November 2010 Issue of Digital Paint Magazine by Digital Painting Magazine

An Angel Painting with Photoshop CS5 True Colours

November 2010

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Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I do want to this time to thank a bunch of people. First and foremost for our Family is I want to thank God for so many different blessings he has given is this year. We are so blessed to be able to do that which we are passionate about and still keep the lights and heat on. With the magazine there are so many people to list that I know I will miss someone if I try to name names. There are a host of people that write columns, produce tutorials, proof read, layout and handle many of the other behind the scene areas of a magazine production. They all graciously give us their time and talent at no cost, purely for the love and passion of producing and sharing art. To those very gifted and generous people, thank-you. There are a large number of people who I learn from and am inspired by, I also thank-you. While I could go on for days I wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bore you. But I do want to make it clear that what we do at the magazine and at the school in a team effort and without the help of a huge number of people none of these resources would be available to us. As a fun aside I want to share a tradition we have in our family. While it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always get implemented like we would like it to it is a way to really treasure and focus on the many things we have to be thankful for throughout the year. We have a shoe box that we put slips of paper in throughout the year. The slips of paper have little special things that we are thankful for at the time. Many times those pieces of paper go in the box during times of challenge. At Thanksgiving time we pull those out and read them while we are making dinner, chatting, and when we are eating dinner also. It is always a bunch of fun and for those with memory issues it serves as a nice reminder of those blessings we might not have remembered otherwise. So any way sorry to get mushy on you but I wanted to share. Now, on to some other business stuff. Barb will be back next month with her column. We miss her this month for sure but have no fear she is just taking a short breather. In other news you will notice a few new columns. Joan Hamilton and John Stevenson have agreed to write monthly columns for us as well. So welcome Joan and John. Finally I have a retraction to make. On page 16 of the MAY issue the image listed as being done by Richard Rownak was actually created by Kim Kauffman of http://synecdochestudio.com. Thank-you Richard Rownak for bringing that to our attention last week. Until next time Live-Love-Laugh 2

In This Issue: An Angel by Annell

Cartoon by Victor Lunn-Rockliffe

Painting With Photoshop CS5 by John L. Stevenson

Right Click

4 8 9

17 25, 35, 38 28

Breathe New Life Into An Old Painting by Skip Allen

Readers’ Gallery True Colours by Joan A. Hamilton Cover

An Angel By Annell

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

Marketing Buzz: Make A Mess by Tim O’Neill

36 3

An Angel By Annell L. Metsker “She’s a little angel,” I remember thinking as I created the painting found on the cover of this issue. It was commissioned by a client right after the baby’s second birthday. This image is particularly sentimental to me, and brought home the importance of our work to our clients and their families in a compelling way. I had photographed this child about twice a year from the time she was three months old, and had created a mother-baby painting from an earlier session. I did not realize how attached I had become to this family until I got a call one Sunday morning: the mother and child had been killed in a car accident the night before. Those images and paintings were a tangible part of the family’s memories and became so much more important following their loss. What we do as photographers and painters in creating portraits of our

An Angel, 01

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

An Angel, 02

clients captures the essence of who they are. How shocking it was to receive that phone call and realize that little girl really is an angel now! At one of my outdoor sets at my home studio, I wanted back-lighting to create more depth in the portrait of this little girl, and I used natural light with a warm reflector. In the original image I increased the density and saturation in Photoshop. I also duplicated the image and took some extra flowers from that image and added them to the lower right foreground and upper right background, visible in “An Angel-01-color.” When painting, I don’t worry much about cleaning up the added pieces as they will be blended in as the work progresses. I wanted to increase the softness around her with the foreground flowers, create more depth, and tone down that hot spot in the background. I next took the image into Corel Painter and added color to the image using Den’s Oil Bristle Brush, as is visible in “An Angel-01-color.” The addition of color in the highlights and shadows adds great dimension. I then made a clone copy, (“An Angel-02-paint”) and painted the entire image. I used Den’s Oil Bristle Brush, then switched to Sable Chisel Tip Water Brush for details on the subject’s face. I blended parts of the image with Darrell’s Bristle Blender where I wanted more softness. 4

An Angel, 03

An Angel, 05

An Angel, 04

I cloned the painted image, (“An Angel-03-muck”) and made an abstract out of it using Den’s Oil Funky Chunky. I used a combination of color modes on the clone to create an overall soft blended abstract. In the next version, (An Angel-04-emerge) using the soft cloner over the mucked image, I creaded a soft wash over the entire painting. I started with the subject’s face and the area close to it using an opacity of about 5 - 7% and gradually worked out to the borders. Next I cloned that image and created texture using image luminance as is visible in “An Angel-05-texture.” Again, I used a clone copy of the emerge version to clone texture into specific areas of the image with the soft cloner, visible in “An Angel-06-emergetex.” The final version was created in Photoshop by adjusting levels, curves, hue and saturation to put the ‘punch’ back in the image. This image was signed and saved as final. My painting was printed with an Epson 9800 printer on Lyve canvas from Breathing Color, sealed with Glamour II Gloss Veneer and embellished with water-mixable oils to create more depth and brilliance. Producing a finished, painted canvas from a photographic image is

