"Sparks and Son" Digital Watercolor - Corel - Plus

Sparks and Son

I was emailed this photograph taken by Chary Izquierdo, of Singer Songwriter Edward Sparks and his son Josh performing. It was on my laptop so I saved the PNG image. I converted it to JPG and transferred it to my external HD.

I took that to my Desktop PC and opened it with Corel PSP Pro X3. I first applied Digital Camera Noise Removal and then the Smart Photo Fix. I also applied the Unsharp Mask tool to the photograph to sharpen it a bit.

Then I used the Hue and Saturation Vibrancy tool for some punch to the colors. I slightly increased the size of the file as it was smaller than I desired. I saved that iteration to my Local HD.

I went to Picasa 3.9 and opened the file with Corel Painter Photo Essentials 4 and used the Watercolor Sketch feature to auto paint  it. I then used the hard edge cloner brush to add back some color and detail to their faces and hands and instruments.

Saving that iteration I opened with PSP Pro X3 and used the Smart Photo Fix on it to lighten it up a bit. I added the Polaroid frame (it's one of my favorites,) and a border in black. I saved that iteration.

I opened with Corel PhotoPaint and added a white signature, using Invert on my signature file and Add as the property.

962 posts and climbing ever so slowly to 1,000! Follow with me on this adventure! We've reached over 78,000 pageviews this past weekend! Thanks for your visits and please keep coming back to see what I'm up to next!

Visit Edward Sparks link: http://www.facebook.com/edward.sparks.71

"Acoustic Magazine" Fake Cover - Corel PhotoPaint

Acoustic Magazine Fake Cover

I chose a magazine motif for a creative activity this evening. I created a digital collage in Corel PhotoPaint. I found some images in old magazines and, after cutting them out,  scanned them in using my Canon MP495 All in one.

On the main face I added the eyes of a female singer and her lips on the Blues player wearing the hat, which were both cutouts as well. I applied the Image, Threshold bi-level, on the entire collage prior to adding any text.

I used the names of myself and two Guitar singer songwriters I met on the Acoustic Guitar Community. I also used the band name of the first band I was in in our senior year at high school for the exclusive interview. I added a blurb about using the free recording program Audacity. And using a bit of humor added the six-fingered Blues lesson.

The Fonts I used for the various text phrases were, Arial Narrow, Bleeding Cowboys, Abadi MT Condensed  Extra Bold and Berlin Sans FB. for a realistic touch I added the UPC code from a magazine blotting out the numbers on the code.

I saved the large file with my signature and resampled for display here.

Listening --- Cowboy Junkies --- Blue Guitar

Stone Grunge Guitars Grid - PhotoPaint

I was browsing a musician's website and went to his photo gallery where he displays a grid of his guitar collection. I was immediately taken by the grid of rectangular guitar images. I did a screen capture and contacted the musician about using this in an image to gain his permission.

His name is Edward Sparks and credit for the grid of guitars goes to "M. Edward Sparks/Pepperland Productions", along with my many thanks for the use of this great piece of image making.His website is really good and he has, along with his guitar collection, some great videos to view and listen to him perform. [CLICK HERE] for the link to his site. I invite you to go there and enjoy his music and well done site. We are both members of the Acoustic Guitar Community where we share music and music based videos, groups, photograph and discussion concerning our love of acoustic guitars.

I used a stone background from Mayang's Textures and assembled the piece in PhotoPaint. I used object property Multiply for the guitar grid. I was going for a grunge look and feel so I darkened the image using the Tone Curve and upped the saturation for that rusty stone color. I added a film frame from Filter Forge's frames.

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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - Peaceful Tones
via FoxyTunes