"Series 66 #3" Digital Collage - Corel PhotoPaint

Series 66 #3

"Series 66 #3" is the image for today. I am staying with this motif for a while, don't know how many I will do or if I will keep up the successive permutations. I really like Digital Collage and working with scanned pieces of collage material.

I used another number of sources for this image. I did add some Dover Publications Clip Art for design purposes. I created it in mainly Corel PhotoPaint, scanning with my Canon MP495. But I also used Corel's Painter 11 for texture and warping of the background. And CorelDRAW for the numbers "66" and "3".

I cut, pasted, erased and sized to fit all the pieces for this face collage. I saved the large 11"x7" file and then after adding my signature, resampled for presenting here.

Listening --- JJ Cale and Eric Clapton --- Heads in Gerogia

Crowded Sunlit Atrium - Paint.NET - PhotoPaint

Here is a photograph taken by my son, Keir M. Gatzka. It's an angular view of a crowded sunlit atrium. It has much appeal in it's geometric appearance and the busy crowd bustling about. I opened the image in Paint.NET and applied the Ink Sketch filter, boosting the color all the way up.

I also used the Curves adjustment to the Luminosity for a brighter appearance with an increase in color saturation as well. I saved that large file and opened it in PhotoPaint and applied Filter Forge's Photo Effect Vibrance for more enhancement.

I also added a 30 pixel black border to the piece then I resampled for display here. A simple digital manipulation for this angular piece. I tried to add some texture to the piece in Painter but found it distracted from the overall image so I left it alone and saved it.


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Now playing: Beatles - Good Day Sunshine
via FoxyTunes

Custom Cars are a GAS - Grunge and Polish

Hard work, a great classic car and a fabulous paint job polished up to a high gloss. You are ready for the Woodward Dream Cruise. All nature of cars will be cruising Woodward Avenue and the image for today names only a few brands.

On WXYZ.com you can share your memories of previous Dream Cruises with photographs of your memories. And they even have an Events listing for you to plan your days at this years Cruise.

I used PhotoPaint for the piece with another Grunge sandy background. I took the photograph of the car into Paint.NET and used the Effects> Artistic> Ink Sketch with no color for the overlaid car image. I applied the object properties Color Burn for the browns of the ink sketch. I then thought awhile about some of the cars I had seen at previous Cruises and added their names to the piece. I know I have probably not covered them all, but many of these names are going away in the current Big Three crunch.

I used a variety of fonts, some Grunge others a bit more polished, but you'll get the idea from the image itself.

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Now playing on Windows Media Player: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - Take the Time 2
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Lute Player

I found this image in my collection of older paintings of the use of stringed instruments. A lute player with an amusing smile on his face. He really looks as though he is enjoying himself!

I did not keep track of what painter did this painting as I have quite a collection that I have used as a screen saver at times. The paintings range in styles and I tried to keep it within the string instruments genre but I did stray here and their.

The history goes back a long time. Wikipedia again helps us to understand some of this: "The origins of the lute are obscure, and organologists disagree about the very definition of a lute. The highly influential organologist Curt Sachs distinguished between the "long-necked lute" (Langhalslaute) and the short-necked variety: both referred to chordophones with a neck as distinguished from harps and psalteries. Smith and others argue that the long-necked variety should not be called lute at all, since it existed for at least a millennium before the appearance of the short-necked instrument that eventually evolved into what is now known as the lute, nor was it ever called a lute before the 20th century."

"Lutes are made almost entirely of wood. The soundboard is a teardrop-shaped thin flat plate of resonant wood (usually spruce). In all lutes the soundboard has a single (sometimes triple) decorated sound hole under the strings, called the rose. The sound hole is not open, but rather covered with a grille in the form of an intertwining vine or a decorative knot, carved directly out of the wood of the soundboard."

It is interesting to note that they are completely differentiated from harps and other stringed instruments. I have always viewed them as the ancestor of the guitar. But that is for experts to decide it is just an opinion of mine. I have never played a lute but would love to try one. but they are not in favor these days as the guitar has become so popularized as the instrument of choice. They are hard to find at the guitar stores, sort of an oxymoron I suppose I imagine you would find them at "Lute Stores."

By the way, if you recognize the painter of this image please let me know, I would appreciate it. I wonder if it is Caravaggio?

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Now playing on Windows Media Player: Van Morrison - Little Village
via FoxyTunes

A Man and His Dog

A man and his dog on a cutoff in the mountains. I tried to make a better image with the addition of a sky but it appears that the Pyramid Paint filter made it look too dark.

So I think it looks doctored up. But it was fun to do and so I am sharing it.

I've been working on a mapping project with a friend. So it is an interesting challenge to formulate the maps from resources. It is mostly cutting and pasting and adding street names that don't appear on the resource map.

I've been listening to music, too. Some of my older songs that I may remake using the Toneport to see if I can add an edge to them, or soften them a bit. I may add background vocals as well as some lead playing, although I'm not your best lead player! It's all in fun anyway. And there are always covers to do of other songwriters works.

I've received an invitation to an Opening Reception for the Michigan Plein Air Painters exhibition coming up on November 7th. http://www.michiganpleinair.com/ The show runs until Nov. 29th. It's being held at the Huron Valley Council for the Arts in Highland, Michigan. Not too far from us. The invitation was a large sized postcard with six images of plein air paintings, all very well done. We hope to go to the reception but if not we may go to the exhibition at a later date.