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

An Angel, 06

a multi-step process that requires practice, experimentation, and command of a wide array of skills. In addition, it is an art unto itself. If interested in a collegial consultation or commissioning a painting of your image, I will be happy to help. Please contact me at Annell.com, or at my studio: 704.847.8281 Annell has received many State, Regional and National Awards. Named â&#x20AC;&#x153;Photographer of the Yearâ&#x20AC;? by PPNC in 1995 and 1999, her awards have included many first place awards in the categories of pictorial, groups, illustrative and women. She has been honored with a Kodak Epcot Award, a Fuji Masterpiece Award and a Kodak Gallery Award. Her work has been published in Art Acquisitor, Professional Photographer, Rangefinder, Rainbow, and Carolina Photographer. Her art has been exhibited by PPA, Epcot, B. Brown Gallery, Amsterdam Whitney Gallery and hangs in many private collections across the U.S. Annell has a portrait studio in Charlotte, N.C. where she specializes in heirloom portraits of children and families. Her work can be seen at Blue Valley Gallery in Cashiers, NC, Hawkins Studio Gallery in Charlotte, NC and at www.annell.com. Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

A Night at the Library Club

Left: With The Wind Below left: The Port at Positano Below: Showtime

A Girlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s First Love Eyes of Innocense

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

This cartoon was created using the 4 programmes depicted - Art Rage, Corel Painter, Photo Shop and Manga Studio. It was a bit of an experiment. At the end I was bit surprised at how it eventually became quite impossible to see which bits and effects were created by which programme. Its what I expected but I thought that there would be more programme signature as it were. The exercise reinforced my own belief that the end result and underlying vision/idea is more important than the means of getting there.- Victor

http: //cargocollective.com/victorlunnroc Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

Victor Lunn-Rockliffe 8

Painting with Photoshop CS5 Part I - the new Bristle Tip Brushes

a contribution to Digital Paint Magazine by John L. Stevenson jstvnsn@photoscena.com Amongst all of the hoopla earlier this year concerning Photoshop’s twentieth anniversary and the release of the CS5 version of the program, many commentators noted the innovative features newly being provided for digital painting. The purpose of this article, and others which will follow in a short series, is to examine: (a) the characteristics and use of the new painting functions built into the CS5 release, specifically the Bristle Tip brushes and the Mixer Brush, (b) some pathways for also using these in conjunction with other components of Photoshop, and, (c) some opportunities for pursuing unique artistic outputs within the framework of Photoshop CS5 (rather than just the simulation of traditional media painting). So, let’s cut to the chase. One immediately noticeable difference between the CS4 and CS5 versions of the program is that the new release has two Panels for setting up the primary features for painting - the Brush and the Brush Presets Panels are now separated entities. (The Window menu in CS4 contains just a single Panel, titled Brushes.) Whether this has anything to do with the new brushwork Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

“first screenshot” functions included within the engine of the program, it’s hard to gauge (as an independent

observer). But, nevertheless, the “wheelhouse” of the painting machine is now the revamped 9

Panel shown in the first screenshot here. Note that there is now a control option included here titled Transfer – this replaces, in part, the Other Dynamics component in CS4 and preceding versions of the program. The two new controls included within the Transfer controls are applicable to configuring the Mixer Brush (and these will be covered in a subsequent article). In this “essay” we are going to concentrate upon the Bristle Tip brushes. These are easy to find. The default set of Photoshop CS5 Brushes now contains each of the ten of them, in a single configuration of each. Five of them are classified as Round brushes, whilst the other five are Flat. Once any one of them is selected, then a new sub-panel appears within the Brush Panel, titled Bristle Qualities. It is active and shown within the second screenshot included here. The Shape menu included there gives direct access to all of the ten Bristle Tip variants. Even though the new Bristle Tips are intermingled with the original brushes within the default configuration, there are some substantial differences between them and their conventional, or standard, “predecessors”. For example, the listing of the default brushes which can be seen on the right-hand side of either the first or the second screenshot images contains six versions of the standard Spatter brush – different by both size and imprint – whereas just one size is preset for each of the Bristle Tips listed immediately above these. Further differences can be found if a given configuration which has been setup (and/ or loaded or saved) for a standard brush Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

