"Two Fish More Fish" Art Deco - Vintage Stamps - Corel PhotoPaint

Two Fish More Fish

I discovered this great Art Deco pattern in Edouard Benedictus' Art Deco Designs of Two Fish and Water. I scanned it in with my Canon MP495 as the basis for this piece. I opened Corel PhotoPaint and Acquired the scan and then applied the Effects, Tune Blur, Directional Smooth a few times.

I opened Picasa 3.9 and browsed my Dover Clip Art folder for some fish and nautical themes. I copied to the clipboard and pasted the fish and rowboat onto the background. I used the Property, Color Burn to make them transparent, placing them for a pleasant composition.

I also Acquired by scanning four Vintage Egyptian Postage Stamps to place in the four corners of this piece. These of course, come from my Cigar Box Collection of Vintage Postage Stamps. I copied and pasted these and used the Feathering tool on them, reducing the amount of white space around them each.

I added my signature in white and saved the large file, resampled for display and saved that iteration.

Listening --- Widespread Panic --- Fishing

Eyes - Victorian Tea Cup and a Brain with a Hat - PhotoPaint

A Victorian tea cup and saucer, a brain, a hat and some eyes, all on a William Morris floral background. This is what makes up today's image.

I opened Picasa 3 and browsed my folders for some Dover Publications clip art. I opened PhotoPaint and began the piece. I found the tea cup and the brain and decided that it would make a good pairing. I used the eraser to get rid of the portion of the cup and brain to settle them together.

I continued to browse and found a grouping of women's hats and selected one. I resized it to fit the upper brain and again erased what was not needed and sat the hat upon the brain.

I browsed my North Light Clip Art Series book and found a series of eyes and scanned in only one set. I again resized to fit with some overlapping for a winged look.

I copied the background to the clipboard and opened File New From Clipboard and copied and pasted the image of the cup et al. I did use the Tone Curve on the background to lighten it and boosted the saturation by 9. I used the layer property Multiply to lay the design upon the background with transparency.

I made the image the right size for display here and added my signature and a beveled frame to finish it.

Listening --- Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young --- Sweet Judy Blue Eyes

PolkaDots - Vector Graphics - Dover Clip Art

Shepherdess with polka dots and her creatures are todays focus. I again took some liberties with the design books and magazines I looked at and created an imaginary scene in vector graphics with the backgrounds from Dover Publications.

I used CorelDRAW, and PhotoPaint for the creation of this piece. I selected odd colors on purpose as well as odd creatures to shepherd. I added the polka dots at the end as the girl's shirt needed something extra.