May 2010 Issue of Digital Paint Magazine

May 2010

Surrealist Painting of Flowers

By Cher Threinen-Pendarvis

Add Drama to a Simple Sketch Floral Vignettes Negative Painting with Watercolor

It seems like the months are flying by. Perhaps it is because I am so new to having a publication that has a specific deadline each month. This month we have a nice line up of information for you. Skip and Barb have again put together some nice tuts for you and Victor has provided some toons.

Images by author and artist Cher Pendarvis grace the cover. Cher also provided a nice excerpt from her new Painter Wow book and I asked Bonnie Willis to provide us some of her beautiful floral images.

Scanography might be an area new to many of you. This is a great way to capture the intricacies of floral arrangements. Patri Feher shares a few techniques and some images pertaining to scanography. John Derry rounds out the mix with some information and a few paintings done with Photoshop CS5.

One of the major changes for this month is that we have hired a layout and design person to free up more time for John.

New to the team is designer Daria Lacy. When she’s not at the computer, she’s praticing the “art” of horse breeding. You can see her rare Hackney Horses at www.shallowmyre.com.

We do have a reader gallery and I encourage you to submit your work. Some of it will end up on the blog and we have room for a few pieces in the magazine each month.

As always we welcome your comments and suggestions.

Enjoy!

Tim

This magazine is free to distribute by any medium.

You can print it, e-mail it, upload it on your web server.

You may however not edit any part of this PDF, copy the content, or split the pages. This PDF must re-main whole at all times, the content of which belongs to Digital Paint Magazine. All art and trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

It had to happen at some point—Painter’s near twenty-year run as the natural-media king of the hill with little or no competition came to a close with Adobe’s recent announcement of Photoshop CS5. After years of Photoshop users asking for a similar capability, Adobe decided to act now with the exciting combination of the new Mixer Brush and Bristle Tips. Why Now? I don’t have any inside information, but my sense of the marketplace tells me that Adobe smartly looked at the digital photography user, along with the availability of low-cost output media (ink jet, the web, etc.), and came to the decision that the market is ripe for more individually expressive tools in Photoshop. I believe that there is a sizable segment of the marketplace that wants to take their photography beyond image capture.

How does this development impact the Painter user. Competition raises the bar of expectations and forces the development of better tools. Users have more tools to choose from, increasing the range of expressive tools available. In the end, the winner is the user, and I’m certainly for that!

I’ve been working with CS5 during the Photoshop Prerelease Program and have provided a couple of image samples done with the Mixer Brush/Bristle Tips.

John

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In This Issue: Surrealist Paintings of Flowers

By Cher Threinen-Pendarvis With Brush & Pen

by Barb Hartsook Marketing Buzz: In bound marketing Rocks

by Tim O’neill Floral Vignettes: Sublime, Witty, Genteel

by Patri Feher Negative Painting With Watercolor

by Skip Allen Cartoons

by Victor Lunn-Rockliffe Cover

Floating Orchid 2

By Cher Threinen-Pendarvis Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

Bonnie Willis, Artist

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Photoshop CS5 is all the rage. John had done some videos in conjuntion with Adobe and one of those videos recieved over 1 million views. The video at this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH0aEp1oDOI is over 2.8 million views. Cool.

Here is Johns take on the painting portion of CS5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D0TgsCnwv8& feature=PlayList&p=B9F1FCB70D068014&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=1 The image samples on this page were painted by John using Mixer Brush/Bristle Tips in CS5.

Portrait courtesy of Mercer Harris Photography

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Surrealist Paintings of Flowers

By Cher Threinen-Pendarvis

Floating Orchid 2 is one in a series of surrealist paintings of flowers hovering over land and sea.

The flower was painted from life, while the simple seascape was painted from a memory of beautifully lit clouds over the sea in the early morning.

This project uses Chalk and Blenders brushes that incorporate Hard Media capabilities, which means the brushes are very sensitive to the nuances of your hand, for instance, whether the stylus is held upright or at a tilt while drawing. We love painting with the Chalk brushes because they interact with Painter’s textures in such a unique and natural way!

1 Setting up and making practice strokes. The first step is to set up the still life. We placed the blooming orchid under a full spectrum light on the

Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

desk. Then we planned a composition with plenty of space around the flower because we planned to paint a seascape behind it.

