May Issue Digital Paint Magazine

May 2012

Michael Campbell “Breaking Free” Truly Scene Blast from the Past

Wohoo, summertime! I love summer. The outdoor palette bursts with flavorful color and in a few weeks I can start thinning the early garden plants for the dinner table. Yum. Flowers burst forth beginning for the attention of the camera or brush and late spring early summer storms offer a variety of new clouds and skies to paint. All in all summer is a great time of year for stirring the creative juices.

This month’s magazine was fun to put together. Victor provided an awesome cartoon, our blast from the past features a nice tutorial from Joan Hamilton and artist Jim Cunningham wrote a nice piece as well. There will be some new info in Truly Scene from John Stevenson and a marketing buzz begins a series on Pinterest. For me though the most exciting thing we have going on is the upcoming webinar with Michael Campbell and painting in the Bouguereau style. Last year I began developing some work to emulate his techniques. Throughout the year in speaking with Michael and looking at a bunch of his work I noticed there were some stunning images that looked much like Bouguereau. So I talked with Michael and told him my idea and asked him if he wanted to collaborate on a webinar and he immediately said yes. In this issue you will find the Old Masters article featuring William-Adolphe Bouguereau, the cover features a nice painting from Michael Campbell and inside we have a small tutorial showing us how Michael creates these awesome paintings. Of particular note is that Michael was actually offering photographs in that style from his studio over ten years ago. There are a number of things that go into emulating that particular style including clothing, posing, background, color palette and brushwork. While it is far too much to cover in a short written tutorial we can accomplish the main mission which is to get your creative juices flowing. If you decide you want more specific, detailed, step by step information you can check out the webinar that we will offer in June.

As always I encourage everyone to send us some images for the Reader’s Gallery. We are always looking for ideas to write about and artists to profile so drop us a note. I hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

Live well, love much and laugh often Tim O

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In This Issue

How to create a portrait in the style of Bougereau

By Michael Campbell Cartoon

By Victor Lunn-Rockliffe

Worlds First Digital Fine Art Prize Launches Truly Scene

By John Stevenson

The Sketch

By Michael Campbell

Old Masters William-Adolphe Bouguereau

By Nadia Lim Post Print

by Tim O’Neill

Cover

Annalise

By Michael Campbell

A Blast from the Past Painting a scene from Venice

by Joan A Hamilson Marketing Buzz: Pinterest

by Tim O’Neill Digital Paint Magazine - May 2012

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How to create a portrait in the style of Bougereau William-Adolphe Bouguereau (November 30, 1825 – August 19, 1905) was a French academic painter. (ie in the style influenced by the French Académie de Beaux-Arts) “William Bouguereau is unquestionably one of history’s greatest artistic geniuses. Yet in the past century, his reputation and unparalleled accomplishments have undergone a systematic assault of immense proportions. His name was stricken from most history texts and when included it was only to blindly, degrade and disparage him and his work.

Since 1960, his values in the market place have literally exploded, doubling on average every 3.5 years. From works selling for an average $500 to $1500 in 1960, they have accelerated to where in the last three years Digital Paint Magazine - May 2012

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alone his auction records have been repeatedly broken another 4 times.”

I first saw an original Bougereau in the San Diego Museum of Art in 1998 and decided to try to emulate his style.

I went to the costume department at the Old Globe Theatre and paid $150 to have a costume made based on the painting in the museum. I used my landlady’s six year old daughter Annalise as a model.

I went up on the hill behind our house and took some snaps of the stoney path and the hills beyond. I found an old snap I had taken in England with some sheep in the picture. To find a wooden shepherds crook, I went to the beach and picked up a piece of drift wood. I assembled the pictures into this composition in Photoshop and then took it into Painter and added subtle brush strokes. I wanted it to have the almost photo realistic look of Bouguereau painting.

To closely emulate his style there are several important factors to consider, they are:Costume and Props are key.

They must reflect the period and socioeconomic indicators Digital Paint Magazine - May 2012

that influenced him in his creative endeavors.

Pose, Expression and Composition.

Study examples of his paintings and pay particular attention to line and form. Take the time to draw an overlay on a few of his paintings.

Color Palette.

William used a very specific color palette to create mood.

For the most part colors are muted so a quick tweak in photoshop to desaturate helps us to closer follow his color schemes. It is said that every color on his palette was mixed with a neutral grey made from raw umber, pthalo blue and white, his black was derived from raw umber and pthalo blue. Being mindful of those things while working to tweak the colors in Photoshop will be a help.

