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Went to NYC this weekend with a group of friends. Took lots of pictures! This sign I spotted on a snack truck was particularly cheerful, charming and appealing! In particular, the likeness of the Sponge Bob ice cream treat has a great amount of personality, I think.



Bloomingdales' font is interesting: it looks like a mesh of past and future. Clearly it's Art Deco period but seeing it today it has a very "Sky Captain", "Matrix" twist. It feels very lost in time to me and all alone, even though I am sure there are many that are similar to this, that would be very easy to find on the web. But I can't think of any that are really, really close to this one (knock off of it).
The building has much tile detail relief. I'd have liked to get several shots of this building, but not this trip. They don't make them like this anymore (at least not here in the USA).

I'm calling it "Done"!
There was a lot of experimentation, moving back and forth between Painter X and PS. It was a real learning experience (complete with the prerequisite kinks along the way) but I'm finding my footing with Painter, and the Painter / PS combo. I could have continued working on this, but I needed to finish it, for psychological reasons as well as time frame reasons - I have other work I need to accomplish, too :) . It's hard to know when enough's enough, when you are trying so many different things. Despite all of the new tools I used, I think it holds together very well. YAY for Completion!!

This is the progress I've made on this illustration thus far. I've been doing it solely in Painter X. I like how this is progressing but, honestly if I had done it in PS I'd have completed this three times over by now. I guess it is all a part of the learning curve and I know that it is worthwhile to struggle through the process. It's just tough when you're in the middle of it.

There are things I wish I could easily do in P X that I haven't figured out how to do yet. (I'm sure there is a way, but I have not taken the time to figure it out yet because I am clamoring to finish this piece.) These same things are easy for me to do in PS. But back-and-forth between P X and PS just won't work for me right now, so I would need to complete work in P X, then bring the whole enchilada into PS. If P X and PS can't be integrated into one program (in my dreams), I at least wish that they were easy to ping-pong work in, back-and-forth.

I think that, in the name of expediency and consistency, I'm going to start my next project in PS and then see how it goes from there. Maybe I'll find things work better starting out in PS?

Here is a detail of a piece I am creating in Painter X. It's a work in progress and this is just a portion of it, but I wanted to post something I'd done exclusively in Painter. This will be my first piece which is almost-all or entirely created in Painter. (The last piece I did in Painter was started in Painter but was mainly done in PS.) I'm still not sure how PS and P X will work together - - or not. Will it be too unintuitive to move into PS after working in P X? does it make sense to? Will I devise a set plan that works for/with both? We'll see. For now, I need to get the basics of P X under my belt and just use it as much as I can.

I'm learning some important things to abide by when working in Painter X:

Utilizing the customized Workspace and customized Palettes is pretty important to my overall productivity in Painter X. There are SO many tools to paint and draw with, and SO many options for said tools, it's dizzying, and it can really be a big black hole unless a good system is devised. I am at the tail end of the experimental stage where I want to see how EVERYTHING works. But what's starting to happen is that I am beginning to (finally!!) gravitate towards a few certain tools which I will use most of the time. Now, my next move is to create some customized Palettes that are very limited in scope so that I can be more productive overall. I'll explain it this way - picture yourself as a 2 year old kid in F.A.O Schwarz. You really like this one toy witht he sparkling lights and the horn noise, but what if there is an even BETTER toy on the next shelf over? And then, what if THAT toy is also a gummi worm candy dispenser? In some ways, it's like an artist's ADD fantasy/nightmare. It's really, really easy to get distracted by the availability of so many options. So you must discover your own plan of action and then stay in scope.

Key commands are very important, especially with the Cintiq.
I do have a keyboard now set up for use with my Cintiq, but learning the key commands helps a lot. I can't seem to find one definitive source/document for Painter key commands. If anyone knows where I can get one, please let me know if you have a sec.

The Jesus Storybook Bible has moved up to number 4 on the Christian Marketplace Best Sellers chart, this is great news as this is based on only the first couple of months of sales. If it keeps going at this rate we'll be at No 1 by the end of the summer (the current No 1 has however sold over 5 million copies in total so it maybe be a tough one to beat!).

playing about with patterns and lettering