"Steps to This: Path To The River" PE5

Path To The River

Back to a Pathways image for today! I selected a Stone and Brick Pathway photograph to work on. I opened in Picasa 3+ and applied the HDR effect, Radius at 50% and Strength was Medium. I saved that file. My next step was to open this file in Corel Painter Essentials 5 (PE5).

I picked the Impression Painting set with the Acrylics, Oils Fine Camel Brush to digitally paint. I added back in some slight details with the Soft Cloner Photo Brush. The Impressionist palette really makes this image stand out. I saved this piece.

Corel PhotoPaint allowed me to apply the Tone Curve adding a slight depth to the colors. I applied Saturation set to 10. Added my signature layer and merged the layers saving the large file.

I used the Filter Forge Frames for a Film Frame on the image. I saved the large file again. I next Resampled the image for display. Set at 72dpi 768 X 1024 pixels, Anti-alias and Maintain the Aspect Ratio I saved to an Optimized JPG Compression at 75, Smoothing at 25 for display size.

A piece of advice for all who work on Digital Visual Artwork. Save your working file frequently! It saves a lot of grief if the program freezes or your computer acts up and you lose some of your steps already taken. If you like to save to the working programs native file format for recovery if the worst happens.

Alaskan River - Acrylics - Painter 11 - PhotoPaint

Continuing with Alaskan landscapes I selected this photograph in Picasa 3 of a rocky river. I opened with Painter 11 and selected Acrylics brushes. I did a quick clone again to paint upon. I used various Acrylic brushes for the foliage and the Soft cloner to add back in some leafy detail.

I selected a wet acrylic brush for the water and rocks and painted those. I added some detail with a Crayon brush with the clone button selected. To blend I selected the Distortion brush Confusion. I saved the large file.

I opened with PhotoPaint and adjusted the Tone Curve and the color saturation set at seven. I added a 10 pixel white border and then a larger border in light blue. Using the wand I selected the light blue border and applied the Effects> Texture> Plastic> filter using another light blue color. Finishing it with a 10 pixel black border for larger viewing.

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Now playing: J.J. Cale and Eric Clapton - Ride The River
via FoxyTunes

Rill in Alaska

Here is one of my favorite images from Alaska. A rill in the mountains. I love the color of the blue water of this small riverlet flowing down the mountain side. It's indentations shows many 'folds' of land that make it a pleasant photo.

I used the same filter and saturation on it as before. I really like the watercolor effect this give. It also leaves an impression of depth that other filters don't.

I had to crop out part of this photo as it was taken from a stopped vehicle and part of the driver and window showed in it. It cropped very nicely I thought.

I missed getting photographs of the local autumn color here. I was busy with other things and the time flew by and rains knocked the leaves down before I had a chance to get any good photographs. Maybe next year.

The Rivers Wide

I used Corel's PhotoPaint once again in conjunction with KPT's Collection to create this image of a river.

I upped the saturation about 15 and then used KPT's Pyramid Paint filter to get the watercolor appearance.

I have also been reading some forum posts about songwriting at Guitar Tab Universe where I have found some interesting discussions on how to write songs. As well as guitar tablature of many songs.

I found some good chord progressions to try out and also a great chart of the major keys and minor keys chords for use in writing using guitar.

I have started to create some songs that have a theme of Beginnings and have found it quite the challange.

I really enjoy the use of online rhyming dictionaries, they really come in handy. I have been trying lyrics with AA BB type of rhyme and AB AB also, along with some structures not mentioned in the reading I've done. But the ideas from the forums have been helpful.

One of the best things a songwriter can do is listen to other songwriters works to see how they build their songs from scratch to a full blown song structure. I have been listening to Gordon Lightfoot some more and JJ Cale with Eric Clapton, also Sheryl Crow. I plan to broaden out on my listening soon as I take a trip to the public library and pickup some CD's of writers I haven't listened to before.

PBS had on it's Austin City Limits series a group of 4 (5?) songwriters last time I watched and they were amazing! I really like it when that series does present a group of songwriters together like that. It's not only enjoyable to watch and hear the songs but inspiring as well.

Today I entered a competition based on the theme of "Water" online. This is one of three images I was allowed to enter. Each image was taken with my Canon XTi camera. I really like this version of Canon's Rebel line of cameras. It is a 10.1 megapixel camera. Which is more than sufficient for my needs.

This was taken on a road trip up to Hatcher Pass near Anchorage, Alaska. Our family up in Alaska generously allowed us to visit them and paid our way for us, if they had not we probably would not have been able to go.

I was able to get many photographs of the Alaskan landscape. We went on a couple of road trips and the scenery was very beautiful. Awe-inspiring vistas, rivers, mountains, and we got to see a young Moose by the roadside. Though bears are plentiful we did not have any run ins with them. We did see some salmon that were protecting their eggs after spawning, but did not come during the salmon runs which we were told about as amazing.

The South Central part of Alaska is a wonderful place to visit. We had a great time.