"Abstract - Beale Street Blues Players" PicsArt - Corel

Beale Street Blues Players

I took this photograph with my Smartphone at Beale Street Ribs, in Fenton, Michigan. This duo was playing Blues with backtracking equipment, and did some originals as well.

I sent the photograph to myself after using the PicsArt App on it to give it the Contours Abstract appearance. I added a light tint to it here as well. After downloading it to my computer I opened it in Corel PSP Pro X3 and added Image Information, and applied the Saturation Vibrancy tool. I also used the golden frame addition here in Images, Picture Frames.

I would have to say that we enjoyed the Live Blues Rock music they played, and gave them a thumbs-up before leaving, accompanied by big smile of approval.

"Abstract Guitar Player One" Corel

Abstract Guitar Player One

I attended a Taylor Guitars Road Show and took the original photograph during the show. I used a Canon Rebel XTi. I used my Android Phone and shared the image with Instagram first using PicsArt App to alter it. I used the Pencil Sketch tool, and a sepia filter.

I went to my phone Gallery and sent a copy to myself by email. Taking this image I downloaded it to my PC. Here I used Picasa 3.9 to add a Museum frame and Matte to the image.

Saving that I opened it in Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3 and increased the Saturation Vibrancy by 33. Then I added my signature file as another layer. I sized that and fit it to the image and using the property Multiply I made the white background transparent. I merged the layers into one.

I ended up with a square image with Abstract lines and texture I saved it with a differing name, which was only a number prior to this.

"Blue Period Abstract Guitar" Corel Painter 11 - PhotoPaint

Blue Abstract Guitar

I opened Corel Painter 11, my most current version of Painter. Using the Real Filbert Brushes in Digital Watercolor I painted a colored filled background and a Guitar shape.

I used a texture like wood for the painting of the guitar body. I then opened a Liquid Ink layer with a Fine Point ink brush and quickly painted some details, without concern for realism.

I saved the image and opened Corel PhotoPaint. In Picasa I browsed some older folders and found a blue background. I opened both the blue background and the painted guitar image in PhotoPaint. I copied the guitar and overlaid it upon the blue background. I played around with the layers properties and opacity settings. I ended up with the blue image you see.

I inverted my signature to white and placed it in the now blue image.

It reminded me of Picasso's Blue Period of paintings, thus the title. If you don't care for playful abstracts you may not like this image. I did have a blast creating it while listening to music through my headphones, some Rock, Some Jazz, And some old tunes by the Cars.

"Abstract Guitars Digital Collage" Corel - Paint.NET - Plus

Abstract Guitars Digital Collage

I have used more of the photographs of our 12-String and 6-String Guitars to create another Digital Collage. I browsed in Picasa 3.9 to my folder of a recent guitar shoot and selected three photographs separately for this collage.

I opened the first two with Paint.NET and using the Ink Sketch tool I made them into pen and ink sketches. I copied them to the clipboard and then pasted as New from Clipboard into Corel PhotoPaint. I fit the images together with merging them with the Multiply property. I used the wand tool and selected large dark areas of color and then filled them with a blue gradient with the fill tool.

After I did that I copied to the clipboard the third photograph of the guitar necks crossing each other. I opened as New from Clipboard and applied the Local Equalization tool. Then I used the Art Strokes tool Conte Crayon on it. I copied to the clipboard again and pasted upon the other merged pen and ink, gradient guitar image. I merged those and saved that iteration.

In Picasa tools I applied Warmify to the image for color warmth. I saved that image with a new name. I then used the plugin from Filter Forge Frames film frame to add a light frame, adding my inverted signature to the whole piece saving one more time at the larger size.  I then resampled for display size and saved that.

For a finishing touch I ran Filter Forge's Photo Effect Vibrance on it to add some punch to the colors.

I ended up with a very Abstract Composition of Guitars Digital Collage. I enjoyed the process. I hope you enjoy the results.

"Digital Abstract in Red and Yellow" Corel Painter - Plus

Digital Abstract in Red and Yellow

I took a photograph of some colored glass objects and played around with them to create this image. I first opened it with Corel Painter Photo Essentials 4 and auto painted it using a Modern Painting setting. It resulted in a large digital file that I wanted to mush and warp.