Background.

I quickly extract the subject from the studio background. I tend to favor using channels to facilitate the extraction as it is fairly quick.

Presentation The best way to present in my opinion is to print on canvas and over paint with acrylic or oils. As William’s style favored photorealism heavy gel or brushstrokes don’t fit.

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http: //cargocollective.com/victorlunnroc

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WORLD’S FIRST DIGITAL FINE ART PRIZE LAUNCHES The world’s first global prize for fine art created digitally – The Lumen Prize – has launched this month in London. Leading academics, artists and critics are backing the initiative that will select works from entrants around the world and launch a 4-month-long touring exhibition to venues worldwide in 2013.

Digitally-created art – long on the periphery of fine art – is now coming of age. “One only had to look at the crowds mobbing the Royal Academy’s recent Hockney exhibition to see that people can love art created on a screen as much as a canvas,” says Lumen CEO, Carla Rapoport, a director of Treberfydd Foundation, the social enterprise launching the award.

The contest will serve to promote digital fine art globally. “The opportunities digital art creates to cross boundaries, both conceptual and literal, are enormous. We are only just beginning to explore the space for work beyond the usual art hegemonies,” explains Jonathan Kearney, Course Director for MA Visual Arts, at the University of the Arts London and special advisor to the Lumen Prize.

The contest has been organised by a group of professionals with experience from The British Museum, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York University, National Portrait Gallery, Financial Times and includes Lord Stevenson, former Chancellor of the University of the Arts and Ivor Davies, President of the Royal Cambrian Academy.

The Lumen Prize will seek entries from all parts of the world at US$40 for 2 submissions but will accept entries at no cost from eight conflict zone countries, including Afghanistan, Digital Paint Magazine - May 2012

DR Congo, and Southern Sudan.

Proceeds from the competition, after costs, will go to support the vital work of Peace Direct, a global charity that supports local peacebuilders in conflict zones worldwide.

Call for Entries is now open and closes on 15th August 2012.

Winners will be announced in October 2012.

The winners and 50 short-listed entries will tour to venues around the world in Spring 2013.

NOTES: Half a million people visited David Hockney’s recent exhibition at The Royal Academy of Arts - which prominently featured art created digitally – in less than 3 months.

A UK company recently created the world’s first secondary market in digital art with a digital work by Damien Hirst A digitally-created work by Yang Yongliang, a Shanghai artist who is a judge on the Lumen Prize panel was recently acquired for the British Museum archive.

For More Information: website (www.lumenprize.com) or call Carla Rapoport on 07791 545068 or email at info@lumenprize.com. Images are available on request.

The Lumen Prize Exhibition, owned and operated by Treberfydd Foundation.

Registered Company No. 07865132.

Registered in Wales. Limited by Guarantee. Registered Office: Treberfydd House, Llangasty, Brecon, Powys, Wales, LD3 7PX 12

a column for Digital Paint Magazine John Stevenson

TrulyScene

john.stevenson@photoscena.com

April/May 2012 © John Stevenson – Photoscena LLC 2012

Introduction Sometimes reality checks are a really good idea. Examining motives and ambitions from top to bottom can be a healthy and productive thing. But, equally well, a check on reality is often a good precursor in the process. The actual reality that’s going to be the subject of this column is contained with a press release, issued by the social media network company Facebook in early April, and reads in part as follows: “Facebook announced today that it has reached an agreement to acquire Instagram, a fun, popular photo-sharing app for mobile devices. The total consideration for San Francisco-based Instagram is approximately $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close later this quarter.”

The truth of the matter is that Instagram, while it is indeed a photo-sharing application for mobile ‘phones is also a platform for photographic artwork. So, for those of us who both write and read this magazine, particularly those who use photographic images as source material in digital painting, there are – obviously – some new insights at hand here.

The announced cash component of the transaction – which is therefore all that can be committed to the deal as of now – might represent a “bounty” of perhaps $10 for each of the thirty million or so Instagram account holders. But Facebook does its own in-house arithmetic differently. It announces its own growth in terms of “active users” (subscribers who actually have posted something into the network in the previous month). So it should be clear that there may be, “later this quarter”, a cash outlay of $30, perhaps even $50, from the cash vault at Facebook for each active Instagram user. And, this is so in circumstances where those active users themselves will not contribute any revenue to offset this (or any other associated cost). I will return (briefly) to this point at the conclusion of the column. For now though, let’s concentrate on matters pictorial and artistic.

