I met Francis one year at my friend and mentor, Deb Festa’s Open Studio Art Tour. Francis was out in Deb’s courtyard, greeting everyone and making them feel welcome. I didn’t know Francis well, but I know that he was a warm, generous man with a huge heart. Over time, I got to know him better, as Deb would share with me about her Dad. Francis was a very creative man – he was a photographer, writer, gardener, and he loved making and improving upon things.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with digital paintings, I’d like to share the process for making a digital painting.
First, I work with a software paint program called Corel Painter (version 11).
Wikipedia’s defines Corel painter as “a raster-based digital art application created to simulate as accurately as possible the appearance and behavior of traditional media associated with drawing, painting, and printmaking. It is intended to be used in real-time by professional digital artists as a functional creative tool.”
Translation…Corel Painter is a paint program that allows me to paint directly into the computer. I start with a photo reference and my line drawing and paint a painting, just as I would if I were using watercolor paper, brushes and paint. The program offers greater diversity though and I can paint in watercolor, oil, acrylic, pastel, colored pencil, or a number of different mediums. It also offers a number of brushes specific to each medium. There is a palette that allows me to select my colors and paint and mix them directly on the computer screen, or I can mix them prior to application – again, just like if I were painting with paper, brush and paints.
There are three things I absolutely love of about creating digital paintings:
1. I don’t have to wait for the paint to dry between layers.
2. There is an “undo” key, so if I do change my mind (or make a mistake), I can press the undo key and no harm no foul.
3. I can save the painting at different iterations. This allows me to be more experimental with my painting process, and I can try different backgrounds, color schemes, etc.
I could never pull off painting digitally using a mouse – why that would be like trying to paint with a bar of soap! Instead, I use a Wacom Intuoso 3 tablet.
The tablet comes with both a mouse and a stylus, and I use the stylus to draw and paint directly into the computer, via the tablet. The stylus and tablet are sensitive to hand pressure, stroke speed, etc., and it really does mimic the painting experience.
Once the painting is complete, I print out the finished artwork on an Epson R2400 printer. I print onto watercolor paper and the paper and ink are archival quality, with time studies stating that with proper care, the artwork is expected to last 100+ years.
Another advantage to digital painting is that you do have the option of printing additional copies of the finished work, with each “copy” being an exact color and quality replica of the “original.”
I learned how to paint digitally a few years ago, when I took an extended workshop from Fay Sirkis. Fay is a New York artist and she is one of Corel’s Master Painters. She is a wonderful lady and I found her to be very generous and encouraging. Her work is beautiful and I encourage you to check out her website: http://www.faysartstudio.com/.
Well, April 15th is coming soon, so my first priority is getting our taxes done…then it’s on to painting. I’ll post images as I work on the Morro Bay collage painting.
Bye for now…Deborah
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