“Gary Clark Jr.” HDR Picasa - Painter Essentials 5

Gary Clark Jr. - Numb

I opened a screen capture of "Gary Clark Jr.," in Picasa 3+. I adjusted the Contrast of the image for the lighter appearance. Next I applied the HDR tool with the Radius set to Medium and the Strength also Medium. This was a PNG file, but I saved it as a JPG to work with.

I now opened with Painter Essentials 5 and used the Watercolor Sketch set. I set the Brush to Simple Water Brush small size and digitally painted the piece. I then selected the Colored Pencil Drawing set and a Calk Charcoal Brush medium sized. I added just a few Pencil Strokes to the image.

Using the Soft Cloner Brush, I hand painted back in some details of his face, and the microphone. This lets the HDR appearance show the changes it made. I saved that iteration.

Completing the piece I opened in Paint.NET and added my signature file as a layer. I sized and placed it and applied the layer property Additive to it for transparency. I merged the layers to finish the piece. Then decided to use Curves set to RGB to lighten the depth of colors a small amount. This image has plenty of saturation of color so I did not alter that at all. I saved again.

Gary's song “Numb!” is a favorite of mine, he is another of my Blues Rock Singer-songwriter Guitarist I turn to for listening and watching Videos of him perform.

Thus, I have one more image to add to my Music Themed Visual Artworks.

All names, copyrights and, videos or trademarks belong to their prospective owners, I only own the right to my Artworks and explanations of my workflow. 

"Joe Bonamassa - Mountain Time" Picasa - Painter Essentials 5 Plus

Joe Bonamassa - Mountain Time

I use Pandora on my Smartphone and my Tablet to listen to Music. One of my Shuffle Artists to listen to is Joe Bonamassa, along with a few others. I also enjoy Videos of Bonamassa performing his Blues Rock Music. I have used Picasa for some screen captures of Joe playing his favorite Guitars.

I opened Picasa and selected one of those screen captures, “Joe Bonamassa – Mountain Time.” I increased the Highlights a bit and the Color Temperature as well. I applied the HDR tool in Picasa for that effect the Radius Medium and the Strength Medium settings. I saved that file.

I next opened in Painter Essentials 5 and used the Oil Painting set with a small Dry Brush. I used the Soft Cloner Brush to add back in details of his face, Guitar, and clothing. I created a new layer with the same unpainted image in it and applied the Colored Pencil set with another small brush. I dropped the layers together for one background and saved it with a new name.

I used Picasa's Border with only the outside border showing and added corner curves to that. Saving again I opened that file in PhotoPaint and added my signature layer, sizing it and placing it using the property Add for transparency. I saved that iteration.

I Resampled at 120dpi and increased the size of the image before resizing for display, saving again. Next I resized for display 120dpi, 75 compression, and 25 smoothing, saving as a JPG.

The “Joe Bonamassa,” name, and all song originals belong to their prospective owners and I do not own the rights to these.

"Intense Blues Digital Poster" CorelDRAW - Plus

Ain't Nobody Gettin' Away

Short post today. I combined some old "Blues Performers," into a Digital Poster. I used Corel PhotoPaint for the photos and the processing. I copied to the clipboard and pasted onto a new file in CorelDRAW. I added the blurbs and the backgrounds with the black signature and frame finishing it off.

I saved the large iteration and then resampled to display size. Funny I had more time when I got up this morning! Now it's dark out already. Amazing!

"Acoustic Magazine No.5" Fake Cover - Corel PhotoPaint - Picasa 3.9

Acoustic Magazine No.5

Yesterday I worked on this piece. "Acoustic Magazine No.5," is another parody of a faked magazine cover. It is essentially a Digital Collage that pretends to be a magazine cover. I browsed in Picasa 3.9 to my Mayang's Textures folder for a background texture. I opened with Corel PhotoPaint and began browsing for more pieces to make up this cover.

I used scanned in images from my Canon MP495 All in One. On the background I used the Tone Curve for depth and a bit of increased saturation. I copied, pasted, erased and placed the images. I gave the main guitar player Elvis Costello like glasses and eyes and added the shoulders to the arms and guitar.

I used bright colors as accents to the blue in the background for my text boxes. I used the fonts Bleeding Cowboys, and Arial, as well as one I believe was Avantgarde MdBt. I centered by eye and dragged the text to fit the box sizes for a elongated style.

Listening --- Otis Taylor --- Mexican Cowboy

Corel Painter - Painter 8 Wow! Book Acrylics - Autumn is Coming

Summer is cooling, Autumn is right around the corner. Time marches on, and we can't stop it. Here is a digital painting of a fiery tree done in Corel Painter using the Painter 8 Wow! Book's Acrylic brushes.

I have posted a larger version of the image than I usually post, for your enjoyment. The photograph was taken by me last fall at Kensington Metro Park, Michigan. Near their petting Zoo. It was a family outing and we had a great time and got some good photographs of the autumn colors.

