"How this was done: Sister in law and Younger Brother" Corel

Sister in law and Younger Brother

I was visiting my family up north in Farwell, Michigan and received some photographs from them for our albums. I took them and scanned them in using my Canon MP495 All-in-One. I set the scans for 300dpi and saved them to a Family Photo Folder.

I opened this portrait in Corel PSP Pro X3. The first thing I did was to crop the image, ridding it of some of the White Sky on the top of the original photograph. I applied the Smart Photo Fix:

• Brightening
• Increasing shadows
• Upping the color a bit

I then used Adjust Curves for Depth, and  Saturation Vibrancy set at +20 for greater color.

I next opened the altered photograph in Corel Painter Essentials 5. First I tried a Pastel Drawing:

• Chalk, Pastels and Crayons Brushes
• Selecting the Sharp Charcoal Pencil Brush
• size 7.0
• opacity 100%
• grain 25%
• Clone Color from Source Image

I digitally painted the image for the first time, saving the iteration.

I next decided I wanted to experiment with the Modern Painting settings in PE5:

• I painted from the Clone Color Source Image
• After that was done I could see where more detail was needed
• I Selected Photo Painting Brushes
• Soft Cloner
• And I Hand painted the Details back in with the setting for the Cloner Brush:
• Size 15.7
• Opacity 24%

I liked the resulting image, very painterly, and still with more details for the Faces, making a better portrait of my subjects. I saved that iteration with a differing name.

In PSP Pro X3 I added my Signature as a layer and sized and placed it with the property Multiply, merging and saving again.

As you can see I have used a combination of Narrative and Outline description of the process, workflow explanation. I hope you find it easier to follow the steps I took for this photograph to Digital Painting.

Musically I recently found online, three songs to learn to play on my Seagull 12-String Guitar and sing along in accompaniment. They are:

• Good Riddance, Time of Your Life: by Green Day
• I'm Fixing A Hole: by the Beatles
• Big Yellow Taxi: by Joni Mitchell - the Counting Crows version 

I am hoping this warmer weather continues as my Studio/Office gets pretty chilly this time of year. I would be more apt to practice and record Covers for my own enjoyment if it remains warmer in here!

The last poem I wrote, is not good fodder for lyrical or melody development, so I await until a new song strikes me for writing and recording.