It’s important to set Brush Tracking before you work with the sensitive Hard Media brushes. Brush Tracking allows you to customize how Painter interprets the input of your stylus, including parameters such as pressure and speed. Choose Edit, Preferences, Brush Tracking (Mac OS X users, choose Corel Painter 11, Preferences, Brush Tracking) and then make a typical brushstroke in the window. For a broader range of sensitivity, we recommend making a stroke in the Preview window that reflects using light and heavy pressure while painting quickly and then slowly.

It’s a good idea to get acquainted with the brushes by making some practice strokes.

In this project you will use the Real Fat Chalk, Real Hard Chalk and Real Soft Chalk variant of Chalk and the Real Stubby Blender and Real Pointy Blender variants of Blenders.

2 Planning a color palette using the Mixer. We used the Mixer palette to build basic colors for the painting. If the Mixer is not visible, choose Window, Color Palettes, Mixer. It’s a good idea to have both the Colors palette and the Mixer open while you work. Apply color to the Mixer with the Apply Color

tool (at the bottom of the Mixer Pad, second from left). The Dirty Brush mode is active by default.

Deselect the Dirty Brush by clicking on it. The Dirty Brush mode retains color that was previously used.

For this painting, we preferred to apply puddles of pure, clean color to the Mixer and then mix them using the Mix Color tool (third from left).

3 Sketching with Chalk. Now, it’s time to sketch.

To create a file for your painting, choose File, New 5

and set up a file that measures 10 x 12 inches at 150 ppi. In the Paper Selector located in the Toolbox, choose a natural texture (we chose Basic Paper). In the Colors palette, choose a color that will complement the colors you plan to use in your painting. We created a drawing in Painter from direct observation, by sketching with one of our favorite Hard Media brushes, the Real Soft Chalk using a blue-gray color over Basic Paper. For this sketch, you can work directly on the Canvas. While drawing, carefully observe the shapes of the forms in your subject and pay careful attention to the lighting on the forms.

4 Building an underpainting. We envisioned a background sky with soft cloud shapes. The darker values behind the white orchid will help the background to recede and allow the flower to come forward in the composition. The Real Fat Chalk is a sensitive, grainy, Hard Media brush that is ideal Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

for laying in large areas quickly. Choose the Real Fat Chalk variant of Chalk. Use the Sample Color tool from the Mixer to pick up color and then lay color onto the clouds and sky. Notice how the width of the stroke changes with the tilt of the stylus.

When you are ready to add color to the center of interest, switch to the Real Soft Chalk. Be loose and expressive with your brush work. While carefully observing the forms and lighting, we blocked in the shapes and values, resizing the brush as we worked.

5 Sculpting forms and modulating color. Now that the basic colors are established, begin to layer chalk strokes that will build color complexity. As you work, continue to use the Mixer palette as a paint palette to pick up color and the Real Soft Chalk to apply paint to the Canvas. Directional

brushstrokes will add dynamic energy to the image.

Layer color over color, and let your strokes follow the direction of the forms. Next, use a wider range of values to further establish the light on the forms.

We also added brighter colors to the sky and then blended large areas of color with the Real Stubby Blender.

Now that your painting is nearly completed, zoom in to 100% and take a careful look at your composition. In our painting, the center of interest needed brighter highlights and deeper shadows.

The petals in the center of the flower needed to be brightened and refined. To paint crisper edges and brighter color on these petals, we used a small Real Soft Chalk, and to add textured details to shadowed areas on the petals, we used a small Real Hard Chalk. Then, to blend small areas, we reduced 6

the size of the Real Pointy Blender to about 7–10 pixels and brushed carefully, allowing the strokes to follow the forms. Next, to layer more texture onto the sky, we sampled color from the image using the Dropper tool, switched to the Real Fat Chalk and then loosely brushed back and forth over the cloud shapes, sampling a different color with every few strokes.

6 Refining and adding details. As with the modeling and sculpting work in step 5, when painting the

smaller details, keep in mind the shapes of the forms, and apply the strokes in the direction of the forms. To add final touches to the center of the flower, we used a small Real Soft Chalk (try 7–10 pixels). First, we added strokes of varied gold, orange and brown onto the center of the flower. Then we added deeper tones to the interior to help bring the overlapping lip forward. The final brushwork can be seen in the completed illustration.

This article is excerpted from the Painter 11 Wow! Book by Cher Threinen-Pendarvis. Copyright 2010. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and Peachpit Press. You can see more of Cher’s work by visiting her websites at pendarvis-studios. com and pendo.com.

