All Things Painter A Second Look by John Derry

One of the side effects of creating images in Corel® Painter™, particularly for the artist transitioning from traditional tools, is the tendency to take an image too far. I experienced this side effect as a creator of mixed-media drawings after I was introduced to digital image-making tools.

With traditional tools, it took me about a week to produce a finished result. When I initially applied my visual thinking to the digital medium, my creative sense of time was thrown off-kilter. I found myself reaching a density of imagery within a matter of hours instead of days. I'd think, "I shouldn't be finished yet - I still have four-and-a-half days to get this image right." In time, I was able to recalibrate my image-making clock.

The sensation is akin to that of a hypothetical Iowa farmer who has experienced travel only by horse-drawn buggy. For the first time in his life, the farmer rides in an automobile on an Interstate superhighway. He has a hard time comprehending that he can get to Des Moines in 60 minutes instead of 15 hours. He doesn't even have time to nod off for a while.

Corel Painter users also experience this dilation of creative time when they discover new filters and apply them to an image for the first time. These filters are designed to generate pleasing results without much user intervention. With a single click, for instance, you can make your image look like it was run through a blender. A more subtle example is color and contrast enhancement. What looks good in the heat of the creative moment often appears overdone the next day. Having experienced this phenomenon many times, I developed what I call my 50% rule: No matter how good an easily applied effect looks at first, it will probably look better at 50% (and possibly a smaller percentage) of its current strength.

How do I know? After applying such an effect, I've often walked away from the monitor for a breather and a change of perspective - only to return, take a second look, and see that I was overly enchanted by the effect. What initially seemed ideal was in fact a distortion produced by my creative eye. When I reduce the effect's overall presence throughout the total fabric of the image, the effect remains in balance and complements the other visual details.

We are constantly influenced by our environment. The artist's image-making yardstick shrinks and expands all the time. By taking a second look at your work, you can judge it more fully and arrive at a distinctly improved result. You can easily use the multiple-undo feature in Corel Painter to go back so that you can ponder the difference produced by a creative moment. Try to develop the habit of taking a second look before making a permanent commitment.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to walk away from the monitor for a bit before saving this column.

John Derry
Somewhere in Kansas

John Derry is a pioneer of digital painting and one of the original authors of Corel Painter. Since 1985, he has leveraged his background in drawing and painting to advance the look and experience of traditional art-making tools on the computer. John has a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in Fine Art and is a practicing artist and photographer. He teaches Corel Painter workshops around the country and is currently serving as Corel's Painter Ambassador-at-Large. John's Web site is at www.pixlart.com.