The Facebook Deal for Instagram Let’s get some pecuniary aspects of this out the way first. First, Instagram is a free service. Secondly, it’s possible to read in the conventional press that the deal itself means that Facebook is simply paying about $30 for each Instagram user. The reality is actually a little more complex. Facebook is not as yet a publicly traded company.

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an Instagram output (or not?)

- original image: © Chad McDermott – Fotolia 13

The Deal that is Instagram The image above is actually not a true output from the Instagram app.

It was made courtesy of an initiative taken by Daniel Box: to write a set of Actions for Photoshop which would closely mimic what his iPhone produced (you can find Daniel’s work here). My image was made using his Toaster Action and it has one extra characteristic which is not directly implemented in Daniel’s tools – the use of a square format. (It is usually claimed that this is itself a mimic, with Instagram applying it based upon Polaroid and Kodak Instamatic camera formats.)

was initially introduced just for Apple’s iPhone – and the screenshot above was captured from the online Apple store. This is a fascinating thing, because of what can be seen at the bottom of each of the two individual iPhone screenshots - a row of photo-filter thumbnails.

So then, when users take photographs with their smartphone there are two levels of artistic freedom opened up. Initially, there is the composition of the scene in front of them. Plus, subsequently then, an ability to customize the image beyond what the camera itself records, using Instagram’s own built-in software. As well as the filters there are capabilities for selective blurring, plus some geometric operations.

Finally, several types of borders can be added.

This is one of the prominent and key descriptors in Instagram’s own marketing of its app – from their own website you may read: “pick from one of several gorgeous filtered effects to breathe new life into your mobile photos”.

Instagram-like and “Instagram-plus” In summary then, there are two primary components (today) within Instagram. One – the ability to transmit, store, exhibit and exchange photographic images into and within an open network – does not rely upon the other. The developers who built the software application which enables image networking went out of the way – clearly, very deliberately - to include the photo-filter software. The key characteristics of the Instagram image processing are: – simple, almost one-step, photo-filtering, – the production of a series of retro-look outputs, in a square format, – the production of not tack-sharp (and often actually unfocussed) output images, – distorted/diffused/faded coloration(s), and, – the introduction of borders/vignetting. the Apple iTunes Preview of the Instagram app - © 2011 Apple Inc. Instagram itself became an operational entity in the fall of 2010. It is a strange entity in several ways – for example, it has only a minimal presence on the web (the portion of it which can be accessed by a non-user via a regular web-browser is very limited). The app itself Digital Paint Magazine - May 2012

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(definitely not) another Instagram output - original image: © Chad McDermott – Fotolia The remainder of this column is going to center upon extending this pictorial foundation via the use of Photoshop. And, hopefully so, in a way which will appeal to digital image makers quite generally.

The first pictorial example is the “definitely not” illustration above. This was made by using the outputs from two more of the Actions already referred to (Inkwell and Nashville) and a simple Layer blending scheme.

It’s also been subjected to some deliberate blurring (i.e., there’s an overall softness to the image, in both color and spatial details). Plus a border. It has a tinted photographic look – there’s a tutorial, which covers the basic procedure which was used in this instance, here.

two Photoshop plug-in outputs - original image: © pictureguy32 – Fotolia Digital Paint Magazine - May 2012

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One obviously easy means of creating at least components of “Instagram-like” images in Photoshop is via plug-ins. And, in fact, it’s no surprise really to find that the newest of the third-party plug-in software actually does cater to this sort of retro- and photo-processedlook work. Amongst the newer/contemporary software products which I have used and can recommend for this “line of work” are Retrographer (from Mister Retro), RadLab (from Totally Rad) and PostworkShop (from Xycod Kft.). There are several independent reviews available online for each: as insightful examples, see here for Retrographer, here for RadLab and finally here for PostworkShop. The feature sets of all three of the plug-ins can explored and compared further here: http://www. plugsandpixels.com/

a first Photoshop composite output - from the two component images already presented The illustrative examples included in this column actually rely on just Retrographer and PostworkShop. (I’ll include some work based upon RadLab next month. It is actually closer to a single-step toolkit for Instagram-like effects.) To me the finesse of the classic photographic print effects in Retrographer is a good foil for the more textured Digital Paint Magazine - May 2012

artistic and/or impressionistic renderings which can be obtained from PostworkShop.

two more Photoshop plug-in outputs - original image: © jeancliclac – Fotolia 16

there are service providers now active doing just that specifically for Instagram outputs – see, as examples, Printstagram and CanvasPop. A good argument can be made that the commitment made by Facebook to acquire Instagram outright is based at least in part upon the commercial potential of this type of spill-over initiative, involving advanced video as well as other still imaging developments.