After saving it I opened in Corel Painter 11 and applied the Effect, Blobs to it. This gave me the white spaces on the image. I painted upon it with Amazonia brushes I had gotten from PainterTalk's forum a while ago before Painter 12.1 came out. I wanted to do more so I used the Warp tool to smear the paint in multiple ways. And the Quick Warp tool also. I added texture to it by using the Apply Surface Texture, Image Luminance and then using a differing light source I applied the Paper texture to it. The resulting image was very large. I saved the large iteration.

I reopened with Corel PhotoPaint and I moved the painting around till I found the colors and brushstrokes, texture that I liked. I cropped out a piece of the larger image. Not satisfied yet I rotated the image 90 degrees to a portrait position. I did add my signature here.

Saving that I opened with Corel PSP Pro X3 and added Vibrancy to the colors with the Saturation tools. I finished by adding the golden frame and resizing for display.I don't do abstracts very often but sometimes they just feel right!

"Colorful Digital Abstract" Corel Painter 11 - Plus

Colorful Digital Abstract

I began this image as a photograph of Colored Glass in many forms and hues. I was browsing in Picasa 3.9 and went to an assignment folder from PainterTalk and found this and other photographs.

I opened with Corel PhotoPaint and resampled it to a display setting. Then I used the Tone Curve for some depth to the image. I saved that iteration in a New Folder. Clicking on it in Picasa I opened it with Corel Painter Photo Essentials 4 and auto painted it with the Modern Painting settings, I saved that iteration. To open in Corel Painter 11 I used Copy the Full Path in Picasa, then I used Corel Painter 11 to paste the Open path in the Open image window. I cloned the original auto painted image.

Using the clone I opened the Warp Image tool and using that brush like setting I warped the painting to a completely abstract piece. I selected the Artist Sargent Brush and painted lines upon this abstract. I next applied Surface Texture using Image Luminance for more brushstroke texture. I saved that iteration.

I opened with PhotoPaint and added my signature. I then resaved the display size piece.

It has been some time since I have done a Digital Abstract like this and I enjoyed playing with the original brightly colored glass photograph. Sometimes you just need to create abstractions.

"Return to Grunge Guitars 2" CorelTRACE - CorelDRAW - Plus

"Return to Grunge Guitars 2"

"Return to Grunge Guitars 2" began as a photograph of our two guitars. I opened in Corel PhotoPaint and rotated the photograph to portrait. I cropped it slightly and saved the large file.

I opened CorelTRACE and turned the piece into a grayscale photograph and traced the Outlines. I saved the image to a Traced folder. I opened CorelDRAW and selected this image.

In DRAW I Ungrouped all the traced parts into individual pieces. I then selected some basic colors for the majority of them. Red, blue, cyan and yellow. I then regrouped all the pieces to one image. I copied that to the clipboard.

I pasted that into Corel PhotoPaint with a height of 2500 pixels at 300 dpi. I used the Adjust, Local Equalization and the Tone Curve for differing depth of colors. I then applied Filter Forge's Photo Effects Grunge, trying different variations, under Settings, til I found one I liked. I saved that large file.

I next opened the image with Corel Painter Photo Essentials 4. I tried a couple of auto painting styles and finally settled on Gouache with the programs settings. Auto Painting the piece gave it more character, brushstrokes, and some abstraction. I saved that iteration.

I opened with Corel PSP Pro X3 and added my signature using Image, Visible Watermark, Lower-left corner. I added a 25 pixel black Border and saved that. I then resized for display saving my final iteration.

Listening --- The Beatles --- Help! CD

"Custom Truck Mashup" Corel PSP Pro X3

Custom Truck Mashup

This little experiment shows the value of having a tripod for differing exposures of the same subject to use for HDR images. I ended up with an Abstract image playing around with Corel PSP Pro X3's HDR feature.

I took three exposures of this same custom truck, owned by a friend of mine, and united them in the HDR feature. I used the Align Image tool and it did its best to give me an HDR photograph. I did not use a tripod, only stood there with my shadow on the bumper of the truck. So my photographs did not align properly, as is evident in the image.

