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My painter essential brushes began working again, have no idea why, and it is intermittent so while I had the use of them I decided to just get some easy paint texture and backgrounds down. Did five or six before the program crashed again. I didn't have anything specific in mind, just get the paint down on the paper and save it out to Photoshop as quickly as possible. I had the use for about 40 min. Here is one I decided to pursue.








I also painted another background of clouds...



Éthat works like fog when overlaid to the background.



Still needs some brightening but then my imagination roams and I think, "Oh some deer might be nice."



And this is where I think I need to go get some reference material of a Buck. Stay tune.

We'll see where this goes.

Be sure you watch this in HD, it will be much clearer to see. Change by clicking on cog wheel (setting link) and choose 720HD.

In this snippet of a tutorial I'll show you how to go about developing a truly unique painting from your mind. I use Photoshop CS4 but any program that allows you to use layers will work. No computer? No worries, this method works with markers, pens, or pencils on tracing paper too.

A word of warning and caution, this technique in highly addictive and it works best when you are proficient in drawing fundamentals. That said have fun.

First create a rather abstract shape. I use a tweaked round brush so I can take advantage of the pen pressure settings to use with my Wacom.

Duplicate (command + J) this shape on another layer then flip it horizontally (edit menuÑtransformÑflip horizontally) so it is mirrored on the other side. Depending on how dark the image is I will either set the mirrored shape to darken or multiply blend mode located at the top of the layers panel and left of opacity settings. Play around with moving the shape until you get it to where you are satisfied with the placement.



I played around with a few placements including warping the shape (command + TÑwarp) a bit and combining different warped shapes before settling on one that I found interesting enough to me to develop further. You may find something sooner or play quite a bit before choosing one or more shapes to develop into finished painting.












This technique works for developing photorealistic paintings or loose abstract paintings. You can see how I used this method for a recent abstract painting here.

Leave a comment to let me know if this post was helpful, interesting, or if you would like to see more posts like this.

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a page from my sketchbook.

I've spent the last year experimenting with making my own texture brushes in photoshop. I hated all of them because they didn't do the job. And besides if I really wanted brush texture I could paint my piece in my Painter Essentials 4 program. Then, a couple of months ago, I upgraded my Macbook pro to apple's Mountain Lion. Woo-hoo, I gained 12 gb of space on my computer...and lost Painter Essentials. No problem, Corel will do a patch upgrade like they have in the past. I called to find out when it would come out. It's not..WHAT! I was told they do not intend to upgrade the program and I would need to purchase the $349 Painter 12.

Amazing what necessity will do for your motivation. It took me only a month to have a breakthrough. I created a thick paint texture brush, I lovingly named "My Monet Brush." I have since created a few more texture brushes over the summer. Tonight I created another and tested it out.

Usually I just paint a sheet, no subject, just get some paint on the canvas and check the teeth of the strokes. Here is the page I did before tweaking the brush a bit more.



I had read in the forms about painting photo realistically...a thread about how important composition is to realistic painting. It had been awhile since I had done any realistic portraiture so as I tested my tweaked brush and it started to look more like an eye I decided to take it to a painterly realistic state. This digital sketch is about the brush work and not composition...

Ah, well, I took some time trying to decide what to pull from the old sketchbookÉso many possibilities, most dealing with thumbnails, silhouettes, clouds, rockÉand on and on. I've settled on posting a couple of my land/cityscape thumbnails.

I get comments all the time that I am so creative or asked how I come up with so many different ideas. You will often find in art forms where someone will ask the community "How do you keep your ideas fresh?" or "How do you overcome artist's block?" Well it may just be that you need a break. Artists and people in general need to do something else in order for their mind to gather new information and make new connections even if they are familiar ones.

But at other times it is not that easy, sometimes you have to just push on through. It may be that you have a deadline to meet or your free weekend is coming to a close and you must return to your day job on Monday Morning; and dog gone it you haven't accomplished anything. How do you overcome these?

The easiest way to do that is to sketch on a regular basis if not daily. These could just be the scribbles you do while on the phone. Or you could take another approach used by many Fine and Commercial artistsÑdo many, many thumbnails. Thumbnails can be really planned outÑthe house is on the right, pond 3/4 of the way downÉhowever, if you do it from an abstract approach you can pull out those same thumbnails a year from when you did them and see something totally different than what you saw when you created them. Your sketchbook(s) become instant reference and inspiration.

The idea here is not to plan anything. It is to put down strokes and tones and go back later and (or sometimes right then) look for the tiny scenes and refine three or four with the most promise. Then from there you can decide to take one or all of them to a finished piece. Here are a couple of sheets from my sketchbook. What do you see?

Working on a few personal pieces that involve perspective. This one will be a birthday gift for my youngest nephew. He is a big sci-fi and fantasy fan.

Some people ask why I still sketch everyday. After all I've long graduated with my BFA. I am semi-retired, why do it? Yes picking up a pencil or stylus in most cases these days is like riding a bike, the muscle-memory is there at a moments notice if I have a painting I want to doÑthat landscape or portrait, or design of a logo. The steps are all deeply ingrained. I do it for practice, for play and learning new techniques, as an archive to look up what might work in a new piece, and lastly to keep my mind active and engaged.

Why practice, I thought you said the techniques were ingrained? Well, as much as I know about doing portraits, I have always struggled with how the neck and chin come together in extreme views, from the bottom looking up. Luckily, doing portraits, you are pretty much on the same level as the subject. I just didn't have to learn how that worked in order to start my art career. And there are quite a few things like that. So now I do study those things that I have gotten by without having to know.

I also sketch because it is just fun to do. It is play time. No one has to see my sketches if I don't want them to, so as a result I am free to play to my heart's content. And playing is especially useful in learning deeper parts of a photoshop. What would happen if I used the warp tool to do this? Sometimes the play actually leads to a finished salable piece.

Past sketches will allow me to go back and find new or different inspirations from a sketch. To use that sketch as a new piece or in a new piece of artwork. And again, keeping a sketchbook keeps my mind active and engaged in creating new works.