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New abstract hymn print: Be Still, My Soul.

I’m experimenting with a slightly new style here, masking the notes (after adding noise to the outlines with SVG filters and then eroding/dilating with Imagemagick) and painting inside the mask in Procreate. (And then texturing it in Affinity Photo as usual.)

Be Still, My Soul

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A few new pieces tonight. First, To Fulfill All Righteousness III:

To Fulfill All Righteousness III

And then a scripture print from 2 Nephi 2:

Art with several verses from 2 Nephi 2 laid out in it

And finally, an abstract hymn print of Where Can I Turn for Peace?:

Circles and lines representing the first few measures of “Where Can I Turn for Peace?”

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A new abstract hymn print for As Sisters in Zion:

Circles and lines representing the first few measures of “As Sisters in Zion”

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Abstract hymn prints

Me being me, I went ahead and explored what abstract hymn prints might look like.

I Stand All Amazed

Circles and lines representing the first few measures of “I Stand All Amazed”

In Humility, Our Savior

Circles and lines representing the first few measures of “In Humility, Our Savior”

Press Forward, Saints

Circles and lines representing the first few measures of “Press Forward, Saints”

The Spirit of God

Circles and lines representing the first few measures of “The Spirit of God”

I also played around with making one in Blender via depth maps:

High on the Mountain Top

Circles and lines representing the first few measures of “High on the Mountain Top”

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Hymn prints

A new experimental nerdy thing, for people who like hymns, sheet music, and textures:

The first few measures of “Abide with Me!”
The first few measures of “The Spirit of God”

How I make these hymn prints (as I’m calling them):

  • Typeset the first phrase (or so) in MuseScore using the Bravura font, with the spacing trimmed to within an inch of its life
  • Play it out loud to make sure I entered it right (cough) and export an SVG
  • Drag the SVG into a frame in Figma and use the SkewDat plugin to skew it -4°, center it, then export a 4,000px-wide PNG
  • Use ImageMagick to do some erosion and dilation (to simulate age and ink spread): convert input.png -morphology erode disk:18 -morphology dilate disk:16 output.png
  • Texture the image in Affinity Photo and export the PNG
  • Upscale with Real-ESRGAN to 12,000px-wide
  • Downscale a little in Affinity Photo, add 8% monochrome noise, and export the final PNG

I’m still figuring out how I want to do these (full bleed or not, barlines, clefs and key signatures or not, etc.). Also thinking about possibly doing some abstract versions as well, to avoid all these music typesetting issues entirely.


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