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MONTANA 2010

Art ist ic Impressions Digital Painting Workshop

Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

July 2010

More Informat ion Elise’s Christmas Noodles Digital Painting by Tim ONeill

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Simple Sketch – Two Branches in a Glass It’s spring in the Northern hemisphere. Color blooms!

• Wild flowers among the tall grasses in a nearby meadow.

• Blossoms on the tree by the patio wall.

• Forsythia on the bush at the corner of the yard.

I cut little branches from both the forsythia bush and the tree, put them in water in a small skinny glass, and set them on my desk next to the computer.

Opening a new file in Painter 11, at 150 ppi, with rice paper selected, I selected the Liquid Ink Category Corel Painter – Intermediate Level Brushes: • Liquid Ink Clumpy Ink • Gouache Opaque Smooth • Real Soft Chalk (or Square Chalk) Other Painter tools used: • Gradients • Rice paper texture (can be found in Painter • Extras Folder, Painter 7 paper textures file) • Glass distortion • Layers and composite methods Save often!

Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

and the Clumpy Ink 4 brush and sketched the little glass and the branches.

(Love that brush!)

Sketch fast and loose, not for accuracy but for general placement. The simplicity and direction of this composition give it an oriental feel.

The sketch layer is Gel composite mode.

Flower Petals, Loosely Painted Use the Gouache Opaque Smooth Brush for petals. I laid in petals on two different layers.

SAVE those layers! For later.  Reduce the opacity of one layer and move it under the other, brighter one, and then collapse them.

The reduced opacity layer pushes the petals back visually.

You can also reduce the color saturation of the layer to push them back farther.

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I chose two: glass distortion in the Effects menu and gradients from the tool box.

Add Shadows and Reduce Ink Layer Shadows: Add more depth and a sense of light by creating flower-shape shadows.

Duplicate the flower layer and the sketch layer.

Collapse the two duplicated layers.

Choose the Luminosity mode for this layer.

Place the shadows layer under the flowers layer in the layers palette so it moves behind in the painting. Move the layer to one side to create the shadows.

Ink Sketch Layer: In Effects>Tonal Control>Adjust Colors, I discovered that liquid ink, when saturated with the value lightened, actually has color to it.

Adjust to whatever color and intensity you want for the branches and the glass.

I selected just the glass part of the sketch and cut it.

(Edit>Cut.) I liked the watermarks it left.

Put Water in the Glass Paint water in the glass on another layer and make it Gel mode. I kept this layer above the flower layer

Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

Glass Distortion

so the blooms inside the glass would sink into the water.

Add Some Punch and Drama After collapsing the layers – did I mention Save???

– I thought my little painting looked flat, in spite of the shadows. So I turned to Painter’s tools and effects to punch it up and give it some drama.

Choose Effects>Focus>Glass Distortion. Play with the sliders until you have a look you like. I used the soften, amount, and variance sliders on this.

It created more interesting and abstract petals.

I actually like this as it is and could call it finished.

But I wanted to see how it would look on a ricepaper background using a complementary color.

Quick and Easy Gradient Background Gradient layer: Add a layer just above the canvas layer, below the painting layer, and fill with the lavender neon gradient. (Or one of your choosing.)

I edited the gradient to spread out and soften the white strip down the center. Edit the gradient as you like.

Adjust the color and saturation in Effects>Tonal Control>Adjust Colors. I desaturated the purple quite a 10

bit to eliminate the neon.

Try different composite methods to get the look you want. This one is default.

Rice paper texture: The rice paper texture I used is from scanned-in rice paper captured as a paper in Painter. (Painter already has one for you in the Extras folder, Painter 7 textures.)

Add the texture to the gradient layer through Effects>Surface Control>Apply Surface Texture.

Hints of petals on background: Duplicate the forsythia petals layer from a previously saved RIF file of your work. Choose Luminosity composite method, and move the new layer to just above the background layer. Use the transform tool to increase the size of the petals, and keep only what you want.)

Add the Rice Duplicate the layer and move to wherever you like it. (Play with this with your flower layer visible to get the best composition for your painting. You may not need it at all.)

With the Real Soft Chalk (or Square Chalk) at a large size and with very light pressure, brush white on its own layer above the gradient layers. You’ll be Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

What sprig of blossoms can you find to sketch and paint?

Will you keep it simple? Like these wild flowers?

Or add a bit of drama with a gradient and texture?

hitting just the tops of the rice paper texture.

