Kate on the graphics tablet

It's a gorilla. With spots.

Chalk Autumn

This is what I was working on earlier--pumpkin and leaves in Corel Painter (with the "chalk" brush). It was part of the October mega kit, and is now available separately. (Cheap!)

Heather T. asked what the advantages were in using Painter for something like this rather than Photoshop. I find Photoshop can be kind of choppy--if I'm doing some hand journaling, or drawing, I get better results in Painter. And as for actually "painting," it's just more specifically designed for that sort of thing. Though some of the mediums are not particularly useful when you want to make a transparent png file, because they leave white around the edges. Chalk works okay. There are a lot of things that I'm comfortable doing in Photoshop that I don't really know how to do in Painter, so I always finish up in Photoshop.



Here's what they look like on white. The pumpkin is pretty solid but the leaves were made on the brown background, and will look quite different on something else.

I know the pumpkin vine isn't really botanically correct. Hopefully that won't bother anyone too much!

Sneak Peek

What I'm currently working on:

In which we continue to do it the hard way

This is part of the mask for an extraction that I'm currently working on. Each one of those little edge hairs is traced in by hand, with a three-pixel brush. This is definitely a case where the tablet makes things much easier--I don't think I could do this with the mouse.

Doug says I'm a masochist. I'm finding it rather relaxing, so far.

Doodling Pumpkins

Corel Painter is a very cool program. It is so awesomely cool and has so many different brushes and controls that it takes a long time to try them all out and find out what they do. Just choosing a brush to use can be a daunting task. Do I want acrylic? Watercolor? Oils? Airbrush? There are some books by Cher Threinen-Pendarvis that I'd like to get, but in the meantime I'm playing around and trying different things, and figuring out what I like. Here I was doodling pumpkins in various different mediums (media?).

I should do one of these with banjos, and then I could call it "Doodling Banjos." That would be funny. Ha.

Doodly-doos

Yesterday I was working in Corel Painter (or trying to) and Kate crawled up into my chair with me and wanted to play. The graphics tablet attracts her like magic. ("Color?") So I let her scribble on the screen a bit, and then she had me drawing animals for her. "Green mouse! Red rooster! Orange lion!" Animals are always her big thing. The other day Doug made her a paper dragon, which she received with great interest, then pointed at him and said, "Horse? Horse paper?" Now we have little paper animals all over the house. Poor kid--it's going to be quite a blow someday when she realizes there are things her parents can't do.

Computers can DO that?

All the learning, doodling, and playing around finally coalesced into me, the graphics tablet, and Painter getting together to create a finished product. The moment at which this happened was not entirely convenient, as it was right in the middle of Christmas. I haven't been at this designing thing for too long, but two particular things that I have learned are: A) Stuff always takes longer than I think it's going to, and B) Trying to get something done by a specific deadline leads to a lot of stress and to other things getting neglected. I've spent too many Saturday nights frantically trying to finish something up and get it in the store before Sunday. So I'd told myself that I wasn't going to do that anymore. But, well, when the inspiration struck, it was Christmas inspiration, and I wanted to get it up in the store at least before the end of Boxing Day. So maybe there were a few things that didn't get done--like some additional planning for Kate's birthday--but I guess it all worked out okay.

I was thinking back to the first computer my parents got, when I was maybe eleven--the old Mac with 512K of RAM. It had a graphics program called MacPaint that I spent hours playing with, awkwardly drawing things with the mouse in big pixelly patterns. All black and white, of course. I was fascinated by it. I remember there was a horse head that I spent a lot of time on, looking at a picture in a magazine and then trying to reproduce it as best I could with the program's limited capabilities. There was also a program called MacDraw that we could never figure out. Years later, after I learned to use Corel Draw, I realized that it was a vector graphics program. If my eleven-year-old self could see the stuff I get to play with today, she would be completely freaked out, enthralled, astounded.... Doug recently found a sound clip of Homer Simpson saying "Computers can DO that?" which he added to his machine (to play on a certain action). I feel that way a lot. Holy cow, computers can do that? Amazing. (I think I need to get some more RAM, though. Painter stumbles a bit. It should be happier with more RAM.)

I call this one "All Aglow." It was all done with the tapered chalk in Corel Painter IX.5. I love this program. I love my tablet. Sigh.



(Here's a link to the product in the store.)

Giraffe, take 2

AmyB said she wanted a copy of my giraffe doodle for her son, so I said I'd make her a better one.



I used a reference photo for this one, one of Scott Coulter's from pbase. I always work better from reference materials. The original has a particular quirk that I didn't replicate here, though. Check it out for some giraffe humor.

More!

I'm on a roll tonight! I just discovered the "tapered gouache" brush. What a gorgeous line!

Practicing

Theresa said I should draw something with my tablet and post it, so here are a couple of doodles. I've been playing around with Corel Painter Essentials. I haven't gotten very far into it yet, but I'm already thinking I'm going to have to spring for the full Painter program. So here's a giraffe for my sisters (Barb, who collects them, and Kirsten, who has been wanting giraffe stuff lately), and an apple. Yum.



The tablet is marvelous. I've heard people say it takes a while to get used to using the pen. I haven't found it that difficult, at least as far as pointing and clicking and drawing strokes. There is a lot to learn, just with the different things that it can do in Photoshop and other programs. There's a whole level of pressure-sensitive controls in the PS brushes that you can't utilize with a mouse. Certainly enough to keep me busy for a good long while.

Kate thinks it's pretty cool too--I've let her scribble with the stylus a few times. I shall have to keep it away from her so she doesn't decide to color on it with something else.

I would prefer to title this "practising," because I think it looks better spelled the British way. Those two c's are just weird.

It's here!

My graphics tablet has arrived. Now I just have to figure it out.

Anticipation

Doug and I haven't generally made a big deal of Christmas. Some years we've spent with family, but when we've just been home alone we haven't gotten a tree. (Though we did once make two little paper ornaments and hang them on a baby orange tree that someone had given us.) And last year we were in Utah for Barb's wedding, and then spent Christmas with Doug's sister Melody and her family.

This year we are going to be home, and we are getting a tree. I've been collecting decorations. Kate is quite intrigued by some of the ornaments in the stores, and all the snowmen--she's in snowman heaven. This is going to be a fun Christmas.

And I ordered a graphics tablet! Hooray! I've been wanting one for a long time. I paid for it all myself, with the money I made designing. Now I just have to wait for it to get here! I've been having dreams about it and everything. Ooooh.

The lovely and very talented Gina Miller mentioned my painted flower brushes on her blog today. I'm all a dither.