As a tentative conclusion then – ahead of completing the groundwork for a follow-on column to be published next month – it seems that there can be a real commercial interest in the sort of better-than-Instagramalone image transformation work which is set out here (or “Instagramplus” as I have termed it to start with). And, who is to say that the Instagram-plus outputs themselves cannot become a good starting or reference point for conventional, already established, digital painting practices. I’d certainly welcome any thoughts, feedback or questions you have – please just send them to: john.stevenson@photoscena.com another Photoshop composite output - again from the two component images already presented, and, - just with a simple Layer mask within Photoshop

Wrap-up Whether you the reader find any of the images in this column appealing, intriguing, etc. is of course a purely personal choice. But, there can be no denying that in the overall context of digital image manipulation and transformation, the marketplace has now spoken. Users who have direct access to the increasingly better cameras integrated into their mobile ‘phones and tablets like having the ability to create a custom look or finish for their own images. Albeit, at present, with just a very few choices for that customization.

There is also some spill-over from this into associated developments. As just one example, the 2.0 version of the Instagram app uses an image size of 1936 by 1936 pixels (on an iPhone 4 or better). It’s worth noting that the iPhone 4S model sports an 8 megapixel camera; the native resolution of which is 3264 by 2448 pixels. Plus, there are already higher resolutions than this available from competing products. All-inall, this is certainly large enough to make hardcopy prints from. And, Digital Paint Magazine - May 2012

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By Jim Cunningham

The Sketch

What brought about the process of creating what I call “The Sketch”, was to create an artistic product to offer my clients as a secondary add on product that did not take hours to produce. I think this can be used equally as well with portraits and fine art pieces. The following will walk you through the step by step process of creating “The Sketch”.

As with most work I do in painter I start and finish in Photoshop. The first step in creating “The Sketch” is to open your image in Photoshop and convert it to black & white. Any method of creating the black & white image will work. I personally use Silver Effect Pro 2 from Nik software. In my opinion this plug-in for Photoshop creates a black & white image with the best tonal range of any method I have seen.

The Second Step is to create a background copy layer and add noise to the layer. This will give the brushes you use in Painter 12 something to grab onto.

I create a background copy layer and the select Filter>Noise>Add Noise. Here are the settings I use: Amount between 30% and 40%, Distribution: Gaussian, make sure Monochromatic is checked. I apply the noise to a background copy layer to give me the option of reducing Digital Paint Magazine - May 2012

the opacity of the noise layer if I think it is too strong. Once I have the noise layer look the way I want, I flatten the image and save it as a PSD file to open in Painter 12.

I use a very specific naming order for the images I use in creating “The Sketch”. The example image for this lesson is a horse by a barn. So the naming order for the files for this image are: The original black and white is “Barn.psd”, and the image with the noise added is “Barn_noise. psd”.

In Painter 12 open the image “Barn_Noise”. Go To: File>Quick Clone.

This will create a clone of the original with the original “Barn_Noise” embedded in the Cloned image. The original image will be closed by Painter 12 and the only image open will be the cloned image with the Title “Untitled-1”. The original image name will be in the Clone Source Palette. See the illustrations.

Before we start painting we have one more thing to do, and that is change the background color from white to black. Turn off the Tracing Paper (PC: Control>T) (MAC: Command>T). Make sure black is the foreground color on the color wheel and using the “Paint Buckett” from the tool bar, click inside the white background paper.

Now we are ready to start Painting. The First step is to create a “Muck’ image. We are gong to let the ”auto painting” feature of Painter 12 do the work for us. On The Auto Painting Palette, make sure “Smart Stroke Painting” and “Smart Settings” have check marks in the box.

See the illustration.

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To use the Auto Painting feature we have to have the Color Wheel set for cloner brushes. When Painter is set to paint in clone mode the Color Wheel will be grayed out. To select Clone Mode click on the clone stamp icon in the lower right corner of the Color Wheel. Select the “Acrylics Dry Brush” from the “Smart Strokes Brushes”. Push the Play Button and let Auto-Painter start painting. Stop the painting once the canvas is full. If it keeps painting it will bring back too much detail.

