"Simply Orchid - Rust Textured" Corel - Textured

Simply Orchid - Rust Textured

"Simply Orchid - Rust Textured," is a Journal entry of an Orchid done freehand out of my imagination. I opened the file with Corel PhotoPaint and cropped it a tad. I used the Tone Curve on it to boost the depth and colors of this floral.

I searched my external drive Rust Textures folder and found a yellow paint and rust texture. I layered this onto the Orchid image. I applied the property Multiply, and adjusted the Opacity to 80. I merged both the layers and added my signature in white saving the larger iteration. I then resampled for display.

"Vintage Circa 1990's Digital Visual Artworks" Corel

Azuretai Abstract

Abstract Floral

Brown Face

Here are three more (what I call Vintage,) Digital Visual Artworks. Azuretai is a Vector graphic Abstract done in an older version of CorelDRAW. It was enlarged to a JPG format and lost it's clean straight lines and gradients. But I is still an interesting early vector abstract.

The Abstract Floral is based upon a freehand image that was scanned in and manipulated in Corel PhotoPaint. I love the computer colors used to add punch to this image.

Brown Face was done using a Wacom tablet and pen on the computer freehand. The image was small and enlarged and softened.

All images were put through Corel PSP Pro X3 for cleaning of Digital Noise and JPG artifacts and moire patterns.

I am enjoying sharing these older and colorful images, they represent my early Digital Visual Artwork.

"Searching the Archives - Vintage Dot Matrix and Photograph"

Amelia - Dot Matrix Digitized

Film Photo Scanned In

I am showing a Vintage Dot Matrix Female Portrait to begin with. I did this on a Tandy Color Computer with a Dot Matrix printer. I scanned in the results and saved them for future examination. It may bring back some memories of those of you in the early days of home computing. Amelia was a fictional person I drew on the computer using a Kola Pad if my memory serves me right, if not it was a mouse drawn image. In fact this may have been done on an Amiga Computer! Memory fails me.

Candy Apples is a film photograph taken in the 1990's and scanned in. I think I was using Windows at the time on an IBM type PC. I do remember this trip to the Ingham County Fair near Lansing Michigan.

Memories for all to conjure up thoughts of early computing!

"Digging the Garden - Archives" Old Digital Art

Filling Things

Pink Rust Code Gender

I was installing Windows 7 32-bit on my old PC and found a few CD's with old Digital Visual Artworks on them. I am looking them over and making some changes with Corel PSP Pro X3 and PhotoPaint and displaying them here and on Google+.

I did some of these in 1999 the year my Mother died. Some are somber others are upbeat and reflective with words of pain and loss. A hard time for me, as it is for those who lose loved ones in death.

I am certain I used PhotoPaint for some of these archived images and others are scanned in pen and ink and pastel works.

I am trying to keep this blog going in spite of a harried schedule, taking care of our Grandson and other related activities. I hope you will enjoy some of my old artworks!

"KMG Therapeutic Massage LOGOS" CorelDRAW - Plus

KMG Therapeutic Massage Logos

Between Hardware problems relating to my Video cards and working on these Logos for my Son's Massage Therapy business, I have been neglect full of posting here. We also have been joyfully watching our Grandson who is about to turn three years old, playing with him. So I have been busy.

I created the logos in CorelDRAW and these are the best ones as of today. I like the bottom left one, it is my favorite. You can leave messages as to your favorite if you would like. My Son is an excellent, Certified Massage Therapist and would appreciate any input. These logos are ©2013 by Kirk Mathew Gatzka and are not for unauthorized use or copying.

We are working on our own trifold brochure for him to use for In Office Chair Massage. Then we will create another one for his In Home Massage Therapy. All by appointment only. We are using an Avery 8324 brochure template, downloaded from Avery for MS Word. I have created other brochures in CorelDRAW so if we decide that the template is not to our liking we will make them in CorelDRAW. Now if I can remember how to make a text box, hmmm.

My travails with the video card has sent me backwards to my original OEM motherboards VGA connection which is much slower than the cards I tried to install. Both are Nvidia Geforce cards. I had one that I bought a DVI cable for and it never worked as VGA or DVI. I contacted Nvidia and they suggested it was a defective card.

Well, I recieved the card as a gift so I have no recourse to get a refund, how does one refund a gift? The other card was functioning for a time but had low speed just a tad faster than the OEM VGA connection. So I am now having trouble getting into SafeMode on my Windows PC to try and fix the problems.