Nonetheless, I found the end result rather interesting as an abstract image. I used the Vibrancy tool for the color and a couple of other photograph smart fixes on it. I added the blue and black borders as a finish to block in the abstract image. I also added the visible watermark, my signature prior to adding the borders.

Musically I worked on the song "Playing In A Vacuum," last night with my 12-string searching for a chord progression and melody. I went back through some chord progression notes I have and found a group of chords that fit the subject well. Using them with the lyrics, already written, I created the song. I found a drum beat that was a blues Shuffle and adjusted the speed in Audacity to the pace I had for the tune. I recorded it today and did some over voicing as well for added balance to the piece.

Listening --- Kirk Mathew Gatzka --- Playing In A Vacuum

"Digital Watercolor Paintings" Corel Painter - Corel PSP Pro X3

Four Eyes

Watercolor Portrait

Browsing in Picasa 3.9 I found a couple of examples of portrait work. The first one is an abstract I did years ago and had scanned in. I opened in Corel's Painter and created a clone then using the Ballpoint Pen I sketched the faces. I switched to Watercolor Camel brush and painted the colors into the image.

I added the signature in PhotoPaint. But I used Corel's PSP Pro X3 for saturation boost and the adding of the ornate frame.

The second image was a pen drawing I did at a book store, also quite a while ago. I had scanned this one in as well. I used the same Camel Watercolor brush to begin with, resizing it as needed. I also used a Flat brush for lines and for the background as well as the Erase Salt brush in the same.

Again I added my signature in PhotoPaint and matted and framed this image in PSP Pro X3.

Both images were smaller when I began, I used 300 dpi for them both and resized for display here in PSP Pro X3.

Last night, before going to bed I got out my Seagull 12-String Guitar and played and sang some Beatles tunes, starting with I Am the Walrus. I ended with Fool on the Hill. What an enjoyable hour that was.

Creativity - Art Nouveau - Collage - PhotoPaint - CorelDRAW

Today's image began with a scan of an Art Nouveau pattern from R. Beauclair's large format book of patterns. I scanned it in as a large file and opened it in PhotoPaint, where I cropped the pattern I wanted. I used the Tune Blur Directional Blur to soften the image for the background.

I next scanned in the woman's thoughtful gaze piece from North Light's Spot Illustrations clip art book and placed it. I used the object (or layer) property of Multiply for transparency.

To add flavor I selected a Victorian Decorative Initial from a Dover clip art series book and scanned that in for the word Creativity. I added the phrase with another font in PhotoPaint.

I also chose another spot illustration from North Light, the hand and the stop watch to give a feeling of the racing thoughts of the creative process that I have when working on a new piece.

I then took the whole piece into CorelDRAW and added the color filled right hand border, filling the rectangles with sky and color. This added a more up to date feel to the piece. I used the black line to outline the image.

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Now playing: Eric Clapton - Bell Bottom Blues
via FoxyTunes

Casual Conversation - Grunge - Painter 11 - Paint.NET - PhotoPaint

Late-night posting, we all do it at times. Rather tired this late, but creative. I selected a photograph of a couple paying rapt attention during a casual conversation. I opened in PhotoPaint and cropped to show the faces in profile.

I again opened with Paint.Net I applied the Kuwahara Filter Modified for brushstrokes. I used a light Ink Sketch for some line work and saved that file. I reopened in PhotoPaint.

I applied the local equalization for high contrast. I then applied the Tone Curve for depth and upped the saturation for colors. Saving the large file I opened with Painter 11. I used the quick clone with and ocher background. Then I Auto cloned with the Auto Van Gogh cloner brush.

I saved that file at excellent quality. Reopened in PhotoPaint to apply Filter Forge's Photo Effects - Grunge - and to resample for posting here.

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Now playing: Three Doors Down - Here Without You
via FoxyTunes

Deer - Cat - Faces - Music - Grunge Digital Collage - PhotoPaint

Grunge Digital Collage

I selected one of Mayang's Textures for the start of a grunge digital collage this morning. I browsed for it in Picasa 3 and picked one I liked with deep browns. I opened with PhotoPaint and began creating the collage you see.

