Here I am in my studio working on a painting (forgive my hair—I’m trying to).
Times have changed in my studio. What used to be a giant wooden easel, canvases on stretcher bars and tubes upon tubes of oil paint, have been replaced by a computer, tablet and 2 screens. I decided to quickly (ha ha) add 3 more illustrations to my junior fiction novel before e-publishing it (digital painting isn’t quick as I’m discovering). This is what I am working on at the moment–a cougar painting. The illustrations are in black and white so I’m using black and white paint. While many illustrators work in ink or pencil, I am a painter so I work in paint.
Digital painting is very different from traditional oil painting. Each and every brush needs to have many, many settings adjusted for it to perform in the way I like. With hundreds of brushes to choose from, and each brush with over a dozen settings to adjust, this can be time consuming. I do limit myself to painting with about 25 brushes per session–many more than I’d use with real oil paint (imagine the expense of owning so many real brushes!). The beauty of digital is that I have an entire warehouse full of all the art supplies in the word right at my finger tips.
As it stands now, I find traditional oil painting easier. It takes much more effort (using digital paint) to get the type of blending and brush strokes that I am accustomed to (when using real oil paint). Paint doesn’t behave as easily on the digital screen. However, I find the challenge of learning digital painting fascinating; so, despite the difficulty, I am entranced and want to keep painting and mastering this new medium.
Hold tight Peter Not-Pizzaface fans! The novel is dropping into e-book stores very soon. Just as soon as I get the 3 paintings completed.
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