I’m formally educated…

in Illustration using all types of medium like watercolor, gouache, oil, acrylic, conté crayon, charcoal, various type of pressed colored powder, air brush, and mixed media. I loved acrylic because you could apply a vast amount of color and mix colors without too much complication. I hated acrylic because it dried so fast and the texture was not very smooth.

Work In Progress Painting. Title UnTree

Enter electronic media.

My very first digital illustration was done with Aldus FreeHand. The subject was a simple illustration of an African Violet in a shiny black pot sitting on my glass desk. It was beautiful.

I used vector shapes and filled them with color. At that time there was no gradation or layers and so I just figured it out with multiple layers upon layers of color variations to simulate gradation. Now I paint with Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is akin to airbrushing. Of course Photoshop has moved beyond airbrushing but most all of the lingo and processes in the first Photoshop versions were based on airbrushing for retouching and composition of photos, thus the name.

I’ve tried other software such as Painter and Canvas and they have grown to be beautiful and useful tools but Photoshop comes with Creative Suite; I use CS for work; and Photoshop is thorough. There is nothing in any painting software that Photoshop doesn’t do better. It’s just a matter of finding where it’s hidden in the palettes, filters, or ingenuity.

Coupled with my Wacom tablet and stylus, dual monitors, and the thought of knowing I don’t have to mix and store vats of paint, wash my countless brushes, or scrape paint off my tools and clothes. I can put all my time into applying paint and setting those doodles and images that are in my head onto the digital canvas. The best part of all is knowing that at 3 in the morning when I can’t keep my eyes open any longer, I can just roll into bed and not worry about whether the cats will spill the dirty water. I don’t have to worry about all the paint drying on the brushes.