“second screenshot” is directly transferred to a Bristle Tip. For example, the first screenshot image contains two sets of brush strokes obtained using a standard tool. One route towards creating a brush which has most of the characteristics associated with a physical fine art painting

brush, typically: i. a variability in opacity (including fade-out over the length of the brush stroke, as the reservoir of paint is used up), ii. some variance in thickness, plus some degree of randomness, (to provide a basis for 10

rework and overlay via additional strokes/ marks), iii. the deposit of a stroke or mark which can have, distinctively, both a central core and an edge, and, iv. a friction – for the interaction with the media being painted upon (such that the tooth of the paper, linen, canvas, etc. will create a texture within the stroke being laid down), is to first turn on the primary options within the Scattering and Transfer control portions of the Brush Panel. This is how the upper set of strokes in the first screenshot were transformed into the lower group, with a result that does indeed produce core and edge effects, showing changes in both opacity (fading) and thickness. However, simply substituting the same settings from this standard brush into a Bristle Tip brush doesn’t work very well, as demonstrated by the lower (orange) group of strokes included in the second screenshot. Here there is a uniformity of thickness; more similar to the unrefined standard brush marks included in the upper portion of the screen. The primary reason for this is that Bristle Tip size is not made a variable over the course of a stroke, linked, say, to the pressure of a stylus on a graphics tablet, since Size Jitter (which specifies how the size of the brush marks vary in a stroke) is itself not active under Shape Dynamics for any Bristle Tip. (This can be seen within the Brush Panel included in the third screenshot here.) Presumably it is deactivated, by default, with the intention (by Adobe) that the shape of the new tips themselves should provide for variability in the thicknesses of the strokes produced. Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

Also worth noting in the second screenshot is the new display component on the upper left-hand side. This is an innovation in CS5, applicable to the Bristle Tips alone. The preview – which is only available from a video card which supports OpenGL functions – can be configured in several ways, to confirm the basic operation of the brush (including stylus pressure effects, tilt and rotation, when any or all of these are enabled). It transpires that there are two key features which need to be adjusted carefully in order to gain a fully responsive and sensitive brush based upon a Bristle Tip. Firstly, the third screenshot illustrates how reducing the Bristles percentage (within the Bristle Qualities subpanel) can bring some structure back into the output strokes. It is not clear, at least to the author here, what the percentage scale really signifies. But, generally speaking, it is worth exploring the lower portion of the range (25% or less). It is also advisable to make downward adjustments of the so-called bristle density when resizing the brush itself to a smaller size. Additionally, as illustrated in the next (fourth) screenshot, the careful use of the Dual Brush option can provide for a restoration of thickness variations in the strokes obtained (as per the lower (green) group of brush strokes there). It is not possible to use two different Bristle Tips as complements in the Dual Brush setup. However, the aforementioned Spatter brushes, from the standard default set, can be very complementary choices. The fifth screenshot shows directly the difference between strokes laid down with increasing stylus pressure but with the Dual Brush option turned on (for the upper, green set) and

switched off (in the lower, blue grouping). It is clear that the former is a more sensitive configuration. As already indicated, more “bristle marks/structure” could be introduced in either case, by deliberately decreasing the Bristles percentage (whatever it is that that means, in definition terms …!). Note also that the Shape Dynamics option was not active in this instance, for either of these two trials. And, as an additional observation here, it is noteworthy that none of the brush configurations discussed to this point have made any use of the Texture option in the Brush Panel. It is well known - and seems to be more-or-less universal for most digital painting software tools and plug-ins - that using an underlying Texture to represent the media being painted upon can play a key role in the outcome. My own preference is to introduce this option as a last step, so setting up the basic Brush first, inclusive of its sensitivity to the graphics tablet and stylus. Well, the reader might now ask: we’ve read all of this wordage and we’ve looked at all the screenshots, but, so what? The final image included here is a partial answer. It was generated, in a relatively large format (to output a print at no smaller than 30 by 20 inches, at 180 ppi) using just the Art History Brush alone, but with an exclusive reliance on a customized set of Bristle Tips. The work as shown is at an intermediate stage of development; i.e., not completely finalized for printing. However, the set of custom Brushes, relied upon exclusively and selected from just one single Shape category, was developed using the principles introduced above (plus the 11

addition of a single fixed Texture). The primary intent in presenting this work is to give the reader an opportunity to view the “natural media” emulation which the Bristle Tips can provide, but without use – in this instance - of the Mixer Brush. Also of note: the Art History Brush provides a more systematic means of painting by directly sampling from an original photograph than does the new Mixer Brush (in CS5). So, hopefully, this short article has confirmed some guidelines for configuring and using Bristle Tip based painting tools, without too many complications. The next contribution within this series will cover the combined use of the CS5 Bristle Tips and the Art History Brush (much older and oft neglected) in more detail. It will describe the step-bystep procedures used to generate and also to enhance the type of work included in the last example image presented here. A following article, or two, will then cover the new Mixer Brush in a similar manner. The overall objective is to give users who have some knowledge of the legacy framework for digital brushwork in Photoshop the ability to expand both their skills and their artistic quest. I welcome any questions or feedback the reader may have. Just send e-mail to: jstvnsn@ photoscena.com

