Dancers Surrounded - Digital Collage - Self Portrait

This digital collage began as an Art Nouveau floral back-
ground from Mayang's Textures. As I went I added various pieces to the collage, some Roaring Twenties, Japanese, a couple dancing, a self portrait, a man working an old saw, and a banner.

I used some of Dover Publications clip art along with images I produced, like the dancers and self portrait. I placed each piece and sized them to fit, angling some. The majority of the work was done in PhotoPaint with a bit done in Paint.NET.

I am down to two days of my 30 day Alien Skin Exposure trial so I did pick Color Film> Cinema> Technicolor Vibrant> which boosted all the color of the image.

I added a brown border of 50 pixels width with a double film frame from Filter Forge's Freepack 3.

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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - Switch Time
via FoxyTunes

Toddler in Chalk and Digital Watercolor - Painter 8 - Baby Collage

We were comparing baby pictures of my Daughter and Son n law with pictures of their son, our Grandson. To our delight we found that we could see both of them in his features and expressions.

This image for today was one of the enlarged crops I made for a collage for them from scanned in photographs at 300dpi. It is my Daughter as a toddler. I used Painter 8 Chalk brushes for the piece, varying size and taper. I used a large Chalk brush for the background then applied a Digital Watercolor brush which darkened the background considerably.

I applied Alien Skins Exposure 3 trial Slide filters to add to the texture. Deciding that I wanted more texture I used the Apply Surface Texture> Paper with a woven cloth swatch.

In PhotoPaint I added a large border to allow me to use Filter Forge's Freepack 3 frame on the image without losing any of the crop.

I also am sharing the collage of the three of them showing the similarities from each parent. It is amazing that DNA carries this remarkable ability to form a human with part of both parents so well mixed. We got a big kick out of doing this collage. I used Picasa 3 for the collage and resized it in

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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - Use It Or Lose It 2
via FoxyTunes .

Art Nouveau Digital Collage - A Custom Sedan

Art Nouveau is one of my favorite art periods. I have taken one of Mayang's Textures of peeling painted rust and used it as the background for this themed piece.

With PhotoPaint using Art Nouveau Clip Art from Dover Publications I added them to the image using the object property Multiply for most of them and Color Burn for others along with Invert. I placed them In such a way that the theme would be obvious.

Using the first two pieces of clip art I ran the image through Alien Skins Exposure trial - Technicolor Vibrant - which boosted the color dramatically. Then I place the other pieces to frame the larger ones. I finished with a film frame from Filter Forges' Freepack 3.

On the Custom Sedan I used Paint.NET for the Ink Sketch and applied a painterly filter as well. In PhotoPaint I applied the Technicolor Vibrant from Alien Skin trial. I added a LensFlare from KPT's Collection for an enhancement. Finished with a film frame from Filter Forge.






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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - Where the Wind Blows
via FoxyTunes

A Custom Corvette - A Technicolor Sunset

Another two images to share today. The first is a custom Corvette Wagon at the Woodward Dream Cruise a few years back. And the second a Sunset near some railroad tracks in Waterford, Michigan.

Both of these photographs were film processed scanned in at 300 dpi and resized for display here. On the Corvette I opened the scan in PhotoPaint and used Alien Skins Exposure 3 Trial Color Processing on it. Then I brought it into Paint.NET and applied the Ink Sketch filter, also a painterly filter. Back in PhotoPaint I used KPT Collections LensFlare on the image. I boosted the saturation by fifteen and added a film frame with Filter Forge's Freepack 3.

For the Sunset photo-
graph I used Alien Skins Exposure 3 trial and applied the Technicolor-Vibrant filter which boosted the color dramatically. I did not have to increase the saturation at all for this photograph.

Still in PhotoPaint I applied the film frame to the piece. Then added both a white ten pixel and a black ten pixel border to the framing.

All in all two good images to share with you.

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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - I Walked Along the Lakes Song
via FoxyTunes

Playful Digital Collage - PhotoPaint - Paint.NET

A piece of Mayangs' Bubbled Paint / Rust Texture, Dover Publica-
tions Clip Art, a portrait in pen and ink, make up today's image. I enjoy digital collage very much and it is a satisfying creative act.

I choose Flora's Feast clip art by Walter Crane of a woman playing two flutes and dancing, Another piece was a chart of a man's body with proportions. A border design on the right hand side, which I narrowed and lengthened it before placing it. To this I added an pen and ink portrait to give a central focal point.

To create the portrait I used Paint.NET and the Effects> Artistic> Ink Sketch filter with the color set to it's lowest and also lowering the ink thickness. I cut the face out and pasted it as a new image to add it.

I did all the rest of this in PhotoPaint, and used Alien Skin's Exposure 3 vignette only Round Soft filter on the whole image. In Exposure I adjusted the saturation and tone curve for color and depth. Adding a finish of Filter Forge's Freepack 3 light film frame to the image.

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Now playing: NPR - CMJ: Looking Back to a Whirlwind of Music
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Inspiration Striking - Dual Guitars

Last night I was playing my 12-string guitar and striving to work with a chord progression that used G D C D Em Em7 Em6 Am Am7 Am/G Am/F# back to G. I was able to come up with a workable base with these chords but no melody or lyric came to mind.

Sometimes the inspiration is there striking like a bolt of lightning other times it takes time for it to burst into a full-blown song. I like impulse driven inspiration the best, but it doesn't always happen. Sweat Equity comes to play, hard work and time. I'm not very patient to be honest, and like it when a song bursts into being.

That wasn't happening last night. So I did today's image - two guitars in black and white with a lightning bolt added to the piece. I used Alien Skins Exposure 3 trial to make the color photograph a black and white one with a bit of a border created in PhotoPaint.

I had an image of a lightning bolt that I added, it was made using KPT's Collection feature. It was just an experiment that today came in handy to illustrate the type of Inspiration I really enjoy. Not that I don't mind a good challenge mind you, I do. I feel that some songs just happen and creating them is a joy. Others are a challenge and are not as much fun, but still it's enjoyable to overcome with a decent finished song.

A little Sweat Equity never hurts.

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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - I Want It Today
via FoxyTunes