Note: In real media, I have found some of the white rice texture on my paper doesn’t cover with pigment, while some saturates with color thus showing some white when I’m finished. In Painter, it just adds another dimension. Use it or not, as you like. You might prefer a darker shade rather than white. Do what looks good for your painting.

Drop the Layers and Sign

Thanks so much for joining me. Happy spring – and happy painting!

Barb welcomes you to visit her blog, www.overcoffeeblog.com, and her painting galleries at www.pbase.com/bhartsook 11

Marketing Buzz

By Tim O’Neill

In bound marketing Rocks

Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

It you have followed any of my marketing messages you know that I am big on social media and blogging.

The reason is because they are an effective and less expensive means of customer acquisition. They work much better than Old School push marketing techniques. Inbound marketing is a term that is used loosely and covers blogging, social media and other tools and resources that attract potential clients to your site. Inbound or pull marketing is a great fit in today’s economy because it parallels the way a client makes buying decisions.

One of the really cool things about this type of marketing from a consumer perspective is that there are a ton of free tools, resources and other useful information offered by marketers. This information is given freely to attract people to their sites while at the same time offering an opportunity to interact and develop a relationship. Digital Paint Magazine is an example of this.

As a business owner fads don’t really interest me but trends are significant to the bottom line. Overall the cost per lead and therefore the customer acquisition cost is much less for inbound marketing than it is for outbound marketing. Not surprisingly this has resulted in a shift in terms of where lead generation and advertising budgets are spent. Inbound marketing budgets are growing rapidly and outbound marketing budgets are shrinking.

See Image One You might be asking, so what does all of this mumbo jumbo have to do with me? If you are a hobbyist with no interest in getting new clients, selling or showing the art you create…nothing. If on the other hand, you are a business owner or you want people to see your art then this is important. Guess what the fastest growing market categories are? Blogs and Social Media, those budgets are up 67% from 2009.

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Check out this chart provided by hubspot. This shows the various social media venues and how important they are for exposure.

See Image Two The illustration shows us that 46% of the people with a company blog have acquired a customer from that channel and 44% have actually scooped up new customers from Facebook. So that should show us that blogging is much more than just a nice place to journal what’s happening in your personal life. If we look further at acquiring clients through blogging we see that it is directly tied to blog post frequency. At least ninety percent of the folks that blog daily and multiple times daily have picked up customers.

(Image Three) This information was provided by hubspot. The primary thing it tells us is that we need to get a blog up and running and get involved in social media if you want to attract more customers. There are many places online you can find information specific to blogging. You also can go to Digital Art Academy and sign up for the blogging course that is just starting, I think it is only fifty bucks. This is a full blown course that I used to sell online for $97. During the four weeks of class we will go from start to finish with your own blog. We will also cover various ways to optimize your blog for the search engines.

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Floral Vignettes: Sublime, Witty, Genteel

by Patri Feher Scannography.org An International cyber gallery devoted to scanner photography A few years ago a fellow scanographer (and garden enthusiast) in France e-mailed me upon discovering my cyber gallery. Christian Staebler was developing a cyber gallery devoted to fine art “scannography” presenting artists like ourselves who’d been exploring the medium since the late 1990s. I’d been keeping a rough account, essentially a “Who’s Who”, of emerging photoartists which I shared with him. Through a network of “pickers”, the on-going deep googling (not certain if googling is an official verb) and monitoring public photography forums like Photonet and Flickr, I cultivated the original little listing from a handful of participants to an International collective of devotees.

Scannography.org features the work of many exceptional photographers where the diversity of the medium is showcased. If you’ve ever figured Algis Kemezys a lowly flatbed http://www.pbase.com/ scanner was a alkeme/pre_raphaelite_ poor relation to flowers&page=18 a sophisticated Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

camera the images herein will completely dispel that notion!

To those of you unfamiliar, scanography, served with one ‘n’ or two, often known as “scanner photography” involves the use of a flatbed scanner as if it is a large-format camera to photograph objects. It is a medium ideally suited for botanical studies, flowers and leaves. The intimate magnifying properties rival those of a macro lens. Technically, the capture is a 1:1 photogram that can record at very high resolution to allow printing at lifesize or much larger. The black background defines a mysterious and startling hyperreality where the subject appears to jump right off the page. But that isn’t all- backlighting introduces a transparency and delicacy of color and detail which can have the effect of an X-ray or painting with watercolors. And “liquefied” movement, caused by moving the flower during the capture, presents a wavy ribbon of color or ziz-zaging breaks. All of these effects are accomplished immediately during the recording process. The image is then refined for printing using image editing software. Many photoartists take it a step further by graphically assembling individually captured botanical objects, or layering multiple images. Various Photoshop tools and effects can be applied either to enhance reality or to “paint” a dreamy, quixotic artistic vision. On the other hand, gentle garden favorites can host frightening creepy-crawlies, especially vivid at the capture’s great magnification!