Using Picasa 3 I browsed for some unusual images for this collage. I selected a deer, two faces pieces, a cat, some birds, and a music piece entitled "The Swallow." I added a frame around the face with the red glasses and a floral piece bottom middle.

I used the property Multiply on most of the collage images to allow some transparency to them to allow the texture to show through. I found the deer, faces, and cat from images I had worked on quite awhile ago. The cat image is a scanned in piece I did in pen and ink and painted in Painter with water color. I also selected a floral banner from Dover Publications for the right hand side. The music and the frame and the other floral also came from Dover Clip Art.

I used the Tone Curve on the deer before I merged it to darken it a bit. I also upped the saturation to 15 for the entire collage to brighten the colors. I did the complete digital collage browsing and copying and pasting from Picasa 3 into PhotoPaint.

Listening --- Run Again --- Kirk Mathew Gatzka

Maze Girl - Painter 11 - CorelDRAW - PhotoPaint

Today's Painter 11 experiment began in PhotoPaint where I opened a Maze from Dover Publications clip art. I copied it to the clipboard and pasted it as a bitmap into CorelDRAW. There I used the Trace Bitmap to create a vector maze.

I selected each piece of the maze and added fills. colors, gradients to colorize the image. From there I copied it to the clipboard and pasted it back into PhotoPaint, and saved it as a 96 dpi image.

In Picasa 3 I selected the saved file and opened it in Painter 11. I first applied blobs to the image for some abstraction. Then I applied the pattern effect to make the wavy lines and colors. After that I opened another portrait file from WetCanvas and used the soft cloner to add it into the piece.

It was a grayscale image so I decided to add color to it in Painter 11. I selected the Tinting brushes to do this adding color from the stock palette. I adjusted and varied the size of the brushes and minimized the opacity. I then selected the Static Pencil brushes to draw in details for the eyes.

I softened the colors using the Blenders brushes. All in all a enjoyable experiment to work on and it is making my day to use Painter 11.

Here is the Maze before I altered it adding the portrait. I thought you might like to see it. It was a vector piece with vector fills and color and gradients done in CorelDRAW. I converted it to jpg for use on the internet.


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Now playing: Avril Lavigne - How Does It Feel
via FoxyTunes

PBS - "Paris the Luminous Years" A Show Worth Watching for Artists

Watch the full episode. See more Paris The Luminous Years.

Driven to Abstraction - Traditional Tools - Painter 8

I was up last night and I decided to get out my tradi-
tional art tools and do an abstract piece. I used a drafting triangle for the lines and the center of it for the triangles with the curved corners.

I used a number of different Pencils, colored, watercolor, pastel, and soft pastels to do the coloring. I wanted to use intersecting lines and differing color to do this non-representational image. I kept it pretty simple.

Today I scanned in the image I created and used PhotoPaint to adjust the working size. There I selected the wand and masked out the forms while I added a brownish gradient to the background, that had been left white on the original.

Saving a interim file I opened it in Painter 8 and selected a flat blender brush and blended some of the colored areas starting with the edges. I wanted to leave some of the texture in so I did not blend every colored piece.

I saved this file and added, back in PhotoPaint, a border and a frame using Filter Forge's Freepack 3. I used my new digital signature file complete with hand drawn symbol and date.

All in all I had fun using traditional tools again and will try to do more sketching and abstractions as well as fictional portraits, in the future, to scan and use digital tools on them.

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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - Switch Time
via FoxyTunes

MixCraft 5 Recording Studio - Abstract Guitars - PhotoPaint

I haven't talked much about music lately. Here is an older Guitar Abstract image I did in PhotoPaint using photographs I had taken.

I used a lot of cut and pasting for the multiple guitar look and feel. I also upped the saturation by 15 for highlighting the color.

Using Filter Forge's Frames I added a dual frame to the piece by using Image> Papersize> color white adding 30 pixels then a film frame then adding 30 more pixels and another film frame.

I have been using a trial period of a program called MixCraft 5 [click here] for some musical experiments. It's like a Garageband for PC users. I have been enjoying the trial period but I noticed that many of the samples of the program make my songs sound generic. I did a Country song "Sweet Laurie," and it came out nice but did not sound like my style of writing at all. I used a Gmaj key with a repetition of the G C D chords, very simple.

