Red Dirt Girl - PhotoPaint

This image began as two different photographs. One from Mayang's Textures of flaking paint, the other from WetCanvas galleries. I opened both in PhotoPaint and worked on them separately before I combined them.

On the young lady's face I applied the Charcoal filter and adjusted it with the Tone Curve for more depth. I then copied it to the clipboard and pasted it into the texture image.

I used the object property Multiple to create transparency of the face to allow the flaking paint to show through. With some sizing adjustments I fit the face to the flaking paint.

Using Filter Forge frames I added a film frame and then decided that was too dark. I added a photography frame in the end. I resampled the image for the web in PhotoPaint.

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Now playing: Emmylou Harris - Red Dirt Girl
via FoxyTunes

Song Lyrics and Chords -Selections and Gel Layering in Painter 11

I started this experiment with a floral grunge wallpaper background opened in Painter 11. I selected a portion of the background to work with and pasted it as a new image. I found some faces of some young ladies and opened the files in Painter and used the selection lasso to cut out and paste into new layers, each face.

One of the faces is by Da Vinci from my collection of his drawings - Leda. The others are from WetCanvas forums galleries of photographs. I placed each face where I wanted them and used the Gel layer setting to add them to the grunge piece.

I decided it needed some poetry or lyrics done in my hand printing so I scanned in, using TWAIN Acquire, two pages of my song, "One Time I Am Laughing." It's a song about having conflicting feelings and is done in a Double Drop D tuning. If you look closely I even have chord charts drawn out for this song. I used the Gel layer setting again to allow the words and chords to show but not too much of the paper.

I merged all layers, Applied Surface Texture> Paper> (Italian Watercolor Paper adjusted to a light texture) and saved to a jpg file for placing on the web here. I then opened it in PhotoPaint to add a Filter Forge film frame. Resampling it to a workable size I saved it anew with less compression than usual.

While you are here please check out my new Zazzle Panel of my artworks turned into cards and posters and products for you to purchase if you would like to own a piece of my digital visual art. It is towards the bottom of the page and it scrolls the products for you to look at with no obligation! Thank You! If you have a particular piece you don't see in my store at Zazzle, write me and I can add it for you to purchase.

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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - One time I Am Laughing
via FoxyTunes

Vintage Pen and Ink Drawing - Painter 11 - PhotoPaint

I have an interesting image in Pen and Ink that I drew. I started with a vintage photograph from Dover Publications of two young boys riding an old-fashioned tricycle. Opening it in PhotoPaint I resampled the photograph to 96dpi increasing it's size for use in Painter 11.

Saving that file I opened in Painter 11 and created a quick clone with an ocher background. Using the Pens I selected the Ballpoint pen and the Single Pixel pen in black and drew the young boys and their tricycle. I did not go for realism as I wanted a rough sketch of their features and the trike.

For the watercolor pen stroke I selected the Soft cloner to add shading to their clothing and to lightly add the background. I added using Filter Forge a film frame. It was tedious drawing the details but I thoroughly enjoyed this exercise.

In PhotoPaint I adjusted the Tone Curve to add depth to the image.


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Now playing: Kenny Loggins - Playing With The Boys
via FoxyTunes

Interview with Marty Minui of Motor City Guitar - Waterford, Michigan

Marty, first of all let me thank you for taking the time to do this interview.

Thanks so much for asking us, Kirk!

I'd like to know more about the beginnings of Motor City Guitar, when did the store first open, What were your goals and how long have you been serving such a broad scope of musicians?

We opened in June of 1988, which seems like yesterday. Our goal as a store was to create a place where people could go a just feel welcome to try out cool music gear and get a good deal without a hassle or pressure. We've always had the goal of trying to take care of people as individuals with individual tastes, which is one of the reasons why we carry so many different varieties of products. It's not all about what we like, it's about what you like. As far as personal goals, my girlfriend Melissa and I were trying to get steady jobs so we could get married, which we did a year after we opened Motor City .

Who were the ones who began the store? And what is the size of your staff now?

Melissa and I pretty much did everything ourselves for the first few years, except for lessons. We've always had a pretty minimal staff, where everybody wears a lot of hats. Right now there are 9 of us plus 14 teachers and our repairman Scott.

When you began did you think that you would be as successful as you are now?

We've never really thought about success in any sort of tangible, financial, or other measurable way, we just keep doing what we’ve always done and being grateful for being able to do it at all. What makes me feel successful is anytime a customer leaves with a big smile on their face, or when they comment that one of our guys really helped them out, or when they hand me a CD of music that they created that we played any small part in helping them with.

I really enjoy the atmosphere of the store, it lends itself to trying out the instruments and the personal growth of your clientele. What do you attribute this to?

