Guitars - Digital Watercolors - Painter 11 - PhotoPaint

I recently had the privilege of having one of my songs arranged and played and sung by another musician. The song is "Open Secret," and I had just put it on my Acoustic Guitar Community - My Page listed below. ( I have since then added some older songs from 2004 to my listing so the song is listed as #4 on my playlist, my version.)

His name is Kenneth Brodie and he hails from Australia. He requested my permission to play it for his gigs and I asked him for a recording of what he came up with. He did a marvelous job with the song, keeping it simple and delightful, his recording is very good.

My wife said that she really liked his arrangement as well, he did stick very close to my version but simplified it and played a quiet instrumental version with his vocals. Needless to say I am happy that another musician found my song to be one he was attracted to and wanted to add to his repertoire.

Currently my songs and my recordings are not for sale, so you can only listen to them at My Page on Acoustic Guitar Community or some that are on SoundCloud. I have badges for both on the right hand column of this blog down the pages.

Today's image falls right in line with the topic above. It is a photograph of Guitars that I painted in Painter 11. I first used the quick clone with a light ocher background, selecting Real bristle brushes I did some of the background.

For more muck up I selected Skip's Digital Watercolors and creating a small brush I did an auto clone. I then varied the digital watercolor brushes and painted the guitars in roughly. Using the cloner soft clone I added back in some details, like the strings and soundholes and bridges.

I then Applied Surface texture twice first using Image Luminance and then selecting the French watercolor swatch I added more Paper detail, adjusted slightly so as not to overwhelm the painting.

I saved the large file and opened it in PhotoPaint to resample it for display and I added a Filter Forge film frame to the piece.

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Now playing: Ken Brodie perform written by Kirk Matthew Gatzka - Open Secret
via FoxyTunes

Custom Cruiser - Corel PhotoPaint - Grunge

As a guitar player I like to do covers of other's songs. Some times I find a song, think I know it as I listen to the singing and lyrics only to find out that after I get the song it contains words I don't want in any song I sing. I am not asking for much, but just want a song to be clean and not dirtied up with cuss words and the like.

I just had that happen to me last night. I found the lyrics and chords online at one of the resources I use. And found objectionable content. Spoiled my intentions of covering that song. I could change the lyric, but it would not contain the original intent of the artist. Whatever that may have been, shock value, rebelliousness, superstitious nonsense. So I just won't use that song. I'll move on to another in hopes of finding a good song to cover. Fun to play and sing.

Today's image is a continuation of my grunge motif with custom cars. It was done in PhotoPaint, with a grunge texture from Grunge Textures as the background. It is a modified PT Cruiser, highly altered. I focused on the front end of the vehicle.

I used the Thredgeholder plugin filter, from Little Ink Pot, to create the sketch like appearance of the car. I added this using the object property Color Burn. Adding some guitar chords in a progression and a partial critique of a story I have written for children, (which needs only some illustrations to finish it up.) I again added some paint splatters and drippings for the grunge feel.

I do so enjoy a decent grunge piece, they are so much fun to do.

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Now playing on Windows Media Player: Alison Krauss - Rich Woman
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Loving Couple - Post Wedding Portrait

Thanks to David Benjamin Photo-
graphy I have a few lovely photo-
graphs - post wedding - of my Daughter and Son n law.

I have taken some liberties with one of the photographs and did some of my digital work on it. I have been using Paint.NET quite a bit lately for the filters. I used the Artistic> Oil Painting> filter first on the image, then used the Artistic> Pencil Sketch> filter to create a posterized version of the photograph with lines added.

I opened the resulting image in PhotoPaint and adjusted the Color Hue to a strong sepia like tone. Resizing it I added the Bevel frame to the image.

I have been practicing the song "When The Stars Go Blue" to do a cover of it for the next CD "The Roof". I have to adjust to the tempo, I can do the song but I tend to make it a faster tempo. I have to decide where to put my capo as well, Second or Third Fret. I can't help but add my stylized rhythm playing to it, I just do after years of playing alone. I need to practice more using my digital metronome!

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Now playing on Windows Media Player: Tim McGraw - When the Stars Go Blue
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Centered Peaks

I worked on a Cover of the Beatles "Norwegian Wood"; I found in an older Guitar magazine "Acoustic Guitar". Using the Toneport UX1 and a drum track that I slowed down in Audacity I sang a dual vocal and played the 12-string. I used a guitar tone and style patterned after George Harrison for the rhythm guitar.

Try as hard as I did I still could not duplicate the Lead Guitar. It was beyond my capability for now anyway. So it is drums, rhythm guitar, first vocal, and second vocal. Singing is enjoyable and playing a classic song was really fun.

Gearbox allows so many choices that sometimes you have to be selective in order to get a balanced sound. Making covers of Beatles' songs is really fun as you add your own style to it.

I also wanted to share another one of my manipulated photographs from Alaska. I used Corel's PhotoPaint and KPT'c Collection Pyramid Paint filter. I upped the saturation a bit and lightened up the gamma slightly. I also had cropped out a fence in the right had corner which made for a better overall image.