I added their samples of loops for drums, Acoustic Guitar, Electric lead Guitar and Bass. It sounded nice, but, like almost any Gmaj Country song you've ever heard before. I played my 12-string Guitar and sang a simple lyric to the accompaniment of the other instruments.

I need to experiment with it some more to see if I can make it work for my style of writing. Basically it is a good program and allows mixing of samples they provide and sound effects and plenty of fun. I would recommend it for the trial at least. It goes for about $75.00 and is not that expensive for what you get with it.

I also recorded another piece called "Crazy Eights," using eight bar snippets from Sludge Metal for an intro to a Power Ballad. I used all samples from them and did not play or sing on this experiment. All in all a good program and a lot of fun.

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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - Sweet Laurie
via FoxyTunes

Vases - Paint.NET - PhotoPaint - Painter 8

Vases began as a photo-
graph taken by my son Keir M. Gatzka. He loves to experi-
ment with angles and macro images.

I opened the photograph in Paint.NET and applied Effects> Artistic> Oil Painting> for a brushstroke feel. I also used another painterly filter for simplifying the strokes. This gave it a posterized appearance.

Next I applied Effects> Artistic> Ink Sketch> with the color turned up for full tonality and the ink lines. Saving that I opened in PhotoPaint and used the Tone Curve on it to lighten it a bit for depth and upped the saturation for those bright pinks. I used Filter Forge's film frame to add a black frame.

Saving again I reopened in Painter 8 and used Apply Surface Texture> Image Luminance> for additional texture. I saved this as 100% quality for the display here.

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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - I'm Counting On You 3 Acoustic
via FoxyTunes

Large Eye - Vector and Painting - Experiment

Another experi-
ment with the spiral and line adjust-
ment tool in CorelDRAW and Painter 8 along with PhotoPaint.

I also used some Dover Publications clip art to add to the image. I used a similar technique as I did on yesterdays image of an eye. Please review the procedures I used in my previous post and you will get the idea of techniques used.

The Eye has always been the fascination of many artists and abstract images of it abound in art. [click here for Wikipedia's Eye article] You can also do a search in one of the popular search engines for IMAGES of eyes. Try "Eye Artwork," I did and I found many interesting pieces of art of the eye.


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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - When Our Eyes Met
via FoxyTunes

Jars and Jars - Angled

Shopping can be an exper-
ience in unusual places. Products displayed in row after row. Thus today's image "Jars and Jars - Angled."

The original photograph was taken by my son Keir M. Gatzka. and it includes myself and my wife surrounded by products during a shopping period at a very peculiar store.

What attracted me to this photograph was the repetition of line and products and the angle that the photograph was taken at.

I used Paint.NET for the line art applying the Ink Sketch effect to it. I took another Mayang's Texture for the background and merged the two together using object property of Multiply in PhotoPaint. I applied Filter Forge's frame film frame. I applied the Tone Curve for depth and upped the saturation a tad for color boost.

Listening to Rock/Pop/Folk NPR - WXPN online.

Nonrepresentational Abstract - "Light" Photographs

I worked on this image from a view of making a non-
represent-
ational abstract piece. I started with some "Light" experimental photo-
graphs done by my son, Keir M. Gatzka. He used my DSLR and took photographs of moving traffic at night to produce them.

I created a collage of them using Picasa 3's collage feature and opened that file in PhotoPaint. There I applied Effects> Art Strokes> Conte Crayon> for a textured approach to the "Light" image. I did not adjust the saturation as the colors were dark and mysterious. It held a bit of rectangular feel from the photographs.

Using Filter Forge's Frames I added a Watercolor frame to the piece with a black 10 pixel border. Saving that file I determined that I wanted more texture to it so I opened it in Painter 8 and used Apply Surface Texture> Image Luminance>. Back in PhotoPaint I added my signature and resampled for display on the web.

Musically I found a chord progression for the song "What Are You Afraid Of?" and now am working on the melody and the bridge chords. It is fun to create music and I relish playing my 12-string guitar. I am experimenting with this song dropping the bass E string to D to give it a slightly different taste. I hope to have the song finished soon.