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

“third screenshot”

“fourth screenshot”

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

“fifth screenshot”

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

John Stevenson has been taking photographs since childhood, first experimenting in the early 1960s with an Agfa Isoly roll film camera (producing square format transparencies in glass mounts). He first produced digitally composed images in 1995, printing his work on canvas using a Hewlett-Packard DesignJet machine. Some of this work was exhibited via his participation in the Art League at the Torpedo Factory, in Alexandria, Virginia. A first solo exhibition of all-digital work – A Shifting Light digital photorenditions – was presented at the Foundry Gallery in Washington D.C. in 1999. A second solo exhibition – Time Spans – was held at the Elements Gallery in Colorado Springs in 2005. His newest work features: square format transparencies! 15

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

Breathe New Life Into an Old Painting Hanging around the Digital Art Academy and Painter Talk, I learned about a program called Dynamic Auto Painter. Actually, I believe that Karen Bonaker first told me about the program. As programs go, this one is very inexpensive, $50.00 US, for what it will do. A free trial download is available, too. Find Dynamic Auto Painter here: http://www.mediachance.com/dap/index.html Dynamic Auto Painter (DAP) is a bit different from other auto painting software. DAP emulates the style of some famous painters as well as particular media. The end results are very good. For this tutorial, I am going to use a painting that I did in Karen Bonakerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art Rage Class and alter it with images created in DAP. The original image is Figure 1 and the final image is Figure 2.

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

The Process: Open DAP and load your painted image, or photograph if you like as shown in Figure 3.

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

!"#$%&'$()*$+',-*./$$0).%$+'1"#$%&'$23'*$45"*$6*7$%&'$89"#.'$45"*:$;<$.'3696%'$.%=1'.$"($6)%"$36-*>*,$56*$+'$.'1'5%'7/$$?65&$+9-*,.$6$7-@'9'*%$1""A$ to the image. I started with pencil. See Figure 4.

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

BC'9$.'1'5>*,$D'*5-1:$4$1'C$611$"($%&'$7'(6)1%$.'E*,.$61"*'/$$F&'9'$69'$1"%.$"($%#'6A.$%&6%$=")$56*$G6A':$+)%$("9$%&'$3)93".'.$"($%&-.$%)%"9-61:$%&'$Â 7'(6)1%$.'E*,.$#"9A$#'11/$$B11$%&6%$-.$1'C$-.$%"$&-%$%&'$.%69%$+)H"*$6*7$#6%5&$%&'$6)%"$36-*>*,$569'()11=/$$4$7"*I%$#6*%$%"$J*-.&$%&'$36-*>*,$5"Gâ&#x20AC;? 31'%'1=$6*7$-*$%&-.$56.':$4$.%"33'7$%&'$36-*>*,$6%$%&'$3"-*%$%&'$79=$+9).&'.$.%69%'7/$$K''$L-,)9'$M/

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

My plan is to place the images created in DAP in the Painter 11 image of the peppers. But, I want more than one. Next I do another pencil sketch, +)%$%&-.$>G'$4$1'%$-%$9)*$61G".%$%"$5"G31'>"*/$$K''$J,)9'$N/

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

4$6G$,"-*,$%"$%9=$"*'$G"9'$-G6,'$-*$OBD$).-*,$5&61A/$$K''$J,)9'$P/

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

B%$%&-.$3"-*%:$4$#-11$3165'$%&'$-G6,'.$-*%"$%&'$"9-,-*61$7"5)G'*%$-*$D6-*%'9$QQ/$$F&'$5"GG6*7$).'7$-.$File > Place. Once the image is placed, I size it %"$J%$%&'$'*>9'$-G6,'$6*7$%&'*$5&6*,'$%&'$5"G3".-%'$G'%&"7$"($'65&$16='9$%"$,'%$%&'$'@'5%$4$#6*%/$$K''$L-,)9'$R$("9$%&'$D165'$S"GG6*7.