Once the “Auto Painter” has painted our “Muck” image we have some saving to do. First save the image as a PSD file and name it “Barn_ Muck”. Make sure Uncompressed is checked. Now save the file again, but this time we are going to save it as a Painter “RIFF” file. This is the defalt file saving format for Painter and we must save the Sketch as a RIFF file or the embedded files will be lost. Name the File “Barn_ Sketch” and make sure Uncompressed is checked.

Now we are going to add the “Barn_Muck” image and the original “Barn” image to the Clone Source Palette. At the bottom right corner of the Clone Source Palette there is a small icon which is the “open source image” icon. Click on the icon and select “open source”. Then add the “Barn_Muck” image and the original “Barn” image. The Clone Source Palette will look like the illustration.

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Now we begin painting, bringing back detail where we want detail to show. We will be using the “Camel Oil Cloner” from the “Cloner” brushes category. This brush will be used as a cloner brush so make sure the color wheel is grayed out. I usually use this brush at an opacity of somewhere between 30% to 50% depending on the amount of detail I wish to bring back. We are using the source image “Barn”.

You may be wondering why we added the Muck image to our clone source palette. There may be times when you have brought back too much of the original image and it begins to look too photographic, or you just don’t like what you did. By having the Muck image in the clone source palette, you can restore any section of the image to the Muck image you started with. To accomplish this you would use the “Soft Cloner” brush from the “Cloners” category.

Once you have your image looking the way you want it to look, Save the image as “Barn_sketch.riff”, that way you have the original Painter file with the embedded images saved if you ever need to go back and change something. Also save the image a second time as “Barn_sketch. psd”. The Photoshop PSD file is what you will do a little more work on in Photoshop.

At this point I will open “Barn_sketch.psd” in Photoshop and enhance the brush strokes using one of a couple of methods. The method I most often use is the Photoshop High Pass Filter. Make a background 19

copy layer and go to Filter>Other>High Pass. I usually set the Radius to 10 pixels. Once you have applied the High Pass Filer your image will be gray and look somewhat embossed. I will now change the blending mode of the High Pass Layer to either “soft Light” mode or “Hard Light” mode depending on how strong a look I am wanting on my sketch strokes. At this point you can lower the opacity of the layer or even create a layer mask to reduce the strength of the brush strokes in a localized area.

If you have the plug-in “Topaz Adjust” from TopazLabs. com, you can also use this to enhance your brush strokes.

I will make a background copy and apply Topaz Adjust to the copy layer. Go to Filter>Topaz Lab>Topaz Adjust. The Topaz Adjust filter I most often use is from the “Vibrant Collection”.... “Vibrance”. As with the High Pass Filter you can lower the opacity of the layer or create a layer mask to reduce the strength of the brush strokes in a localized area.

Now you are ready to print your image. I usually print ink jet on fine art paper. If you want to experiment, try adding color to your image in Painter 12 using the watercolor brushes. The possibilities or endless, don’t be afraid to experiment. Create and enjoy.

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The Old Masters William-Adolphe Bouguereau

By Nadia Lim Bouguereau combined an interesting mix: he was wholly a product and advocate of the established art world, yet made groundbreaking decisions that permanently altered the art world’s future path. His paintings, traditional works that followed classic themes and methods, fell well within the boundaries of what was accepted, so much so that he was mocked and even reviled by proponents of newer movements (such as the Impressionists). On the other hand, Bouguereau strongly championed female artists and used his influence to open up prestigious schools and training to women, who were often cut out of the system unless they were lucky enough to have a close relation willing to train them.

Born in La Rochelle, France on November 30th 1825, Bouguereau was originally slated to join the family’s wine and olive oil business. His uncle, a Roman Catholic priest, had other plans, and arranged for Bouguereau’s formal education.

When he showed artistic talent, his father allowed him to go to L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux. To pay for his artistic training, his aunt offered to match the amount he’d earned painting portraits of his uncle’s parishioners, and he also earned money by designing grocery labels.

Eventually he was taken on at the studio of Francois-Edouard Picot, where he studied the traditional, academic style of painting he would carry into his career and use all his life. As part of the award for winning the Prix de Rome (one of many prestigious art awards he garnered throughout his life), Bouguereau spent a year at the Villa Medici in Rome, Italy, where the French Academy at Rome had been housed since 1803. Here he got a close-up view of the work of the Renaissance artists he so admired.

