Digital Paint Academy and Painter Talk

Finished off yesterday's post with quite a few problems in the painting still. I'm going to keep struggling through this because I think it will force me to learn something. Maybe you will find that totally uninteresting, but at least I'm being honest and thorough about showing you the processes I go through to paint a digital watercolour. It's one thing to read about and see examples of the concepts I need to learn to improve, and another to apply them to my work.

 

 

This is where the subject of my blog changed today. Sorry folks, I've been meaning to blog about online resources for artists and digital artists again for awhile and it seemed to just come out today, so I committed a cardinal sin of bloggging and changed the blog title after it had been published. Usually when I do a painting in progress blog, I post it right away and keep adding to it over the day. This time I got off track and into a subject that is more writing then a painting in progress, so I had to change the title. I don't think it's a big deal since it was only published earlier today with the other title.

 

This is a screen capture from a short video I came across on Empty Easel (a wonderful site for artists and art lovers-trust me, you should check it out if you haven't already.)

You can find Mark Mehaffey's site here. http://www.mehaffeygallery.com/index1.html

I had a look at his website and he is an awesome artist and apparently a wonderful teacher too! Funny how a lot of artists have a bent for teaching too!

 

 There is a lot of Art Instruction Material in the world...

Fortunately for me, because on a limited art budget any free tutorials are great! Library books

are a good source too. Don't look for just digital painting because you won't likely find anything like I'm trying to do at the library. It's all Concept Art. If that's not what you want to paint and you must read and study the books on the traditional art mediums and genre's.

As I'm writing this, I am cringing in my seat hoping a 'really good artist' isn't reading this and looking at my modest efforts and laughing at my struggles. That nasty little voice will probably never go away, but I am learning to ignore it. I try to put myself out into cyber land in an authentic and honest way and that's all you can really ask of anyone isn't it? For the most part I have had nothing but, a very positive response to my art and writings about it. You may have noticed that I rarely refer to Photoshop and photography much. There is a lot of digital art being created in these areas, and there seem to be more books in the library and stuff online about it too.

When I first started painting digitally with Corel Painter 9.5 about five years ago I found it difficult to find free art tutorials and other artists trying to learn too. I blogged about my forays into the online galleries and art forums quite some time ago.

 

  

http://www.joanahamilton.com/blog/how-to-reach-out-as-an-artist-part-two/ 

 

Painter Talk is my favourite art forum for learning

There is one I'd like to talk about now, and I know many of you will be familiar with it, being members yourselves. It's called Painter Talk. That's the link again, although it is in my left sidebar. This will take you to the page where you can sign up for free to be a member. The benefits are many, but I am going to discuss it from my personal point of view. I think it would be a neat idea to interview Karen Bonaker who is the creator (I think?) and administrator for the group and she runs Digital Art Academy too. I'm realizing I may not have the facts straight on this, and hope to remedy that soon. 

 

Painter Talk is my favourite because it is a very supportive learning environment for all levels of digital painters. Other members and instructors are willing to help out and answer questions. You can post your work and have others comment on it, meet other digital artists, and enjoy being in an artistic community that understands and appreciates what you are doing and helps you learn to do it better!

I haven't taken any of the courses yet, but they have a great lineup of them from beginner to advanced using Corel Painter, Illustrator, ArtRage and others. Some apply digital painting techniques to specific genres of painting, such as Portraiture, Watercolour, and Sumi-e to name a few. Some are designed to teach you specific digital art skills like Brush Creating. There is also one on Blogging. At any rate, it's a good place to check out, if you are at all interested in digital painting.  It is not the only one of it's kind out there, but I do recommend it. 

 

Another instructor who generously shares his skills, knowledge and talent for creating wonderful brushes is Skip Allen. His brush sets are the reason I haven't finished a single painting in the last month. I keep getting sidetracked into experimenting with them, and trying to blog about learning to use them! David Gell has given us some great ones too!

 

First Ever? Digital Painting Workshop

I was fortunate enough to be invited to an event  recently that may have been a first in the world of digital painting. I was a day long Digital painting workshop. It was hosted by Skip Allen on "Go to Meeting," software. It was so cool! There were 8 of us and it didn't really have an agenda, although several people demonstrated a little more formally than just showing the others their screen as painted. The mind blowing part was being able to talk to each other show each other things, guide people through a process (thank you Skip with your patient help in downloading the brushes to me!) and watch each other paint in real time. I was always envious of traditional art medium artists for their ability to paint together in workshops.

Now it's been done digitally! Whooee! It really was fun and I learned so much. Seeing somebody doing something is just a fantastic way to learn this stuff. I need to see something before it registers in my mind much! (I used to have to write things out tons of time to memorize them and that knowledge didn't tend to stick in my mind as long as something I could visualize more.) I have seen a few Webinars on digital painting and consider them and excellent way to learn things for the visually inclined (and perhaps technologically challenged *sigh*).

 

Anyway, sorry to get off the original topic so far. I'm going back to working on Morning Mist now, It will be titled Part Three...