Thanks! These are great questions. I remember the days when a lot of music stores kept everything out of reach and practically required you to prove you were going to buy something before they would even let you touch anything. I never understood that backwards way of thinking – how in the world is somebody supposed to even know if they like something unless they can check it out without pressure? We’ve always considered ourselves lucky when people come in and check out our store, and we don’t want anybody to feel under any kind of pressure to buy anything. We want to give them a chance to check out some cool gear, have some fun, and hopefully consider us when they do decide it’s time to pick up some new toys.

Tell me a bit about the expertise of your staff and instructors.

We are extremely proud of the Motor City crew, they are our extended family. We couldn’t ask for a greater bunch of people to work with, and the place would be nothing without them. The majority of people who work here and have ever worked here over the years are customers of the store who have an obvious passion for music and music equipment – in other words, certified “gearheads”. And people that we feel will treat customers with kindness, appreciation, respect and honesty. Those are the types of things we look for, the types of things that a person can’t really learn in training. As for our instructors, we have different people from different backgrounds who specialize in different styles of music. They are all absolutely incredible musicians. We try to match each student with a teacher that is right for them and will help them move in the direction that they want to go in. We also have a really talented guitar repairman named Scott Kenerson who really takes a lot of old-school pride in his work.

I understand that you do your best to offer great pricing on all instruments, how has that made you different from other guitar establishments?

I can honestly say that we sincerely want to give people that come to our store the best deals possible. If we didn’t, why should we expect them to come back? We’ve always been more concerned with long term relationships and hopefully making people happy so they come back and tell their friends. In the early days of our store it was not common at many other music stores to offer discounts unless they were having a sale, everything would be tagged at the manufacturers’ list price and you had to negotiate for a better deal. As a customer myself I never liked that, I don't feel like people should have to haggle for a discount. So we discounted everything as much as we could right off the bat. We figured that by offering lower prices we wouldn’t have to advertise, that word-of-mouth and hopefully repeat business would keep us around. Luckily, when things like mail-order and the internet came around, it wasn’t a shock to us as it was for many other places, we were already discounting heavily so it wasn’t a big deal. We stay on top of what other stores are doing and always try to make sure we are offering the best prices, that’s the least we can do.

What were the greatest challenges you've had along the way?

The biggest challenge by far is finding the time to get everything done that we need to. Our website is the most obvious example, we’ve been trying to get a great website going for years but it is taking much longer than we’d hoped. What we have planned is going to be sweet though, hopefully it will be worth the wait. Another hurdle was a recent expansion of the store that we went through, we had quite an ordeal with a shady contractor but thankfully that is over now and we can finally start enjoying and making use of the extra space.

When you think of the store itself what is the most successful area of sales Electric guitars, equipment or Acoustic guitars?

Things go in waves, sometimes electrics are more popular, sometimes acoustics are. Ukeleles are even big right now all of a sudden! And then there are days when there are more drummers or bass players in the store than guitar players.

Over time who are some of the Artists you have had the privilege to serve?

We deal with all types of artists everyday that we are privileged to serve. Everybody from little kids taking lessons to internationally touring bands. Michigan is and always has been a hotbed of incredible music and there are unsigned artists here that in my opinion blow away a lot of the stuff you hear on the radio these days. One week we had 2 very elderly WWII veterans come in that both wanted to start playing guitar again, it was a special honor to serve them. As far as famous people go, we've served some Detroit legends like Bob Seger, Kid Rock, and members of The Silver Bullet Band, The Romantics, The Rockets, The Mitch Ryder Band, Sponge, and The Black Dalia Murder. We had to provide a wall of amps for Ted Nugent to play on New Years Eve one year. We also serve a lot of artists that come through town on tour - one of my favorites was selling a couple of cowbells to Blue Oyster Cult so they could do the "more cowbell" routine onstage at DTE. One time we provided guitars for Steve Vai when his gear truck broke down, and we provided all the instruments for the Deftones when their gear truck was stolen from their hotel parking lot. Our repairman Scott sometimes goes out on the road as a guitar tech for some major artists. We’ve also been privileged to have worked closely with some landmark Michigan clubs like St Andrews Hall and the Crofoot Ballroom who ordered their PA systems through us.

What do you personally like about Motor City Guitar and your clientele? And why would you recommend this store to others?

It’s a fun place to work and hopefully a fun place to visit. There are tons of cool people that come here that keep things interesting on a daily basis. Our customers are more like friends, and a lot of them are literally like family to us. People often say that we should have a TV show up here because there is usually something interesting or funny going on. Personally I also take a lot of pride in knowing that simple principles like treating other people like you would like to be treated yourself are enough to keep a company in business. As far as recommending our store to others, all I can say is that I promise you that you will be treated with honesty and appreciation, and that we will always do everything we can to bring you the biggest selection of the best gear we can find.

Thanks again for taking time from your busy schedule for us and doing this interview.

Thanks so much for having an interest in Motor City Guitar, Kirk! It's been an honor!

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Now playing: Aerosmith - Living On The Edge
via FoxyTunes