Thursday, February 11, 2010

Painting with Painter


Sigh. I've graduated to painting now. I decided to take a piece from a book I did while back and redo it digitally. Its a simple 'shapey' style - line and watercolor. Should be easy, right? Ha.

Actually, the painting itself isn't hard. Its fun to choose which kind of watercolor brush or drawing tool you want, and how big to make it, etc. etc. etc. What's driving me nuts is trying to understand WHY if something is a 'gel' layer, then it goes back to 'default', or back to 'gel' again, it looks all crazy. Or WHY some other thing will do something that doesn't make any sense, and screw up something I just spent an hour doing. Or WHY do you have to remember to save as a Painter RIFF format to preserve the layers - and if you forget and don't when you save for the last time late at night, when you reopen the file in the morning its all flattened and you've lost everything you worked on all day the day before and can't fix it, and you have to start all over.

Stuff like that.

But I will keep on. I think its like learning to drive. Remember how at first it was all so awkward, and each thing you did you had to really think about, and it took forever for it to become automatic and intuitive? I guess this is the same way. I do like the simple round watercolor brush to fill in shapes with, and the crayon to draw with. I can't figure out how to get a good sky though. At this point it would still be faster to do it the old fashioned way.

So that's where I am. Hopefully next time I'll be happier.

3 comments:

Dorothy Reinhardt said...

I have an older version of Painter, and I find it very frustrating. I finished some illustrations for a cookie cookbook using it, but it was in black & white. I can't get the watercolors to look like watercolor.

CC said...

No matter what,Paula....
I feel your pain, and now I see why you feel
mine right back. I thought about the driving metaphor too. But for me its like knowing how to drive a car in automatic and some one says, "Try
this now." and there's an airplane sitting in the driveway! We'll get through this......
OXO, Carolyn C

J. E. Morris said...

Good for you for sticking with it. I remember the first time I used Photoshop I thought, "good grief, how can anyone get anything done with this thing!?" But now I LOVE it.