"Violin Close Up" Painter Essentials 5 Plus

Violin Close Up

Continuing in a Musical frame of mind, a free to edit photograph of a "Violin Close Up," was used. As you can tell from my last couple of posts I like Musical themed images, and I like Digital Watercolor with variations of Brushes used.

I opened the photograph in Painter Essentials 5, selecting the Watercolor Sketch set. I picked from the Acrylic and Oils Brushes the Wet Oily Brush and Digitally Painted the piece. I added back in details of the strings, bridge, and sound hole using the Photo Painting Brush Soft Cloner, painting by hand.

I hand painted the surrounding background using first the Digital Watercolors Brush - Wash Brush. I continued to paint using the following: the Spatter Water Brush, the Pencils, Pens and Markers Brush Dry Ink, for the Ocher-like hatching. I also used the Photo Painting Brush - New Simple Water to tone down the Blue watercolor a tad. As you can see a Paper Texture was used during the entire process.

Saving that large file, I opened in Paint.NET and added my signature layer with the property Multiply for transparency, and merged the layers. I saved that iteration to Post.

My notes here are incomplete, but I am certain I used Irfanview to Resize/Resample the piece for posting size at 72.dpi JPG.

As always I encourage you to click on the Image for the Larger view to see the details and textures clearly.

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"Street Musicians Two" Painter Essentials 5

Street Musicians Two

"Street Musicians Two," began as another one of the Guitars and Music, free to edit, photographs I found recently. I opened the photograph in Painter Essentials 5 and applied the Effect Sharpen first, this brought out details that were slight.

I next selected the Colored Pencil Drawing set, using Pencils, Pens, and Markers Oily Variable Pencil and Digitally Painted the image. In the enlargement of the image you can see the lines of the Pencil used. Just before it completed I stopped the effect. I then selected the Watercolor Sketch set, with the Oily Variable Pencil as the Brush setting still. This was a good combination of styles and lead to lines as well as watercolors added.

I then selectively hand painted back in some details to the Instruments and the Musicians using the Photo Painting Brush Soft Cloner. I saved that large iteration.

Now in Paint.NET I selected some Adjustments namely the Saturation boosting the colors from 100% to 110% for a punch. I also added my signature layer and merged the layers.

In Irfanview I added a Black Border, and saved that, then Resized/Resampled at 72dpi for display.

"Street Musicians" Picasa - Painter Essentials 5 - PaintDotNET

Street Musicians

I gathered up a few new Guitar and Musician based themed free photographs. "Street Musicians," is the first piece I Digitally worked on. I opened in Picasa 3+ and applied the HDR effect, Radius was Medium, and the Strength or Value was Fair.

Saving that I opened in Painter Essentials 5. Here I used a Modern Painting set with Acrylics and Oils Real Wet Brush. After Digitally Painting that I used the Photo Painting Brush Soft Cloner to add detail to each of the Musicians and a tad to the background trees. Back in Picasa I applied a Black on Black Border and saved again.

Opening it with Paint.NET I applied Adjustments, Curves to add depth, and added my signature layer with the Property Lighten. I then merged the layers. I saved the large iteration at 120dpi.

I Resized /Resampled in Irfanview at 72dpi for display with another name.

"The Blue Door II" Painter Essentials 5 - GIMP - Irfranview

The Blue Door II

I garnered this photograph of another Blue Door. I wanted to do a series of Doors if I could find other good photographs. I selected this one and opened in Painter Essentials 5.

There I selected the Modern Painting set, and chose a Photo Painting Brush Pencil for the Digital painting. I then added back in some details using the Soft Cloner brush, like the door handle and grain of the wood.

I saved that large file and opened it in GIMP, here I added a layer of my signature. I also used Curves to add depth to the image. I Flattened the layers and saved again.

Using Irfranview I kept the image proportions but decreased the compressed size for the display JPG file. I kept the image at 72dpi.

All the time learning and using these programs as they challenged me with differing interfaces and different labels for doing each step. Time consuming but rather intuitive (avoiding manuals) having an enjoyable time while still producing Digital Visual Art.

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"C12 Seagull Guitar in Case." Corel Painter - Irfanview

C12 Seagull Guitar in Case

I browsed my CD "Guitars & Stuff," and found a photograph of my "C12 Seagull Guitar in Case." I opened in Corel Painter 11.

Here I first Brightened the colors a tad. I then applied the Woodcut tool without black. I took that image an made it into a Sketch. At that point I enlarged the image on my screen to fit my workspace. I began to paint with a basic Color Palette. The browns, a bit darker as Watercolors than anticipated.

I used Various Watercolor Brushes and painted the piece. Yes, the wall was a Canary Yellow, and the inside of the Guitar Case was (is) a nice Red color. The background details were very sketchy so I painted them with a large brush size and kept them ambiguous.

I saved the large iteration and opened with Corel PSP Pro X3. I added some Vibrancy with the Saturation tool. I included a Title, Copyright, and Artist in the Image Information tool. Then I opened and copied and pasted as a new layer my Signature. I resized the signature and applied the Multiply property to it, I Merged (flattened) all layers. Adding a border of black I saved that iteration.

I closed PSP and opened the file in Irfanview to resize for display. I am experimenting with Irfanview, a great tool for batch processing image files and it's Freeware.

I added some yellow lines in Irfanview to lighten up the 12-String Guitar Body. I saved the file again.

"Digital Painting Watercolors Old Sketch" Corel Painter 11 - Plus

Painted Digital Watercolor of an Old Sketch

I was browsing through my Picasa 3.9 folders and ran across this old scanned in sketch I did a long time ago. Kind of small I decided to give it a makeover. I used Irfanview to resize the TIFF file to a larger more workable size.

I saved that file and opened with Corel PSP Pro X3 and used the Smart Photo Fix on it and saving that I used Picasa's Softener on it. I saved again and opened with Corel Painter 11.

In Painter I cloned the image. Then I selected differing Digital Watercolor brushes and painted the image. I used Liquid Ink Fine Point brush to add the white reflections in the pupils. I saved that iteration with a "pntd" name.

I opened with PSP Pro X3 and added the ornate Picture Frame. Saved the large file again. Opening in Corel PhotoPaint I added the inverted Signature file with the property Add for transparency. Saving the large file I resampled to display size and saved the finished piece.

"Ice Sculptures at Plymouth, Michigan" Photo-manipulation Picasa 3.9 - Irfanview

I am sharing some photographs of "Ice Sculptures," taken by my son Keir M. Gatzka. They were taken at the Plymouth, Michigan show over the weekend.

I used Picasa 3.9's HDR tool on each photograph, to bring out the details of each sculpture. He took many photographs so I may be sharing more in the near future. I used Irfanview to Batch convert the sizes to 75% the size of the original photographs. I still don't have a handle on all Batch conversion features in Irfanview, even these images are larger than I usually share.

Listening --- Amazon Cloud Player --- Various Songs