Last change: 27 Dec 95

Fractal Design Painter is a way-spiffy natural-media-imitating painting and drawing program. I just got a pressure sensitive tablet for my Macintosh, so Painter isn't frustrating me any more. Instead, it's delighting me. For some reason I've had a hard time relaxing enough to let myself paint with physical watercolors recently, even though I know how to use them just fine. (I thank the Danvers, Massachusetts, public school art program for that. I'm sure that it doesn't exist any more in this age of bombers-not-schools, but I'm happy it existed for me.)

Anyway.

I'm totally relaxed about digital media, for some reason. I just blop stuff onto the screen without any tension or fear that it's not going to come out right the first time. My friend Morrisa tells me that it's always scary to commit by putting ink or paint to paper. I guess digital media doesn't demand commitment: there's always an undo.

I've spewed pen-n-ink figures all over my web pages this week. I did them all with Painter. Tonight I did a sketch with a virtual 2B pencil, then used virtual watercolors on it. This is what I did:

I'm not claiming this is the be-all and end-all of digital artwork. I am having some kind of strange revelation, though. I think I'm going to be doing something interesting with these tools. I think they're letting me do something I couldn't do before.

We'll see.

[68K]	Okay! Here's some more stuff. Great? No. I'm working on technique. Later maybe I'll do something good. So the techniques I'm working on are about using digital tools to draw comic art and then colorizing it using various tools. I start with making line art in Painter, bring it into Photoshop to paint grayscale gradients on it, then use Photoshop to colorize it. The background is Painter watercolor work.
Here's another try, with the stages illustrated. This is a self portrait.
	Here's the original line art, done in Painter with the pen & ink brush.
	Here I've used Photoshop to paint in grayscale tones. I used the brush, airbrush, and smudge tools. I did this on a copy of the line art. The original line art is on a layer above the painted layer.
	Here I've used the Hue controls to colorize chunks of the sketch. The lasso tool is my friend.
	And now, a gratuitous background made with Terrazzo, lightened a bit.
I could have done the same thing by painting in Painter. It's harder to make masks in Painter than it is to make selections in Photoshop, though.
[25K]	A colored pencil sketch.
[45K]	Self-portrait with knife. Not entirely successful.