Two Images Today - Grandson - Old Dodge Truck

I did two images for today's post one of my Grandson and the other of an old Dodge Truck.

The truck photograph was taken by myself and is a favorite motif of mine. I followed a Painter PDF tutorial by John Derry that I had saved quite awhile ago. It included Auto painting of the photograph.

I added the oil brushstrokes from the Painter 8 Wow! Book oil brushes. And by hand painted the rough edges, then added a border and a halftone frame from Filter Forge's Freepack 3 Frames.

The second image of my Grandson, Zeke I used Paint.NET. I applied the Effects> Artistic> Pencil Sketch> with the pencil tip turned all the way up. I saved that file and opened it in PhotoPaint where I also opened a copy of a Mayang's Texture of painted rust. I overlaid the picture of Zeke onto the texture and used the object property Multiply to make the white transparent so as to show the texture.

So here he is "Cute thanks to Mom and Dad." I did finish the image with Filter Forge's Frames using a film frame, adding a border and another file frame. I also used the Tone Curve on the image for depth and upped the saturation by 7 for boosting the colors of the rusted texture.

I hope you enjoy both of these images and explanations as much as I enjoy presenting them and telling a bit about how they were made.

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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - Smooth Riding
via FoxyTunes

Jazz Poster - Dover Publications - PhotoPaint - MixCraft 5

Digital Collage is very interesting to me as a creative outlet. I received some Dover Publications clip art that included a poster for the Fillmore Jazz Festival which intrigued me.

I opened the poster in PhotoPaint and then in Picasa 3 I located one of Mayang's Textures. I copied this to the clipboard and pasted it as a new image in PhotoPaint. Here I used the rectangular tool to cut out a portion of the texture that was a bit larger than the poster. I copied it to the clipboard and pasted the cut piece as a new image.

Switching to the poster I copied that and pasted it into the texture as an object. I used the property Multiply on the poster to make it semi-transparent to allow the texture to show through. I placed the poster in the texture and merged it with the background.

I added some more Dover Clip Art pieces to the poster, a Victorian corner, and an Art Deco piece. Placing them in the corners of the image I created additional balance for the image. I used Filter Forge's Frames to add a film frame.

In music I have decided that using MixCraft 5, though a good program overall, isn't really for me. It made my tunes sound generic and like a lot of songs that are already commonplace.

I've enjoyed my trial period using the program but I prefer to continue to use Audacity for recording my own work, which sounds more original and different than mainstream music.

However I do recommend that you try out MixCraft 5's trial copy for yourself as it may suit you and your approach to recording, the mixing ability is it's strongest feature. It is a fine product for making and recording music.

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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - Spaced Out
via FoxyTunes

Cowgirl Contemplation - Vector Graphics Experiment - CorelTRACE - CorelDRAW

Today's image started out with a photo-
graph That I found in Picasa 3 browsing, without any credits. The photographer is unknown to me. If you recognize it please write me so I can give proper credit to them.

I opened the photograph in Paint.NET and applied the Ink Sketch filter to it. Saving the large file I opened it in PhotoPaint and adjusted the Tone Curve and saturation. Here I added some Dover Publications clip art and I saved the large file and I took the image and traced it for a vector graphic in CorelTRACE cmx file format. This gave me a posterized vector to open in CorelDRAW.

In CorelDRAW I ungrouped the image vectorized pieces and pulled some apart from the original, providing some white gaps to fill. I used the Rectangle tool to create one that I placed behind the pieces. I added a brown color to the rectangle and had my background and fill color.

I copied this to the clipboard as a grouped image. Reopening PhotoPaint I resampled that to 1200 wide and save as a jpg. Here I added the framing using Filter Forge's Frames. I saved this jpg for display here.

I'm continuing with my trial copy of MixCraft 5 to create some music. I am really enjoying using it and am learning to control the mixing much better. I've done a number of tunes which I am reviewing them as I type this.

I did find out that I can open them in Audacity as MP3 files and I applied the Dynamic Compressor to clear up some of the distortion of lyric singing. I have to find the same effect in MixCraft 5 as I am certain they have the same thing.

Yesterday I recorded an instrumental "Upper Heights," and a Blues song with fun lyrics sung and rhythm and lead played by me called "Come Home Blues." I enjoy playing my guitar and singing along with the arrangements I create with MixCraft 5 using my Toneport and the Gearbox software along with it.

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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - Come Home Blues
via FoxyTunes

Feel like a Number - PhotoPaint - Experiments with MixCraft 5

Just the other day I was listening to some Bob Seger songs and "I Feel Like a Number," came on. So I did a search in Picasa 3 for pictures with numbers in them and found this photograph.

I took this photograph with my older 5.2 megapixel camera and the dpi was 72. So I upped the dpi to 128 in increments to save some detail in PhotoPaint.

I also boosted the depth with the Tone Curve darkening it a touch. Then I upped the saturation by 15. I used the Effects> Artistic Strokes> Watercolor> filter on it. And I added a halftone frame in Filter Forges Frames in blue. I added a border of Navy blue and then the green halftone frame with another border of Navy blue.

I have only a few days left for my trial of MixCraft 5 and I have been having a blast trying to use it to the fullest I can before it expires. I've experimented with 8 tunes so far, ranging from Techno to Country Rock. The biggest problem I have had is during the mixing in of the vocals. I have been getting them too driven and it distorts them. I have tried adjusting the input levels so that doesn't happen, but, I still have some distortion.

I am confident it is my own inexperience with this fine program. I have learned to adapt to making the tunes more my own with help from their library of drums, bass, guitar, organ, piano and other synth sounds and effects.

I also found out at their site that they have a Pro Studio version for $149.00. I very much doubt I'll be able to budget in either of these programs. But if I could I would buy MixCraft 5.

The last two songs I worked on are, "Use it or Lose it," and "Don't Leave Me Alone." Both are Rocking tunes. But the vocals are distorted so I am not real happy with them. I need more mixing experience. It's coming along.

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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - Don't Leave Me Alone
via FoxyTunes

MixCraft 5 Recording Studio - Abstract Guitars - PhotoPaint

I haven't talked much about music lately. Here is an older Guitar Abstract image I did in PhotoPaint using photographs I had taken.

I used a lot of cut and pasting for the multiple guitar look and feel. I also upped the saturation by 15 for highlighting the color.

Using Filter Forge's Frames I added a dual frame to the piece by using Image> Papersize> color white adding 30 pixels then a film frame then adding 30 more pixels and another film frame.

I have been using a trial period of a program called MixCraft 5 [click here] for some musical experiments. It's like a Garageband for PC users. I have been enjoying the trial period but I noticed that many of the samples of the program make my songs sound generic. I did a Country song "Sweet Laurie," and it came out nice but did not sound like my style of writing at all. I used a Gmaj key with a repetition of the G C D chords, very simple.

I added their samples of loops for drums, Acoustic Guitar, Electric lead Guitar and Bass. It sounded nice, but, like almost any Gmaj Country song you've ever heard before. I played my 12-string Guitar and sang a simple lyric to the accompaniment of the other instruments.

I need to experiment with it some more to see if I can make it work for my style of writing. Basically it is a good program and allows mixing of samples they provide and sound effects and plenty of fun. I would recommend it for the trial at least. It goes for about $75.00 and is not that expensive for what you get with it.

I also recorded another piece called "Crazy Eights," using eight bar snippets from Sludge Metal for an intro to a Power Ballad. I used all samples from them and did not play or sing on this experiment. All in all a good program and a lot of fun.

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Now playing: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - Sweet Laurie
via FoxyTunes