the mouse

Believe it or not you can draw with a mouse - but it's not easy! You have to learn a completely differently way of thinking in order to make it work - or at least I had to. The first thing I do (after coming up with the subject matter!) is to make a preliminary drawing using the mouse.

coreldraw 7

This is an ancient program. I think they're up to corel 12 now - but hey it works for me so why change it. This is the software I use to make my preliminary drawing, using the mouse. You have to think geometrically - as opposed to drawing freehand. I make a series of geometric shapes and then I basically curve the lines the way I want them.

photoshop 6 - channels

Photoshop is the program I use when I want to start painting. I'm still using the mouse at this point. I separate out all the shapes in my drawing (water, boat, boat seat, etc.) into what are called channels, so I can select and work on each shape separately as well as together. This is an old way of working, I could use layers and I sometimes do but I like the effect I get working this way.

photoshop 6 - painting

Now I finally get to paint. It's probably taken me a week of steady work to get to this point. I paint freehand with the brush tool, and I also use something called filters. Filters apply various effects to your painting. For all you digital artists out there - the secret to using filters is to not accept what they first give you - be original! Layer filter over filter. Go in at the pixel level and change color. Layer a wash over an area with the brush tool, etc. My personal point of view is that it's much better to overwork a picture than underwork it. Push the boundaries! If you go too far you'll know better next time, if you never go far enough - well then you'll never go far enough.

digitizing tablet

I just started using this thing and I'm still getting the hang of it. What I've been doing with it so far is using it to draw on top of the painting in photoshop. You can create beautiful lines by using the stylus (the pen looking thingy sitting at the top) on the pad just like you would use a pen or pencil. Line quality is something that suffers in digital art - but the tablet fixes that.