By the time he started exhibiting at the Paris Salon, he had spent many years in detailed study of human anatomy, historical costumes, archaeology, classic literature and sculpture, antiquities, and the Bible. All that hard work, along with his traditional method of working up preparatory sketches and studies, paid off in Digital Paint Magazine - May 2012

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his paintings.

Bouguereau modeled himself after Raphael and other Old Masters, depicting idealized beauty and classical scenes in his genre paintings. His photo-realistic portrayals of Greco-Roman, Biblical, and mythological subjects (concentrating on the female form, both nude and clothed) were extremely popular. He exhibited at the Paris Salon his entire life, continuously moving upward in the ranks of honors in the Academy. His fame spread through continental Europe to England and the United States. He earned a great deal of money painting portraits for the rich, as well as decorating churches, public buildings, and private houses.

In 1875, he began teaching at Academie Julian, which was different from other respected schools in that it had no entrance exams, charged low fees, and admitted female students. He was also active in getting other art institutions to open their doors to women.

Bouguereau had a prolific career, completing more than 800 paintings before he died of heart disease at age 79 on August 19th, 1905. He had been famous, with the establishment and the rich admiring his work

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and his respect for tradition, while the new movements considered him to be old-fashioned and lacking in imagination. Despite his prominence in his own time, it was the Impressionists he disapproved of who went on to become household names, and only in the last few decades has Bouguereau’s art come to be recognized again for its mastery.

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Images http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_(18251905)_-_Italian_Girl_Drawing_Water_(1871).jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_(18251905)_-_The_Wave_(1896).jpg

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http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William-Adolphe_ Bouguereau_(1825-1905)_-_Not_Too_Much_To_Carry_ (1895).jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William-Adolphe_ Bouguereau_(1825-1905)_-_Biblis_(1884).jpg

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William-Adolphe_Bouguereau http://www.bouguereau.org/home-6-24-1-0.html http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artist.php?artistid=7 http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bouguereau/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Academy_at_Rome

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Post Print

By Tim O’Neill

Sealing your painting is a big deal that requires some forethought.

While there are a variety of products on the market that you can use as a final topcoat for your paintings that will help give some UV as well as dirt/grime protection all topcoats are not created equal. Spend the time and the money to do a professional job.

There are different ways to seal depending on the medium you are using. Also of import is whether removability is an issue for you. Most people say it is not but really it should be. Mike Townsend at Golden Artist Colors brought up an important point in a recent conversation.

Fifty years down the road if you have a piece in the basement of a gallery that is needs to be cleaned you will have a better opportunity to get the piece through the conservation lab and back on the floor if the topcoat can be easily removed thus taking all of the dirt and grime with it. If you don’t use a proper topcoat the fingerprint oils and other dirt particles will be imbedded into the pores of the images and will take a much more extensive restoration process. Unless you are a big name where the expense of the conservation lab can be easily justified your painting may be stuck back in storage. Outside of that using a high grade topcoat gives your clients the best possible product.

It is no secret that Golden Paints are my company of choice for acrylics.

Recently we began switching all of our oils to Williamsburg Handmade Oil colors which is now owned by Golden and we are moving forward to switch all of topcoat products to Golden as well. There are a number of reasons I use Golden but having all of the products I need specific to acrylic and oil painting with one company is a bonus. They have an incredible support system for their users and you can get questions answered specifically for what you are trying to do.

So what is the best way to seal your paintings? Certainly there are a number of opinions on this, here is mine. If you have a mixed media painting of pigment and acrylic first use a gel topcoat as an isolation Digital Paint Magazine - May 2012

coat. The Golden gel mediums can be mixed with color or used as a stand alone coating. They are designed not to foam so you can get a really nice finish, in fact many folks use them for a final finish. They work great if you have no concern about removability. So to take your finish to the next level after using a gel medium for an isolation coat then use Golden’s Polymer Varnish.

If you have a mixed media painting of pigment and oil then you would want to use Goldens product called MSA Varnish which is a liquid or Archival varnish which is the same product but conveniently packages in a spray version. The bottom line with most of this is test, test, and test. If you have a printer at home save your mistakes or junk prints for testing your sealers. If you use a lab ask them to send you their junks prints or strips with your next order. You can see specific information about Goldens sealers at http://www.goldenpaints.com/technicaldata/ archvarn.php You can access our free webinar we had last month at http:// digitalartacademy.adobeconnect.com/goldenartist/

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m o r f t s a l A B ast the P

Image 3: There are many different watercolour brushes available to paint the simple brushstrokes needed to suggest a little grainy texture on the building’s surface. I used DWC as the bottom basic colour and Digital Paint Magazine - May 2012

some of Skip Allen’s Splashing Water brushes on top to actually paint this building’s background. Painter 12 ‘s new Real Watercolour brushes are able to accomplish this much faster.