The current VGA works fine, I was trying to improve the operation of the video. Looks like I have failed and possibly made some sort of other problems on this aging computer. As long as it works and is not failing I will not be forced to get a new PC.

"Seagull S12 Cedar Guitar" Corel - Plus

Seagull S12 Cedar Guitar

Trying out different settings on my Canon Rebel XTi DSLR today and using my Seagull S12 Cedar Guitar as a subject, I garnered a few photographs. I selected one of them and opened it from Picasa 3.9 into Corel PSP Pro X3.

There I used my workflow of the Digital Camera Noise Removal, and Smart Photo Fix. I applied the Saturation Vibrancy to it to give the color some punch. Using the Picture Frame tool I found the "mat" of instruments and a gold frame. I saved the large file.

I reopened in Corel PhotoPaint and added my signature and resampled for display.

I have the Guitar out and I am going to do some practicing with it this afternoon. That is a great way to make my day a good one. DADGAD tuning here I come.

"Grunge Cool Dude" Paint.NET - KPT Collection - Plus

Grunge Cool Dude

"Grunge Cool Dude," began as a trip to Dairy Queen for something cold, I garnered this photograph of my Grandson. I opened from Picasa 3.9 with Paint.NET. Here I cropped the photograph and applied the Ink Sketch feature to it. I copied to the clipboard. I opened Corel PhotoPaint and pasted as New from Clipboard.

I took that image and applied KPT Collection's Gradient, which gave me a blue background. I then pasted from the clipboard the photo image and used the property Multiply on it to let the gradient show through. I added my signature in white, merged all layers and added a blue border to the image using Image, Papersize, Centered 40 pixels.

I then used Filter Forge's Photo Effects Grunge on the piece for texture. I applied a light effect so as to show as much of his face and sunglasses as I could. I saved the large file, then resampled for display.

"Dancers" Digital Collage - Corel PhotoPaint - Corel PSP Pro X3

Dancers

I took some time to browse in Picasa 3.9 in my Dover Publications and Free Vintage Clip Art folder. I have over 1,000 pieces of art in the folder and it took some time for inspiration to hit me.

I found the pieces you see in today's image. A floral like background, a woman and man's faces and the dancers silhouette. I opened the floral in Corel PSP Pro X3 and resized it to a 10 x 5.8 inches 300dpi background. I then saved that and opened in Corel's PhotoPaint. There, and from Picasa, I copied and pasted and erased around the faces, placing them opposite each other.

I searched for the "Dancers," silhouette and copied and pasted that and used the property Multiply, then resized to make them the centerpiece in the image. I merged all, used the Tone Curve and upped the color saturation, and added my signature, Then saved the large file, resampled it for display and saved that. I looked at the enlargement in Picasa 3.9

I decided to use Picasa 3.9's Museum Mat for a frame, I applied that, adjusted the mat color to blue and saved that file separately.

It was a simple Digital Collage project with pleasant results.

Listening --- Elton John --- Tiny Dancer

"Contours Ice Sculptures" Corel PSP Pro X3

Contours Ice Sculptures 1

Contours Ice Sculpture 2

Browsing in Picasa 3.9 I grabbed two photographs of Ice Sculptures and opened with Corel's PSP Pro X3. I quickly adjusted the color and saturation of the photographs (individually.) I decided to try some of the effects of PSP and found that the abstract designs of the sculptures lent themselves well to the Effects, Contours feature.

I had taken my signature file and opened it in another graphics program, Fireworks MX, and with some experimenting I made a transparent PNG file for the watermark. I added my now transparent signature to the photographs. Then I added a 25 pixel black border and a simple black frame.

As usual I saved the largest files and resized for display here.

Listening to the television News right now

"Cars Continued" High Contrast Photo-manipulation - Corel PhotoPaint - Picasa 3.9 - Filter Forge

High Contrast 1

High Contrast 2

Short post for this day. Here are two photographic manipulations done in Corel PhotoPaint, using Filter Forge's frames.

I first applied Local Equalization to them and then used the Tone Curve for depth of color. I framed them with a simple border in Filter Forge's frames.

I do enjoy good images of my Grandson as is evident by my last two posts. He is growing fast as they say.

I had browsed in Picasa 3.9 to the folder that contained the photographs, as this is a frequent part of my workflow on my current PC.