I have this at an Art Trading Card size of 375x525 pixels for the purpose of trading if anyone is interested in a trade of cards. It is in an edition of 3 only, and will be signed by myself on the back, listing the location and the year printed. It is on Matte stock Photo paper.

In music I have been working on a Drop D tuning song for the last few nights. I love the drone of the dropped D (bass E in regular tuning) as it sounds amazing. I continue to experiment with new chord structures trying out new D chords and a few open chords to see if they fit the Drop D tuning well. It's great fun and I have really been enjoying it.

Here is a Blues Drop D tuning song video, but it's not me playing.

Dover Clip Art Frame - Custom Cat - Guitars - Grunge

Impressionistic Lake View - Acoustic Blues

Abstracts - Painter 8 - Color - Non-Representational

12-String X4 - RenCen GM Building - Paint.NET - CorelDRAW - PhotoPaint - Sketchup 7

Lead Belly Music - Guitar Collage

Many people like the Blues, I am one of them. I have a collection called the Essential Blues complete with commentary about the different Blues players it features.

What Blues has done for Rock and Roll is amazing. It is one of the true roots of Rock. From the Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin and John Mayall plus countless others, Blues influenced their lives and music.

Here is a collage I did in TwistedBrush and PhotoPaint. I superimposed a picture of Lead Belly in the center and then surrounded him with differing kinds of guitars. I first created a textured background in TwistedBrush, which proved to be too dark for this piece so I lightened it in PhotoPaint using the Tone Curve feature. I added the guitars using the object property of Multiply or Color Burn. Using the Thredgeholder filter I did the sketch like images I put together.

Listening to a little blues by Cale and Clapton.

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Now playing on Windows Media Player: JJ Cale and Eric Clapton - Heads In Georgia
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Eric Clapton - Guitar Player

One of my favorite guitarists is Eric Clapton. He is versatile and "old slow hand" can really play the blues, rock, and unplugged.

I have the DVD of his Crossroads Guitar Festival in Dallas, Texas. (or was it Austin?) I like to re-watch it often. Many great guitarists are featured and the quality of the playing is amazing.

I had both Blind Faith and Disraeli Gears on vinyl, years ago I loved the albums. And I have a few songs from Clapton and JJ Cale playing together on my PC.

Crossroads Antigua is a rehab for those musicians and others to find who need a way back from alcohol and drugs. Many young musicians were cut down in their prime by drugs or alcohol. So Clapton and others started it to help those in need.

But Eric Clapton is only one of my many favorites, I only wish I could play as well!

My own music has only been playing around with DADGAD tuning recently. I find it at once liberating and at the same time limiting. I have only made up a few dozen chords, and lead lines using it. It definitely makes for long playing 10 to 12 minute periods at a time. A little harmonics, lead chords and drone. Wonderful.

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Now playing on Windows Media Player: Amanda Marshall - The Voice Inside
via FoxyTunes

Wizz Jones - Bluesman

Concluding my series of Bluesmen from Blue Front Blues Room is a portrait of Wizz Jones. Photographic credit goes to John Anderson.

I am very happy with this series of images. I really enjoyed working on them and I am grateful to John for his kindness in letting me use his photographs to work with.

Each one has it's little quirks and style but pulled together they make a great Picasa 3 collage. I made one just yesterday and I have yet to print it out. All told I did 12 pieces based upon a different Blues person each time.

Digital Visual Art is great to work with. There are so many possibilities and tools and programs to work with. Along with my programs and plugins I use a Wacom tablet for digital pieces. It is like using a pencil/pen/brush/crayon to draw with and create such images. I revel in the creative process and the speed and variety at which I can work given the computer and such tools, and programs.

I hope you have enjoyed the series! Comments are welcome on any one of the images I create and post here. Or just mark your Reaction to a post, that is welcome as well. Please pass on to your Friends my blog URL, I would like to share with as many people as I can, Thank You!

We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Perry Foster - Bluesman

Second to the last post of portraits from the Blue Front Blues Room. Photograph credit goes to John Anderson. I have been enjoying this series and I hope you are as well.

Here is Perry Foster performing with his guitar and singing. I used Paint.NET to create the line work using it's Artistic> Sketch filter, I saved it as a separate file. I opened both in PhotoPaint altered the saturation of the original by about 25. I added the line work as an object and changed it's properties to Multiply, dropped it to the background, changed the Gamma to lighten up the dark areas. I saved the file after I added the frame and my copyright, then opened it in Painter 8 to add the texture to it. Each step adding a little something to the finished piece.

I have added my blog to FeedBurner to make it easier to subscribe to for many. I checked my listing in Google's blogsearch and I come up about 4th or 5th in the listings for 'Digital Visual Arts'. Not bad.

I am increasing the blogs I follow, adding art blogs, but I am keeping the number down to keep my time under control. I am very specific as to who I want to follow as well as what my interests are, Art and Music.