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Image 4: The first layer of blue on this building is done with Skip Allen’s Soft Wash. Further on in the painting, more texture and colour was added by digital and wet washes and splats. Some of the paint was also removed with Eraser Splats (made with the Method changed to Wet and the Subcategory to Wet Remove Density.) This was done in Painter 11.

There is a recent tutorial on my website on Watercolour Bleaches and Erasers – how to use them and how to make some different ones.

Image 5: Using a DWC eg: pointed simple water with a slight wet fringe paint the gold detail on the window frames and the blue shadows. Keep the edges sharp because this is in bright sunlight and that’s how real shadow edges look in that light.

Image 6: There a number of ways to make a sharp tiny line. I used a sharp chalk turned into a digital watercolour here to get a nice dry line.

Why make it complicated? I often do my sketch with it too, in case it ends up dropped into the mix.

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Image 9 and 10 show different ways to show texture and colour gradations in a building’s surface. In Image 9, the texture was painted with Splashing Water Digital Closed Splat, Open Splat and some erased by changing the Method and subcategory to Digital Wet Remove Density.

Image 7: Inside the windows in this painting I used a simple water wash in blue, then blended in some green with a custom DWC Soft blender that I restaurated with green. Sometimes it’s better to resaturate your blender and keep strokes to a minimum. There are only 3 brushstrokes in this area.

Image 8: Some soft wet colour mixing with Painter 12.

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In Image 10 the same type of area in a painting can be painted a different way. The canvas layer was a DWC layer dried and lifted to a WC layer. Then I used the new Real Watercolour Fractal Dry (which doesn’t diffuse on you) to put some blue on, then the Fractal Erase to remove some of the paint.

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Image 12: Brushes and Techniques Used for Water Most of the water is painted using Digital Watercolours. The level of detail had to be the same as in the buildings because the water is so still, that it is a mirror image. Distant unseen parts of the scene, eg. the second row of windows, must be included in the water reflections to give the illusion of perspective.

Fine Detail DWC brushes and the DWC Flat Grainy Blender were used to move tiny amounts of paint around.

Very light WC washes and glazes were used on the green window reflections to darken them and give them a watery look.

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Image 15: Many brushes can be simply ‘unsaturated’ in the Brush Control Well (by changing to 0%), and used as Blenders. It works best when you do it in very small areas. You can pull the paint that is already there around and end up with a very different edge than you started with.

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Image 16: A very light glaze with some bristle marks showing in it was used on top of the underlying digital watercolour layer. It was Skip’s Splashing Water Square Damp Brush.

It was really a lot of fun doing this kind of painting and can imagine loosening up on these strokes in areas would give it a wetter painterly look. I wanted to remain faithful to the original photo reference though.

It was taken by Barbara Brown of Red Bubble and is called “Burano Reflections.” She gave me her permission to use this photo.

So there you go…a successful collaboration!

Happy Painting!

Joan JoanAHamilton.com

Joan is teaching a new class at Digital Art Academy called Learning to Paint Elements in the Watercolour Landscape with Corel Painter.

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Marketing Buzz

By Tim O’Neill

What Is Pinterest And How Does it Work?

The buzz about Pinterest is not new. Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social media sites on the web. I have been cautiously bouncing around the edges because of the terms of service and copyright issues with Pinterest. I have used it to successfully market in some other venues but have not made the decision yet to use it to develop anything on the art or photography side of my online business ventures.

It is a wonderful tool for marketing but I would caution you to read the terms of service very carefully. Also for your convenience you can use the link to DDK Portraits which has a blog post from Atlanta based portrait photographer Kirsten Kowalski. Kirsten is also a lawyer; on her blog you can find out why she personally chose to delete her Pinterest inspiration boards. That original post on her blog generated over 700 comments and is well worth reading. Kirsten’s latest post dated in March can be found at Kirsten’s follow up post. You can use Pinterest effectively for marketing, just make sure you know the challenges with copyright and realize that if you choose to post your own work that it will most likely be all over the place. So now we can get into the good stuff.