T'11:$%&6%I.$-%/$$B$.-G31'$#6=$).-*,$OBD$%"$5&6*,'$%&'$1""A$6*7$(''1$"($6$36-*>*,$"9$3&"%",963&/$$U'%)9*$%"$%&'$+',-**-*,$$"($%&'$7"5)G'*%$%"$.''$ %&'$J*61$-G6,'/$$V6W'$()*$#-%&$OBDX$4$7"/

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

Readers’ Gallery

by Thomas Virgil Dube’ THOMAS VIRGIL DUBE’ was born in 1942 in Altha, a small Florida panhandle town. After observing an airplane land at a Pensacola airport at age 2, he later sketched it at home. Recognizing Virgil’s talent, his parents encouraged him from that day, especially his mother who furnished him Saturday Evening Post magazines featuring Norman Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

Rockwellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s marvelous cover illustrations. From the outset Virgil studied Rockwell in depth, his color management, and style and technique from the inception of a picture to its conclusion. Besides Rockwell, whom he believes is technically one of the best painters ever; he studied many notable artists and illustrators from bygone eras, the Renaissance Masters, mostly those from the Golden Age of Illustration, notably Howard Pyle, James Montgomery Flagg, and J.C. Lyendecker, each different and offering him some unique artistic insight. As a draftsman his mentor is the outstanding illustrator, Albert Dorne, former President of the Famous Artist School headquartered in Westport, Connecticut. Virgil grew up in an artistic and supportive family. His father attended Maryland Institute of Art while stationed in the Army at Fort Meade, Maryland, and his artistic brothers are inspiring to this date. Early on he established the habit of drawing at least once a day, which he believes has enhanced his understanding of nature, its bountiful form, texture, and color. The practice sharpened his eye for detail in totality, which he feverishly paints throughout a picture rather than the accepted artistic norm whereby the focus is centralized. He believes the eye naturally scans our environment, seeing, observing, remembering, a picture no different. After graduating from Terry Parker High School Virgil enrolled in the Famous Artist Course to study illustration. Soon afterward he landed a job with a prominent insurance company headquartered in Jacksonville. He worked 35 years as company graphic artist and illustrator, cartoonist, sometimes sculpting on special assignments. He was acting Art Director prior to the company being acquired in 1996 by an asset-guzzling conglomerate. Other than modest professional training, Virgil is basically a self-taught artist who after retirement primarily paints for fun and relaxation. He fervently believes each sitting before his working image adds further to his skills â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

seeing, observing, and remembering the little things all about that make the big difference in his immediate effort. Proficient in all mediums due to personal diligence and a career as a commercial artist, Virgil paints an array of subjects: human interest, country, western, wildlife, on occasion portraiture and cartooning. Much of his theme is rural, since he grew up a country boy and spent many summer vacations in West Florida with aunts, uncles, and a host of cousins on their farms. Apart from art, he enjoys shooting archery in the woods at his mountain cabin, lifting weights at home by combining Olympic weightlifting to toughen joints along with light weight training for muscle tone. In bygone years Virgil was a lifting competitor alongside his World Champion and Olympian brother, Joe. During his short lifting career, he became Florida teen, junior, and State middleweight-heavyweight champion, holder of seven Florida State records during his thirty-plus tournament career, and southeast coast light heavyweight champion. Today as a retiree, he maintains his cardio and general fitness bicycling in his Jacksonville neighborhood. Leisurely, he enjoys reading and writing short stories for his art. A novelist, he has written a crime-adventure, ‘Undercover Artist’, which is ready for publication and is presently seeking a literary agent. He is working on and laying-out an anthology of his art plus short stories in a booklet called ‘Rusty Barbwire’. The collection involves time, and one reason he is now digitally painting to one day finish almost one-hundred works. When Virgil gets an idea to draw or pain, he quickly does a thumbnail free-hand sketch. Opting to use picture references, or not, he redraws the composition until it is right, and acceptable. To reach an accepted design and rendition he often does numerous tracings, refining and moving picture elements around freely. This initial procedure is critical and his most laborious process in picture-making. He paints traditionally, jostling between the Old Masters Technique and wetin-wet, the former involving a detailed tonal under painting that is over-painted with thin and multiple glazes of color. He favors oils, second acrylics, and enjoys rendering charcoal preliminary drawings. Once reliant on pen, or brush and ink as a commercial artist, enjoying stylizing line to attain convincing textures and tones, he rarely does them anymore. Only recently he has included digital painting in order to paint more quickly the hundreds of ideas sketched over the years that Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

are ready for refinement, then completion. As he once painted behind the easel, his ambition is to master digital painting bringing it to the same degree of proficiency. Virgil and wife Sharon has owned a log cabin home in the North Georgia Mountains since 1991. On their adjoining wooded lot in front of his log cabin studio and on a stone patio he constructed by his creek’s white water, he works while away from Jacksonville diligently painting, drawing, and afterward writing his many ideas presently stored in sketch form in an idea file. Traveling across the North Georgia, Tennessee, and Carolina foothills and mountains offers him the boundless subject matter, he either sketches or photographs for future use. Virgil believes being an artist/painter is much more than applying a medium to canvas, paper, hardboard, or on the computer screen. While working alongside his rushing creek, he experiences a connection with nature that is indescribable, a brotherhood with both inert and living things beautifully surrounding, flowing through him, ultimately to his pictures.

