"Violin Close Up" Painter Essentials 5 Plus

Violin Close Up

Continuing in a Musical frame of mind, a free to edit photograph of a "Violin Close Up," was used. As you can tell from my last couple of posts I like Musical themed images, and I like Digital Watercolor with variations of Brushes used.

I opened the photograph in Painter Essentials 5, selecting the Watercolor Sketch set. I picked from the Acrylic and Oils Brushes the Wet Oily Brush and Digitally Painted the piece. I added back in details of the strings, bridge, and sound hole using the Photo Painting Brush Soft Cloner, painting by hand.

I hand painted the surrounding background using first the Digital Watercolors Brush - Wash Brush. I continued to paint using the following: the Spatter Water Brush, the Pencils, Pens and Markers Brush Dry Ink, for the Ocher-like hatching. I also used the Photo Painting Brush - New Simple Water to tone down the Blue watercolor a tad. As you can see a Paper Texture was used during the entire process.

Saving that large file, I opened in Paint.NET and added my signature layer with the property Multiply for transparency, and merged the layers. I saved that iteration to Post.

My notes here are incomplete, but I am certain I used Irfanview to Resize/Resample the piece for posting size at 72.dpi JPG.

As always I encourage you to click on the Image for the Larger view to see the details and textures clearly.

If you haven't listened to any of my songs listed in the CDBaby Kiosks below they are Full song Previews for you to have a listen. Just scroll to the Kiosks below and select a song you haven't listened to yet and sample my Independent Alternative Folk/Rock Music.

"Violin in Case" Corel

Violin in Case

I selected this "Violin in Case," image from Stockvault's Freebies. The photograph is a very nice representation of a wonderful instrument.

I opened in Corel Painter Photo Essentials 4 as a large file, and Digitally Painted with the Simple Watercolor, Wash Brush, Rough Paper. It was very light and not too colorful. I next went to the Watercolor Sketch tool, with another Wash Brush and a Paper texture. I painted over the first iteration.

Some of the details were missing, and a painterly feel in the background was as well. I took the Retouch Brush, soft, and painted by hand some textures. The body of the Violin still lacked definition. I selected the Retouch Brush, hard, and cleaned up those with addition details, all by hand.

I saved that iteration and opened it in Corel PSP Pro X3 and applied the Smart Photo Fix tool. This added some color and increased the brightness. I saved that as well. Re-opening with Corel PhotoPaint, I added the signature and resampled for display size. I used 75 for compression and 25 for smoothing. It was a 300dpi image, now made smaller.

I recently shared my new song with a lead Guitarist ("I Still Remain.") He was to see if he could add a lead backup to my basic Vocals and 12-String recording. He has an iRig and an iPad with Garageband, So he was going to see what he was able to do for the lead. Then they went on vacation! We'll have to wait and see what results he comes up with.