Digital Paint Magazine - May 2012

The bigwigs ‘Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus’ have dominated the social networking scene for quite some time now. However, Pinterest is slowly making its presence felt everywhere with its growing popularity and functionality. In the past few months, the number of visitors to this site went up to 11 million; equal to one third of the Twitter users.

Pinterest has been used increasingly for business promotion and to create brand awareness.

Pinterest is a comparatively new social networking site. It is described as a virtual pin board that functions like a free online scrap book. This photo sharing website allows users to create and share collections of diverse images. These images can be located on the Web or can be your own creations. The site makes an effort to bring users all across the globe together based on their interests. These pin boards can include different media such as videos, images, text and monetary gifts. You can keep updating your pin boards with the relevant links, images and text. You can also re-pin anything you like on your board by hovering over the image. The links attached will help you trace the origin of that image or material. (careful here….you are personally responsible for getting copyright permission from the owner) To get started with Pinterest, you have to set up an account with the site. Without an account you only have the liberty to browse through the activity of the users. You cannot participate in any of it. There are two ways to set up an account. You can either receive an invitation from a friend who is a member of the site or you can ask for an invite from Pinterest. The registration process requires that you integrate the Pinterest account with your Facebook or Twitter account. Users who log in via Facebook should use the “Timeline” format. The sites homepage displays a “Pin Feed” to view activity among boards.

Pinterest is beneficial for marketing of different products. Business owners can add “Pin-It” to their websites. This allows users to directly pin items to their boards imported from your website. Integrating your 34

Pinterest account with other social networking sites is a clever approach to drawing more traffic to your site. Pinterest can increase the number of visitors to your site exponentially. This increase is greater than that recorded by any other social networking site. Pinterest is a user generated content site.

5 Strategies to Make Pinterest Work for You Pinterest has captured the attention of millions of people with a unique platform that allows its users to expresses their interests, desires, and ideas through visually appealing images on virtual bulletin boards.

With the frenzy around Pinterest also comes the perfect opportunity for marketers to leverage its compelling virtual nature and weave it into it a social experience with their business.

Here are five ways brands can leverage Pinterest now:

1. The “Follow Me” Button The simplest way to get Pinterest followers to your company’s Pinterest page is to put a “Follow Me on Pinterest” button on your webpage in hopes that people will click it. Make sure you provide quality content for them to follow. Update it frequently so your boards don’t go stale.

It’s also important to remember that a user’s choice to “Follow” may not be brand specific, but board specific. This gives you the opportunity to segment your followers in ways relevant to your business. A welldesigned strategy will have you add “Follow Me” buttons in places appropriate to the segment.

2. Share Your Authenticity Show your audience you’re a real person. Pinterest allows a business to show its consumers there are really people behind it. You can share experiences, recipes, hobbies, and the like with customers. While this shouldn’t be the bulk of what you’re sharing, it can be a small portion of it to show the person or people behind the scenes of the operation. The more they get to know you, the more they’ll feel they connect with your business.

Digital Paint Magazine - May 2012

3. Link Back to Your Business Is your business something with visual appeal? If it is, you can pin professional photos of your products or services and link back to your website. For example, if you own a restaurant, you can pin great recipes or recipes you create, both with great pictures, and link back to a landing page on your website. This makes it easy for Pinterest followers to become customers once they notice your picture and are naturally intrigued to visit the link where the picture came from.

4. Be a Resource for Customers If you have a service-based business, consider pinning some eyecatching short tutorials and how- to articles. Pin some tasteful photos that illustrate what you’re trying to teach and have them link back to a media story, blog post, or wherever else the educational material might be on the web.

It’s important to meet your customers where they are. If they have a need, fill it. People are much more open to look for new products and services when they have a problem. If you are there to help them fix the problem, they will be much more receptive to what your company is offering.

5. Share and Share Alike If you want to promote your business on Pinterest, you can’t make your pins all about your business. You need to focus on more than just yourself. Re-pin interesting things others are doing. Re-pinning something someone else pinned is the ultimate compliment on Pinterest. If you do it on a regular basis, you will have people take notice of you.

There are so many strategies you can use to promote your business on Pinterest. Gone are the days of hardcore marketing. Today people like to feel connected with the people marketing to them. There are a number of ways you can connect with your customers to help get the word out about your business.

Check out our FREE Pinterest webinar coming up June 11 at 12:30 Central. Keep an eye on your in box.

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