A little note about the title...I chose True Colours because I always listen to Eve Cassidy singing it when Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m painting. It helps get me in the mood, and reminds me that all we need to paint according to our true colours. To do that we need to keep learning and loving what we are doing! Hope this helps you to learn a little about painting with the digital watercolour variants to make the kinds of marks you want to make! Happy Painting

You can use this sketch or sketch your own. I use a Real Soft 6 B pencil. Do it on a its own layer.

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

You might want to practice a bit first. Paint with Pick Up Underlying Colour box checked. Then unclick it and click the Preserve Transparency Box instead. Use the DWC blender and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll see it spreads the paint around in a nice wet manner. If you do it without changing this, it will remove paint, which in some cases is okay, but not here!

On a new Gel Layer using the Pure Water brush paint the first layer on the apples. I clicked the Pick Up Underlying Colour box because I can now blend the paint with the Preserve Transparency Box checked using my Custom Digital Watercolour Blender.

I have used the 3 colours on the canvas, then blended with this technique and also used a littleCustom DWC Diffuser.

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

Shows the darker shadow stokes on a new layer. One apple hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been blended to show how it looks before blending.

I have added 5% diffusion to this brush to help it really spread the paint around. I probably squeezed the angle a bit too! Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

There is very little wet of the Watercolour variants used in this painting.

Using the Lasso Tool here saves a lot of grief. Keeps the stem where it belongs.

This is a little dry sponging here to darken and give a grainy texture. You need to use a very tiny brush â&#x20AC;&#x201C;see settings in diagram! Do the orange first then the yellow on top all on the same layer.

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

The brushes used and the order is in the diagram.

Build the layers with DWC Pointed Simple water for the blue and blend lightly with DWC squeezed blender with the Preserve Transparency Box checked. It blends the greenish washes on top without picking up any of the blue and mixing it in.

The point is to get the paint on in a dabbing sort of motion. To vary the colour and shapes in the green to give it some randomness! Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

A lot of things done here to get things to the final stage. I like to Clone at this point because it drops and dries the layers and lets me keep the original with all the layers (in case!) Lift Canvas to the Watercolour layer and Wet the Entire WC Layer using the brush in the diagram. Added my custom French Watercolour texturelayer. Adjusted the Brightness – increased slightly and Contrast increased slightly (make the contrast between the two more to give it a fresher look.) Do this after you apply texture and wet things. I used some other brushes slightly in some places judiciously. (I hope) to soften edges (Confusion and/ or Diffusion), clean up edges (Pinch on part of the apple edges). Flat Grainy stump is my cleaner up and fixer brush for crooked apple edges –moves paint. I even Clonedsome parts that were textured to another. I also corrected the values of the shadows in places with some more light coloured Pure Water Brush washes on a new Gel Layer, then blended them in. Maybe a teensy bit of Glowto lighten some spots…you get the idea! It depends a lot on your eye for it, but remember DON’T OVERDO IT! You want to keep some of the looseness of watercolour intact. It’s there use it! The Custom Brushes are not difficult to create as they are variations on Painter Brushes with the exception of a couple of Skips. It’s an easier way of transferring the brush info you need.

Click for sketch for your use Reference: Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

Reference Image:

Click for Joan’s Custom Brushes For Digital Watercolours: 33

The final view of “Two Red Juicy Ones …Again!”

Thanks for following along. Hope you enjoyed it and learned a few things that you can use in your own paintings. Don’t forget to show yourtrue colours!

Visit my website at: JoanAHamilton.com to comment and ask questions! Would love to see you there!

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

My name is Joan A Hamilton. I am a digital artist living in Toronto Ontario. I have had a love of art since childhood, but didn’t actively pursue this interest until 2005. Beginning with Corel Painter 9 and a Wacom tablet, I entered the fascinating, and challenging world of digital painting. I am completely self taught and do not have any formal art training. What I do have is a huge desire to paint and create and share what I have learned with other people on the same journey. Although I tried the digital and watercolour brushes when I first started using Corel Painter 9, it was over two years before I went back to them and began to use them in earnest. After two years, I still find them a real challenge to master in any kind of way. All of my paintings begin with a blank canvas and are painted stroke by stroke in an attempt to achieve a certain look. In the course of a painting I use many different brushes and layering techniques, and have developed my own custom brushes over time. These brushes are in constant evolution as I continually experiment with new brushes and techniques. An additional benefit has been that I have met some very talented, generous, and truly genuine people along the way, and can now say I have friends all over the world! I plan to continue learning, and sharing and am looking forward to meeting more people who share my passion for the art of digital painting.

Readersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Gallery

SCI-FI ALMANAC (SFA)

by Bob Bello, Publisher http://scifialmanac.com A 1983 Art School graduate, Bob Bello is a former TV artist and assistant-producer, now independent writer/producer and visionary. He writes mostly speculative fiction (time travel and alternate history with adept space colonization) and paints mainly traditional impressionistic space art and digital sci-fi illustrations. Since 2008, Bob is the Editor-in-Chief or Sci-Fi Almanac, at http://scifialmanac.com . His production company website is http://timeship.tv

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

Marketing Buzz

MAKE A MESS

By Tim Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Neill

How can we bring some of the passion and energy to the marketing of our art that we bring to creating our art? Both skill sets are creative. Although art marketing may be considered by some to be mundane, it does require some right brain thinking to be effective. And as you know I am from the camp that believes one should spend more time on marketing and less time on making. So is more marketing a silver bullet for triggering explosive growth in a business? No, wish I wish it were. Maybe the closet thing though is one of the most valuable skills you can master â&#x20AC;Ś â&#x20AC;Ś Massive implementation mode. What is that? It is the ability to make many things happen simultaneously. SIMULTANEOUS vs. SEQUENTIAL EXECUTION, doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t that sound like a riot? This is totally my kind of gig, it sounds like a mess and I get to start all kinds of different things. Many people indulge in the systematic planning idea that is taught in many circles. While it is very important to use templates and formulas to make this happen as they should, it can also severely limit the results you get. I am a believer in systems. Systems make the difference when implementing a new or existing business strategic plan. Howeverâ&#x20AC;Ś.what if you can find ways to make things happen in a sequence, but systematically make multiple projects and initiatives happen all at once? A rapidly growing business requires an owner who can hold it all together, while riding the momentum they have already built. It means many hours upfront and â&#x20AC;Śchaos. But I think it is an area where many people fall down â&#x20AC;&#x201C; they get a winning marketing campaign put together â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and they ride the wave, loving every single deposit in their bank account. But they typically forget to continue to grow it â&#x20AC;&#x201C; while it is already growing like gangbusters in other areas. When the momentum slows or dies (which it always will, unless you have other things going simultaneously) â&#x20AC;Ś they are lost and completely confused as to where their money and success went.

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

I did a course this year call the Phenomenon. It provided instruction and an in depth look at several different entrepreneurs that experienced triple digital growth in a short period of time, in our current economyâ&#x20AC;Ś and they could trigger that growth. One of the common denominators was the simultaneous execution principle. This is not for the weak of heart because it will change your life. It is really geared for the entrepreneur as opposed to the business owner. The difference being at the end of a given year a business owner may show solid 5, 10 or 15% growth while an entrepreneur will have grown the core business a little but would have started several other things surrounding the core business. The difference is slight from the outside and either way there is growth. So we can notch this back and make it more pertinent to the average business owner. Here are some of the most important tools I have found for building massive implementation into my business: s #ONSTANT MOTIVATION 4HIS BEST COMES FROM A COMBINATION OF EXTERNAL and internal sources. First, you MUST have a big vision on what you are creating â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and you need to know how it will feel when itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s done. This is EMOTIVE. If you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know where you are going â&#x20AC;&#x201C; you will never get there! External motivation comes from mastermind groups, coaches and mentors. I personally belong to several mastermind groups â&#x20AC;&#x201C; each one provides me different areas of support, ideas, and expertise. You can swap ideas, problems and discussions. If you do this right, this will push and stretch you to highly uncomfortable levels in very short periods of time. Be sure to write down the goals and actually visualize them. If some of the goals are physical (a lake house, vacation spot etc) use your artist talents to make that place come alive in a painting or photograph, then look at it several times a day. If you want to give away a $100,000 to your church or favorite charity make it VISUAL. This is especially important for artists because we are visual processors. s 4HE 2/) OF MARKETING GENERALLY WILL BE BETTER IF YOU DO IDEAS RATHER than just 1 (not 10 different business ideas, but rather 10 different 36

