Grungy Guitars Over a Treadplate - Digital Collage

Sticking with some grunge background textures I selected another from CGTex-
tures.com called a painted treadplate for today's image. I opened a photograph of my 6-string and 12-string guitars and overlaid it on the treadplate in PhotoPaint.

I decided to add some Apophysis fractals to the piece. A colleague on PainterTalk has been sharing fractals made with Ultra Fractal which have been marvelous. I have used Apophysis for quite awhile for my fractal play. It's a good program. Appears that the Apophysis.org domain name has expired though, as I just tried to get it for a link here.

I also used the Filter Forge Freepack - Frames again for a frame for this image. See my last entry for a link to them.

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Listening to: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - She's My Kind of Rain Cover
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Digital Collage - Filter Forge Freepack Frames

Digital collage and framing dominate today's image. I began with a photograph taken by my friend David Benjamin of David Benjamin Photography. I added a rusty paint background from CGTextures.com with some aqua paint and rust.

To this I added some Dover Floral clipart using PhotoPaint's object property of Color Burn to deepen the color and make the flowers transparent.

I recently downloaded Filter Forge Freepack 3 - Frames which I used here. I first added a black grunge frame encapsulating the image. Then I added some white edge to the image by using Image> Papersize> in PhotoPaint, and surrounded it in white.

Using the Filter Forge frames I added the textured frame adjusting the inside color to black and framed the whole image in a realistic picture frame.

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Listening to: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - Photographs
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More Rust - Some Green - ArtRage 2.5

I've done paintings of this Dodge Truck previously, this time I used ArtRage 2.5 Starter Edition. Using the Oils brush I painted a loose image of the truck. Using PhotoPaint I took a copy of the photograph I used for the painting and added back in some detail of the truck and the overgrown greenery surrounding it. I used the object property Multiply to make the photograph transparent so as to see the Oils brushstrokes.

I resized the image for the web and am sharing the results here. I continued to use the Rust color theme for this old truck is completely rust covered. The greens make for a nice contrast against the Rust colors. You can see the Oil brush especially in the front tire, wobbly and green.

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Listening to: Rusty Truck - Everytime
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Rust Upon Rust - Digital Collage

I really love the color of rust and this image demon-
strates that. I used a rust back-
ground from CGTextures.com and combined a rusty, very old style tractor, a rusted truck, a rusted farm implement, plus some Dover Clipart to create this Rust Upon Rust image.

I used PhotoPaint to combine all the mentioned pieces into this collage of rust. I added some clipart hands with old mechanisms at odd places to add some humor to this piece. Look closely at the larger image for the details.

I also found a bit of time to practice playing the 12-string and 6-string guitar which was so much fun I recorded a couple of covers of tunes. I have always liked JJ Cale's "After Midnight" with its chunk a chunk rhythm so I attempted this one for an enjoyable time. Using Audacity I recorded 3 tracks. Two (guitar and vocals) with my microphone only and a Detroit RNB Vocal setting in Gearbox. I put these opposite each other in the right and left channels. Then using a Heavy Guitar setting I added the third track of my attempt at lead playing, not my strong point. I used the 12-string guitar for this recording.

I have some Kenny Chesney (Live) songs on my PC so I looked for some of them and found "Live Those Songs" Tab and chords and lyrics. After some practice I adapted the song to my style a bit and recorded that using the 12-string and vocals. I used the same vocal setting and put the two tracks in the right and left channels. In the middle I messed up the chord structure, but since I only share this with family and friends I didn't bother to re-record the second channel. I know, I'm lazy!

All in all I had fun doing some digital art and recording which I haven't had time to do in quite a while. It was great fun!

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Listening to: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - After Midnight Cover
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Portrait - New Grandson - Zeke - Painter 8

We are new Grandparents! And of course I have plenty of subject matter from now on for portrait work. I cropped this photograph to focus in on my Grandson, Zeke. He was 6lbs 3oz and 20 1/2" at birth.

I opened this photograph in Painter 8 and selected Artists> Sargent> brushes and using the palette from the original photograph I began painting. I chose a fairly realistic style for the painting using varying sizes and differing jitter for the Sargent brushes.

I was happy to get a photograph with his eyes fully open so as to have a good shot to work from. I simplified working on this image by cloning in Painter 8. There is some loss of detail but not much. I zoomed in for the eyes and mouth and used a very small brush for those details. I wanted to show how much he looks like his Dad.

The experience of being a new Grandparent is not dissimilar to being a new parent. A lot of amazement and joy at the birth. Now to learn how to Grandparent! It is fun according to sources I have talked with. So much to look forward to.

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Listening to: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - EGDA AE Run
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