"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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My Music CDBaby Kiosks are to be found below with Full Previews of ten of my songs for sale. They are downloads from CDBaby's website. Share the Music or click on the shopping cart to purchase a download of any of these songs.  Thank you for your interest in my Digital Visual Art and Indie Music.

"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.