"Visit to Elderly Instruments Lansing Michigan"

Yesterday we were in Lansing Michigan visiting the Music store Elderly Instruments. I took a few photos. Notice the Mystery Piano Harp and the Mural.

Had a great time playing the guitars and visiting the owner, Stan Werbin, whom I had not seen for many years.

Elderly is family owned and operated Est in 1972. Great place to play the guitars and shop. Highly recommended for every guitarist. Both Acoustic and Electric.

"Where We Live" PicsArt App Collage

I am not sleepy, yet. So playing with the new Tablet and the PicsÀrt App, I have created a collage.
It's probably too large for the blog. I'm still trying out the different Apps.

These photos are of our own yard, and  part of the neighbors yard,  too.

I altered the curves for some depth of the colors. I did not do much more.

"Sketchbook Autodesk Freehand"

New Tablet Art, forgive the crude sketch. I have an Android app from Autodesk called Sketchbook.

I'm not the best with it yet but I'm still learning how to use it.

I used an app called Nocrop for the framing, to allow adjustments to the image. I have a lot more to learn about Sketchbook.  Making art on a Tablet isn't easy.

How this was done - "You Cannot be Serious" Corel Painter 11

You Cannot be Serious

"You Cannot be Serious," is the image I created today. Using a portrait photograph from the Morguefile Free Photos I downloaded this afternoon, I Digitally Painted this piece.

My approach was fairly simple. I first opened it in Picasa (the update) and I heavily applied the HDRish tool to the portrait. I increased the Value and Radius, both. This highlighted the lines and pores of the face, as well as the shadows and highs.

I saved that iteration and opened in Corel Painter 11. There I used all Digital Watercolor Brushes, a Wash Brush and a Dry Bristle Brush to paint this very Serious Man's Portrait.  I Appended the Flesh Tone Palette and the Earth Tone Palette to the basic color starter one. I selected lighter values to begin with and built up the shadows and lines gradually with darker Flesh Tones.

I painted the small parts of his shirt a purple I had selected for some punch. I decided that I would mirror that color in the face around the shadowed areas. It tied the image in together nicely. I saved that iteration.

Next in Corel PSP Pro X3 I upped the Saturation Vibrancy by 33 and then added as another layer my signature with the property Lighten. I merged the layers. It was already a small display size download, so no adjustment was needed there.

"How to - with outdated Corel Products - Grunge Guitar Player" Corel

Grunge Guitar Player

I took this photograph at a Taylor Guitar Show at Motor City Guitar quite a while ago. I decided to work at this piece in a way I have not worked in quite a while. First I opened in Corel PhotoPaint 12 and used the Posterize tool set on 4 on it. This gave me plenty of color to work with for the next step.

I saved that file and opened it in CorelTRACE 12 and Traced it into a Vector file with the Advanced Outline tool. I saved this iteration as a native Corel CMX vector file. I then opened it in CorelDRAW 12, here I Ungrouped all the traced Vector elements of the image. I began to play with downsizing by eliminating some parts grabbing them with the selection tool and deleting them. I then selected some of them and changed the colors with the Gradient (using both Radial and Linear gradients) and Fill tools.

Taking the selection tool I grabbed what was left of the image and Grouped the entire Vectored pieces back into one Group. I Converted it into a Bitmapped file and copied it to the clipboard. I reopened PhotoPaint and opened the New File from the Clipboard, at 300 dpi. I then adjusted some of the other parts with the Wand tool to select, and the Fill tool for colors and textures. I applied myself to this until I was satisfied the image no longer looked much like the original photograph.

I used, next, Filter Forge's Frames for a Grunge look and feel to the image. I selected a setting after trying out different variants of a Grunge frame, settled on one and applied it. I saved the image with my signature added. I resampled for a display size.

My recent disappointment was to find out that the Corel Products I use to create much of my Digital Visual Artwork is NOT compatible with Windows 10, my reserved package of Windows 10 will not even download onto my computer. I checked and it indicated that it was my Corel Products that were stopping it. I did want to try Windows 10 later this year before the free version is turned off, but it won't download.

I even went to the point of uninstalling all my Corel Products, but with Windows 7 hiding someplace in the Programdata folders were pieces of Corel still there. Windows 10 would not download! I know this is the problem, it is not a hardware problem, it says I meet that standard easily.

Lets face it I am a Disabled Artist on a very tight budget. I am not able to upgrade my Corel Products at this time. So I am continuing to use Windows 7 Pro and my Corel arsenal of graphics programs.

So I suppose that sometime in the future I will have to find those remaining hidden files and folders, uninstall my prized Corel programs and maybe be able to download my copy of Windows 10!