Listening --- The Beatles --- Yellow Submarine

"Digital Faces" Digital Collage - Picasa 3 (New Version) and Corel Products

"Digital Faces"

Today I browsed some photographs I had taken long ago of some of my older works, printed out and mounted on a wall display.

I opened the photographs in Corel Painter Photo Essentials 4 and applied a number of the Auto Painting selections to both. After I was satisfied with each painted version I saved them separately. I then browsed in Picasa 3 (the new version) and selected them both and created a collage.

I saved that collage and opened with Corel PSP Pro X3 to add a torn matting and black frame.

I saved that file and opened with PhotoPaint to add my signature and resize for display.

Listening --- Robert Plant & Alison Krauss --- Gone, Gone, Gone

"Series 66 #2" Digital Collage - Corel PhotoPaint

Series 66 #2

For "Series 66 #2," I used Corel PhotoPaint, Painter 11 and CorelDRAW to create the image. Staying with the face motif I scanned in using my Canon MP495 and then cut, pasted, erased and resized to fit all the pieces to make this image.

I began by scanning in a large background piece from one source then turned to other sources for the additional pieces. I did use the Tune Blur and Tone Curve on many of the cutouts for smoothing and color depth.

I applied Little Ink Pot's Thredgeholder to the guitar player for a etched line look and feel. I also used the fonts Tossaway, Accords, and Arial Narrow in the piece. Accords is a guitar chord symbol library font which has a number of often used chord symbols.

I did create the "66" number in CorelDRAW with the Tossaway font. I copied and pasted and resized it in PhotoPaint. I added my signature to the large file and resampled for display and sharing here.

Listening --- Kirk Mathew Gatzka --- Collision Warning

"Miles Davis" - Corel Painter 11 Pen and Ink, Watercolor

Miles Davis and Friends

I took out some time from other activities to work on this tonight. I was listening to some "Miles Davis," jazz the other night and was inspired to do this image.

I opened Corel Painter 11, as I have yet to upgrade to 12, and penned Miles and the drummer and bass player using the Ball point pen brush. I then used some of Skip Allen's watercolor brushes on a new watercolor layer. I kept my approach as simple as possible for a basic look and feel to the piece.

I saved the file and reopened in PhotoPaint to use the Tone Curve for a slight increase in depth of color. And I added my signature. I kept the file at it's original size, for display.

Comments are always welcome. I do moderate the comments, though.

Listening --- The Steve Miller Band --- Your Saving Grace

Two Digital Collages - Paint.NET - PhotoPaint

Click for Larger Image

Click for Larger Image

I had a couple of more photographs of my Grandson and my Daughter and I decided to do two digital collages with them. I opened with Paint.NET and selected Effects> Collage Paint for the first image and it allows selection of a folder of images, along with the size of the collaged images. I made my adjustments to the selections and let the collage build with images of guitars and other images.

On the second image I opened Paint.NET again and selected a folder full of photographs of my grandson. These made the collage image, if you look closely at the larger images you can see some of that detail.

As the second image's background was dominate I opened with Painter 11 and used the Suminagashi grainy brush on the background. I saved the large file and reopened in PhotoPaint. I used the selection tool to select the background and applied the Local Equalization tool to it. It made the image of my Grandson stand out more.

For both I used the Tone Curve to make adjustments to color depth and saved the large files. Then I resampled to a smaller size for the web. I added my signature to both and saved the smaller file sizes.

Listening --- Pink --- Family Portrait

Overcoat - 223 - Firehose - Store Front - Book - CorelDRAW - PhotoPaint

Click for Larger Image

Busy again tomorrow I have posted a second time today. I have been scavenging pieces of found art for collage work. I discovered these images torn from a large format LAN magazine from the late 1980's.

I opened PhotoPaint and scanned in five images using the built in Tone Curve to deepen the color of each scan. I copied to the clipboard and pasted into CorelDRAW and resized placed each one into a collage. I placed a black rectangle around them. Grouping them I copied to the clipboard again and opened as New from Clipboard into PhotoPaint.

I added the text naming each piece after it's subject matter with the exception of the "Open" image. I used the typefaces Orpheus Demo - Overcoat; Time New Yorker - 223; FuturaBlack BT - firehose; and DirtyUncle - book, adding each one to the finished piece.

I resized the image for display and added my signature to complete the collage.

Listening --- Kirk Mathew Gatzka --- After Midnight Cover

Cup Saucer and Silverware Freehand Design - CorelDRAW - PhotoPaint

Click for Large Image

I found an old sketch I had done, from 1998 and I scanned it into PhotoPaint. Copying it to the clipboard I opened and pasted it into CorelDRAW.