marketing efforts). Spread out that risk. I mean think about it, wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t it be more difficult for the average small business owner to get 1 idea that makes $100,000 than to get 10 ideas that make you $10,000 each? And actually the ideas are the easy part. Sifting through them and implementing is the real task. s /UTSOURCE THIS BY GETTING ONE KEY ASSISTANT TO HELP YOU MANAGE everything you have on the go. For most of us artists this is tough. What one needs to do is figure out the hourly income you want to be making. Then factor in what you can hire an assistant for â&#x20AC;Ś the difference is the profit margin you make from having them do the little things for you, while you focus on your most effective and profitable tasks. This is applying the Pareto principle (the 80/20 rule) in your business life. s 4RACK RESULTS "LAH 4HIS FOR ME REQUIRES A HEINOUS ACT OF THE STRICTEST discipline and quite frankly, is a bore. But I can use the numbers to push me and trick myself. So keep track of what works so that you can do that again, and again, and again. Constantly be looking for new and more creative marketing ideas. Track and measure everything â&#x20AC;&#x201C; how it worked, how many people, how much they spent, what they said, who they referred. s ,IST OUT THINGS YOU WOULD LOVE TO GET DONE IN THE NEXT MONTH These are 10 MAJOR projects. How can you re-purpose the time, effort, and content you put into each project? If you lay it all out on paper, there will be areas that duplicate efforts â&#x20AC;&#x201C; THOSE are key areas for massive implementation. Do the projects that have a common tie-in all at once. Stick to a timer and set aside at least one hour of uninterrupted time (see the point below for more information on this). Work on just one project per hour. I use an egg timer. Not only does it help me keep my ADD in check but it is a healthy reminder to get up and stretch and walk around a few minutes every hour. Take time on occasion for a short working getway. Shut yourself off from distractions! A few weeks ago I did a one and a half day hideout in a remote location. Check out what was accomplished. Rather than checking e-mail 47 times and answering the phone 14 times â&#x20AC;Ś I did: s NEWSLETTERS FROM START TO lNISH x s BLOG POSTS n WRITTEN AND POSTED WHEN ) GOT BACK TO h4HE )NTERNET Zoneâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;Ś Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

s SPEECHES WRITTEN POLISHED AND REHEARSED x s .EW PRODUCT WRITTEN FOR -AMARAZZI 'UIDES ONE OF MY NEW SITES GEARED for start up photographers that is launching soon. ) s .EW COACHING AND MENTORING PROGRAM DESIGNED WRITTEN x s 1UIET TIME TO RELAX AND VISUALIZE MY DREAMS AND GOALS x s ! LOT OF OTHER LITTLE THINGS Honestly for me that is normally at least one weekâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worth of work. But because of the intense focus I was able to bust it out in a few days. One of my goals is to get to where that is all I have to do. Do you know that a study commissioned by the Banking industry and SBA showed that the average worker and business owner only does about 1.6 hours of income producing work a day? We all work more than that but it is not productivity that directly affects the bottom line. This is not something you will master overnight. It can take months to find the right system that works for you â&#x20AC;Ś but when you find it, you will get more done in an average day than you used to in a month. Learn how to become a massive implementation expert. Get those projects done and out there â&#x20AC;&#x201C; without worrying about them being perfect every time. THAT is one of the greatest secrets of those who reach the top of their game and industry. It is indeed a rare skill but much like painting or photography one that anyone can master with practice.

Readers’ Gallery Digital Visual Art Collage by Kirk Mathew Gatzka I began searching for an image in Picasa 3, that I recently had received from Dover Publications. I selected this photograph from Aran’s Knitting book images. Right clicking on the image allowed me to open the photograph in various programs, I clicked on Paint.NET. In Paint.NET I used a posterize filter to simplify the color range for tracing. Before tracing I opened the file in PhotoPaint and resample it to 96 dpi which increased the working size of the file. I then opened CorelTRACE and used the Outline tool to trace the image converting it into a vector graphic. I saved it as a .cmx file which CorelDRAW can read. Now in CorelDRAW I ungrouped all the vector pieces created in CorelTRACE. Using the lasso tool I selected various parts of the ungrouped image to separate and create white space in the image for some abstraction. I used the rectangle tool to create a rectangle which I placed behind the vector pieces and chose a light blue color for that. Now my white spaces were filled with light blue. I selected all the vector pieces and regrouped them into a whole vector graphic and copied it to the clipboard. I opened PhotoPaint and pasted from the File> New from Clipboard> into it. Now I had a bitmapped image to work with. Using Picasa 3 again I reviewed a number of clip art pieces for inclusion in the image as collage pieces. I would copy these from Picasa 3 onto the clipboard and import to paste in PhotoPaint. Each became an object that I could manipulate in PhotoPaint. I resized the Advance and McCalls images and placed them in the bottom corners. Using the keyboard shortcut Shfit-Ctrl-Down Arrow I merged these with the background. Other objects I would resize and place using the object property of Multiply to make the white transparent and leave the black image. The Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010

circular image surrounding the face of the young lady, I first cut out part of the image using the ellipse Masking tool and Edit> Delete> (or clear) to make it white. I then used Multiply again to create the black image and merged it with the background. I resampled the image to a workable size for the web and applied Filter Forge’s Freepack Frames film frame once. Added a blue border to that of 90 pixels with Image> Papersize>in PhotoPaint. Then added a second film frame, with another 90 pixels of blue, and finished it off with a thin frame with a thin aqua digital mat. In this process I used the free Picasa 3 and Paint.NET programs; CorelTRACE, CorelDRAW; Corel PhotoPaint; and Filter Forge’s Freepack 3 Frames filter. More of my work can be found with explanations at: http://gatzkart. blogspot.com.

Digital Paint Magazine - November 2010