So whether your taste for flowers is glamorous

Chad Kleitsch and sensual, dignified and traditional, deconstructed and dissected or quirky and contemporary, scanography will give you a peek into their worlds.

For a .pdf copy of the “Directory of Scanography” most recent issue visit: http://www.scannography.org http://www.blackrosegallery.com

Pictures and Links to artist galleries These images reflect both the realistic and abstract possibilities of scanography. Some images required only a very minimal amount of refinement, while other captures were the start point of meticulous merging and manipulation.

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Carol Rollick Chad Kleitsch http://www.chadphoto.com/pages/ thumbnailgallery.php?3 http://www.chadphoto.com/pages/ thumbnailgallery.php?0

Marsha Tudor http://www.whisperingleafdesigns. com/ http://www.scannography.org/ artists/Tudor-Marsha.html Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

Roberta Bailey http://www.robertabailey.net/pages/ portfolio_gallery.cgi http://www.scannography.org/ artists/Bailey-Roberta.html

Patrick Beilman http://www.pbeilman.com/

Carol Rollick http://www.amazingflashsites.com/ TheBloomingGenius.com/

Roberta Bailey

Marty Klein http://www.martykleinart.com/ scanpage_one.htm 15

John Grant http://www.johngrantstudios. com/gallery.htm

John Grant

Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

Al Gabor http://www.flickr.com/photos/algabor/sets/72157603152531602/ http://www.scannography.org/artists/Gabor-Al.html Richard Rownak http://scantography.com/ http://scannography.org/artists/ Rownak-Richard.html

Janet Dwyer http://www.scannography.org/artists/Dwyer-Janet.html http://www.janetdwyer.com/gallery/New%20Work Janet Dwyer 16

Start with a Sketch

Right Click Skip Allen

Negative Painting With Watercolor

I frequently surf the net for tutorials; no, not Painter tutorials, but I look for information on using “Traditional Media.” I find that it helps me paint with Painter 11. It has been 30 plus years since I used traditional materials. I am rusty and in some cases, totally untrained. I had a few classes with watercolor way back when I was in high school, but that was even longer ago...two years from now is our 50th high school reunion. Okay, before you go adding up the numbers, I will save you the trouble.

My first year in high school I was “negative 20,” which means at our 50th reunion, I will be 30 years old. See, there are advantages to negative ages and negative watercolor painting.

Actually I had never heard of negative watercolor painting until I discovered a traditional painter, Linda Kemp, who works negatively. Her work is outstanding and on the abstract side, which I really love. Google her, I’m sure you will enjoy seeing her work.

Negative painting traditionally is time consuming and a bit confusing, I think. Good news, in Painter it is much easier to do, but it is still a little confusing.

I found I had to play a bit before I could wrap my mind around thinking and painting negatively instead of positively. Ready to give it a try?

Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

It is pretty important with negative painting to create a roadmap or sketch to help keep me on track. In this case, I did a freehand sketch of some tulips. But you can use a photograph if you like and trace it or turn it into a sketch.

Effects > Surface Control > Sketch.

I created my sketch on a separate layer and kept it at the top of my layer stack. The sketch is only a roadmap; color outside the lines is okay.

areas will be white. That can be a good thing if you want white areas. In my case, I didn’t want stark white areas. I created a watercolor layer using the Layers Palette > New Watercolor Layer.

Using a custom brush I call Smooth Fill I spread color around the layer paying attention to my sketch but not trying to follow the sketch exactly. I just wanted to flow color around.

The First layer: Since I will be painting the negative areas, if my first layer doesn’t have any color, then the positive 17

Tip: Custom Brush Smooth Fill To create the brush, I selected Eastern Water > Textured Fill Wet and altered the Wet Palette to the following:

Window > Brush Controls > Water will open the water palette. If you do not have my Eastern Water Brushes, you can download them here: http://www.paintertalk.net/forum/ index.php?showtopic=11308 You will have to register at Painter Talk to get them, but the forum is free and if you enjoy using Painter, then you will love Painter Talk...come join us.

Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

leaves, then I used a variety of greens.

In each case, I tried to blend the color out from the edge. Be sure you select Draw Outside from the Drawing Mode Icon before you start.

The First Selections I studied my sketch carefully and identified the areas that are in the forefront of the image. They can be anywhere in the image as long as they are not overlapped by another area. I decided that the top...or areas in the forefront...were the two petals on either side of the flower on the bottom, the tip of the left petal on the top flower, and the right petal of the top flower. Using the Lasso Tool set to Add to Selection, I loosely outlined the identified areas. Once the selections are made, I save them: Select > Save Selection. It is imperative to save each set of selections.

Begin Negative Painting I suppose there are many ways to approach negative painting, but in the tutorials I found for traditional media, light source and shadow were of no interest. Identifying an edge and blending color out from the edge seemed the standard approach.

With that in mind, I created a new watercolor layer, used the custom Smooth fill brush and added color outside of the selections. Color selection was determined by the sketch...if I was working over the tulips, then I would use a variety of oranges. If I was working in the background areas where there were

Tip: Delete Bleeding Inside the Selection.

Creating a selection and painting either inside or outside of the selection will confine the paint in or out of the selection with the exception of watercolors that run.

With watercolor, the diffusion can spread under a selection line...in or out of the selected area. However, 18

if you set the Drawing Mode Icon to Draw Inside and delete the contents of the selection, you can clean up the bleed. To be able to use this tip, it is important to add a new watercolor layer for each new layer of color.

Second Set of Selections and Negative Painting After creating the first set of edges, I studied the sketch for the next level of objects. I loaded the first set of selections and with the Lasso Tool set to Add to Selection. I made selections around the next level. The two sets of selections merged and I saved it. And like in the previous step, I created a new watercolor layer, and I painted outside the selection blending away from the edge.

Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

More Selections and Negative Painting At this point, I continued to add merging selections and saved them.

After each, set I did more negative painting always on a separate layer.

The next few illustrations will show the progress; it really becomes apparent when you turn off the visibility icon on the Sketch Layer.

As I continued, I began to introduce darker and more varied colors.

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To finish, I used Eastern Water > Bamboo Textured Pool variant and on a separate layer I added color with some small pooling in the background. Added an additional layer and used the Stroke Selection function to add a linear frame to the image. Select > Select All, then, Select > Stroke Selection with the Pen > Round Tip Pen 10 variant selected.

In this tutorial I used negative painting only, but in researching different artist’s work, I noticed that most use a small amount of positive painting along with the negative. I do like the look of “Negative Watercolor Painting” and hope you will give it a try. You can take it much further than the demonstration.

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Digital Flower Press Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

by Victor Lunn-Rockliffe 21

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

Victor Lunn-Rockliffe 22

Bonnie Willis Artist Artist Bonnie Willis graciously allowed us to publish these beautiful floral paintings. I asked Bonnie if she would give us a bit of insight to her workflow or technique. Following is what she shared. Thank-you, Bonnie.

My name is Bonnie Willis and I live in Union City, TN. As a wife and homemaker in the 1970’s, I explored many hobbies with my 3 children. I found my personal niche in canvas painting and have continued for the past 40 years. A few years ago I discovered digital painting and have broadened my horizons to include digital portraits and other digital painting projects. I have learned so much, yet still there is much to learn. The imagination can stretch endlessly when working with the digital art world.

Recently, my adult daughter, Cindy, had surgery and I bought her roses.

When she asked me to preserve the roses, I also took photos, as I have been an avid photographer for about as long as I have been a mother. I named the best photo “Cindy’s Roses” and edited it in photoshop. I used Painter X and chose the oil bristle brushes, then captured bristle brush for the entire painting. I only used two layers for the painting, one for the background and one for the roses. The final Digital Paint Magazine - May 2010

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thing I did was add a texture. This was a fun project that I did for my daughter. She is thrilled with both the roses and the digital painting. Thanks so much to the magazine for choosing my work. I am greatly honored and pleased to have my florals included in the floral edition of this magazine.

You can see more of Bonnie’s work at thepaintedpixel.net. We are always on the hunt for readers images we can publish. If you or someone you know is a digital artist send a few pics and a bio to readersgallery@digitalpaintmagazine. We can’t publish everyone but you may have a great opportunity to showcase your work in the magazine or on the blog.

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