Painting and the digital world

Painters are born, they are not developed. I never considered myself a painter even though I have been painting all of my life. I paint to study art, a painter paints to study life. There are truly some great painters out there that can do masterful things with a brush but they are few and far between. They are the ones who can not make the transition to the digital world.

Yes, digital equipment is changing everyday and becoming more sophisticated. An artist on a computer can replicate 150 different brushstrokes with a click of a mouse but none of those stokes can create excitement and passion that a single stroke can do with paint on canvas. 

I sometimes wonder if those painters can survive in this ever changing world of art.

What to do when your website is down

That's the problem. There really is nothing you can do. You can hope that it is only temporary but you really don't know for sure. When it actually happened to me on Monday, my first reaction was to get on the phone and call the web host but for all the time I spend on hold, the problem could be fixed already.

My solution was to jump on twitter. There I found hundreds of website owners having the same frustration that I was having but with a twist. Some were handling in a better way, almost humorously. The jokes and light-hearten comments lifted my mood and left me with a chuckle.

Turns out the site was down for only 30 minutes or so. Not long enough to do any damage.

More to art than a digital pen

The upgrade to windows 10 caused a shut down of my drawing tablet because the driver would not read in the new operating system.  No problem, I thought, it will only be for a little while and a new driver will come available. This will give me an opportunity to experiment with other digital forms of expression. 

I could experiments with textures, develop new patterns, or experiment with filters in Photoshop. Those are just a few examples of how I can best utilize my down time. 

Yes, I could expand my swatch library, or learn Aftereffects. If I really get desperate, I can go back to drawing on paper........Gosh, I miss my tablet.

Installing Windows 10

Terrific. Microsoft is offering a offering me a free upgrade to  Windows 10. After reading some wonderful reviews and other than having a DVD player (that costs $14.95) after you install, I found nothing negative about the installation. So I went ahead and gave it a try.

Everything looks great except my Wacom tablet does not work. Yes, my third arm is disabled. Eventhough the driver says it supports Windows 10, it is not recognized in my computer. Calls to Wacom at this time go unanswered mainly because they are swamped with other callers with the same problem.

Now I have to wait for a patch which could be days, weeks, months? Maybe I should just paint on canvas while I wait.

Digital Painting

Now that Adobe is celebrating its 25th year anniversary of Photoshop, it came to my attention that a new generation has grown up to simply painting on the computer. That means this individual has always used a photo for reference and never sniffed linseed oil. 

The painting process is still the same, the artist starts off with a black and white image and adds color tints with the use of layers, to give it depth.  Using layers did not start with Photoshop but it is a painting technique that began as far back as  the Renaissance. 

Learning how to paint in Photoshop is a great start because you can pick up color, light and shade, and brush techniques much faster than you would starting out on canvas. The problem is returning to mixing paint with turpentine and waiting several days to allow the paint to dry between layers. This will soon be the death of traditional painting forever.