Using the freehand tool I traced the objects, deleted the scanned sketch, and then filled them with gradients of varying color. I added the text using an AvantGarde Md BT typeface with the exception of the number sixty-six for which I used Adolescence.

I again used fillerati.com for the text in Deutsch from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. I force justified the text and sized it to fit the object. I added a black border and then a table top with the polyline tool.

After I placed all objects in order, I grouped them and copied to the clipboard.

Back in PhotoPaint I opened as New from Clipboard and saved the large file. I resampled for display and added my signature.

Listening --- Mike and the Mechanics --- Another Cup of Coffee

At Complete Demoralisation - CorelDRAW - PhotoPaint - Filter Forge

Click for Larger Image

This image is entitled "at complete demoralisation," was created in CorelDRAW and adjusted in PhotoPaint. I followed the same basic steps as I had with my last two images. I like the motif and decided to do another image like them.

I opened CorelDRAW and imported from my Fractals folder three differing modified fractals. I resized them and placed them.

I went online to fillerati.com and copied a partial quote from H. G. Wells, "War of the Worlds," and placed that on the imported fractals. I used the typeface Benguiat Bk BT for the text phrase. I forced justified the full quote, using the color navy blue.

I added a portion of the quote in large text and placed it on top the image, this time straight across the page. I duplicated that quote in a Cyan color to offset from the black. This was center justified. I also set the character spacing at 33 and the line spacing at 85 percent respectively.

I grouped the pieces together and copied to the clipboard. I opened PhotoPaint and pasted as New from Clipboard then saved large file, closing CorelDRAW. I then resampled the file for display.

I went into Filter Forge's Photo Effects Grunge and selected a variant. I adjusted the stains and amount of texture for that grunge look and feel, without overpowering the image. This also placed a frame around the full piece.

I added my signature to complete the piece. I saved the image to share here.

Listening --- Kirk Mathew Gatzka ---When Our Eyes Met

High Contrast Garden - Lilies - PhotoPaint - Filter Forge

Click for Larger Image

Click for Larger Image

I selected two photographs from our garden taken with my Canon XTi Rebel. I applied the same techniques for my High Contrast images. I opened from Picasa 3 to PhotoPaint.

There I applied the Local Equalization and subsequently the Tone Curve plus I increased the saturation. I used Filter Forge's Photo Effects Vibrance on both images for more punch. Then I added a film frame to both from Filter Forge's frames Freepack.

I really like the resulting images using these techniques. They are soft, and harsh at the same time, vibrant and subdued as well.

Listening --- Outkast --- Hey Ya

Art Deco with Bauhaus 93 Typography - CorelDRAW - PhotoPaint

Click for Larger Image

I received in my inbox today some Dover Publications Samples. Among them were these great Art Deco designs. I opened my Dover sampler folder after saving them and selected four designs. I opened PhotoPaint and from Picasa 3 I copied and pasted them. From PhotoPaint I adjusted the individual pieces and then opened CorelDRAW.

I placed each image in the new graphic document. I then selected the typeface Bauhaus 93 for my typography. I merely spelled out Art Deco and selected bright colors for the letters. I outlined each with a complimentary color to make them stand out a bit more.

I selected the rectangle tool and placed one behind all the Art Deco pieces and Bauhaus 93 text. I added the phrase "typography Bauhaus 93," in a small size to name the typeface used.

I selected all the pieces and grouped them together and copied to the clipboard. Back in PhotoPaint I opened with File> New from Clipboard>. This gave me a 6" x 9" 300dpi graphic of the grouped pieces. I added my signature, saved the large file as a jpg, then resampled to display here.

Listening --- Jethro Tull --- Part of the Machine

More Typography Play - A Clean Page - CorelDRAW - PhotoPaint

Click for Larger Image

I've been reading about Typography quite a bit lately. So I made up this image for display. I opened CorelDRAW and used some grunge fonts for the text. I copied them to the clipboard and pasted them into a large file in PhotoPaint.

There I used the Effects> Distort> Wet Paint to add the dripping. I used splatters to mess up the page even further applying the Wet Paint to them as well.

I wanted a messy page that had some humor to it thus the Clean Page phrasing. I kept it minimal in it's presentation using only a bit of design work. I saved the large file, resampled for display here with my signature.

Listening --- Kirk Mathew Gatzka --- Blues Fun One