I have improved my blog heading. I also added a picture at the end of the my blog which I may change infrequently. It is an image that began as a photograph of Onions grown in our garden on the kitchen counter with a red towel. I altered that image so the colors were predominant. I added images of guitars and a couple of guitar players to make it more of a digital montage/collage.

Lazy Lester - Bluesman

Lazy Lester's portrait is based on another Blue Front Blues Room photograph by John Anderson.

For this image I used Painter 8, Oil brushes and Digital Watercolor brushes. I added the brush texture using the Effects> Apply Surface Texture> Image Luminace settings. I really like the brush stroke texture this created.

Using Painter 8 takes longer than some of the other images I have posted recently. But it is very rewarding and requires more thought and creativity and some skill to make a painterly image.

Lester looks great as he plays the blues. I thought he merited a good image. So I digitally painted this one.

As always I used PhotoPaint to do some adjusting to the image, resizing for the blog, adding my name, etc.

Kent DuChaine - Bluesman

Simply continuing my series of Bluesmen. I have a few more to display. I used PhotoPaint and Paint.NET filters, also adjusting the saturation and the gamma to get the effect shown here.

Again Thanks to John Anderson at Blue Front Blues Room for the photograph.

I spent last night working on a new song titled: "Seeing Things the Right Way". A bit of country in it according to my wife's opinion. She is very kind about most of my songs, some she really likes and this is one of those. I kept the lead guitar very simple on it, and played guitar and recorded the singing using the Shure microphone live. Then overdubbed the lead.

It's theme is giving of oneself in a relationship and asking if the efforts, sometimes hard, are acceptable to the other party. It was great to get a song out! I have been dry musically for some time now. It feels good.

I am happy to be sharing the series of Bluesmen and will add more as I go on.

Duck Baker - Bluesman

My continuing series of bluesmen from Blue Front Blues Room.

Using PhotoPaint I adjusted the saturation to boost the colors on this image, colors which were already quite cool. I also use some filters to create a more painterly look to this piece.

All of the photographs are John Anderson's from his site. I have his permission to apply my efforts to them to create some distinctive images. He in turn may use them on his site in the future. So it goes both ways, we both benefit from this arrangement. I get good photos to work from and he gets some unique images for his use as well. Pretty great I think!

I haven't been writing much lately, I really have a bad case of the wintertime blues. So I have been low in activity musically but doing more in the area of the digital visual arts. I realy need some warm weather, like many folks I get cabin fever in the wintertime. I have been walking on the treadmill as I listen to CD's, this keeps me somewhat active but it is not like taking a nice walk outside.

So those reading this I hope you are weathering this winter better than I!

Point is to be creative in some way!

Bluesman - Dave Kelly

One more in my series of bluesmen from Blue Front Blues Room. Photograph by John Anderson of the same website.

I used PhotoPaint and KPT's Collection and Thredgeholder plugins to create this image.

Thredgeholder is a plugin from Little Ink Pot that works much like a sketch maker. I use it for the lines in many pieces I do. I run it on an image and copy it to the clipboard then undo the change. Adjust the image to my liking sometimes using KPT's Collection Pyramid Paint filter and PhotoPaint's Alchemy filter.

Then I paste the sketched image back into the piece as an object. I make it transparent, leaving the lines intact, by changing the object properties to "multiply". And drop the object to the background over the filtered image.

This is only one way I may use these steps as my technique. I have other filters and also Painter 8 to accomplish more painterly images.

Bluesman - Ernie Payne

From a photograph by John Anderson. I used PhotoPaint and KPT Collection filters to create this image. My continuing series of bluesmen from Blue Front Blues Room.

Ben Andrews - Blue Front Bluesman

Ben Andrews is a bluesman that is featured on the Blue Front Blues Room site. I have the permission of the owner of that site to do a series of images using my various digital tools.

Here I have used Painter 8 to paint the portrait of Ben. I used Acrylic brushes and Digital Watercolor brushes to create this image.

If you would like to know more about Ben and other bluesmen I will feature here go to Blue Front Blues Room.

I give credit for all the being original images to John's photography work for the site. If it weren't for John's permission I would not have had such a good group of musicians to do portraits of.

Thanks John!

I'm doing a series of ten bluesmen images from this site for the blog. I hope you enjoy the portraits as I am enjoying them.

Blues Front Site Credit

I recently had contact from John Anderson of Blues Front <bluefrontbluesroom.org> identifying my previous Guitar Player Chording G as a photograph of Rick Payne from John's site as shown above. Thank you, John!

Here I am displaying Bluesman Dave Peabody, also from a photograph of John's. I used Corel's PhotoPaint and KPT's Collection filters to do this derivative piece.

Please visit John's site for an insider look at Blues and many performers. Let me know if the link doesn't work!

I have been busy with a family emergency so I haven't been doing much on the computer recently. So I don't have much to report. But that will change soon, I hope! I would like to write a tune about my experience with the hospital and the family emergency but I remain stunted for right now. A situation I hope to remedy soon.