Ave Maria!
Nitro--
Hats off to you!? 8))I believe you'll surely take 1st prize this month (NOT to discourage other submissions!).
I've not tried the Mesh feature in Illustrator, but I'm game now.
By way of example, pardon me for fussing with your post, I'd like to offer a pointer or two for grafting photos into other scenes, real or modeled/illustrated:
? The camera angles need to match. NitroButler's submission had no background for reference, so this is okay. I added scenery to the picture to first contextualize it (distracting the viewer a tad), and then to add depth. I feathered a rectangular selection, then Gaussian blurred it to de-emphasize the background and to force a little depth. I used Carrera to build the living room (clouds were added in PS with Digital Elements' Aurora 2 plug-in); it's a good idea to model and render different settings at different angles w/ different lighting for future needs.
? The lighting needs to match. Maria was just a tinch paler than the chair illustration, so I selected her (the Path tools in PS are essential to learn; anyone want me to post a tutorial?), and then ran some Levels. I did the same with the background.
? The shadows need to match. Maria's chair had a slight drop shadow, but needed a cast (perspective) shadow. I saved Maria+chair w/ transparency as a png, imported it to Xara, then simply added the cast shadow with the shadow tool, which is wonderful because it blurs the shadow progressively as perspective diminishes...but the same could be done with a little more work, manually, in PS.
? I also defringed my selection on Maria+chair, then used the Blur tool to further the integration of the foreground and background.
But the bottom line is that Nitro built a plausible image, daring to use an illustration software as opposed to a modeler/render.
I salute your talent and effort!
My Best,
Gare