All Things Painter 2007 New Year's Resolutions for Corel® Painter™ Users by John Derry

It's the beginning of a new year—time to renew our resolve to do better, improve our lives, and generally get into shape. Following are a few suggestions to help you buff up your Corel® Painter™ creative muscles.

Invest in a third-party Painter educational resource. The user manual is software's unsung hero. Almost never praised, this valuable resource provides the user with the software's operating instructions. Nevertheless, other points-of-view are always welcome. Independently written books, CDs, and DVDs offer varying points-of-view matched to a user's area of interest. Painter Masters and experts like Cher Pendarvis, Don Seegmiller, Jeremy Sutton, Martin Addison, Ryan Church, Helen Yancy, Karen Sperling, and others offer a variety of Painter learning resources. An ever-expanding list of these resources is available on the Corel Painter IX Education and Training webpage.

Invest in a Painter Workshop. If a book or disc-based instruction doesn't float your boat, consider attending a Corel Painter workshop. This option allows you to participate in an interactive environment with like-minded students. A workshop often provides the opportunity to travel to a unique locale for a change of scenery. The energy level of a workshop is often enhanced by its short-term nature. And you'll learn from the other students as well as from the instructor. A listing of current Painter workshops is available in each edition of the Painter Canvas.

Enter a competition. Try out the exciting—and humbling—world of art competition. There are increasingly more opportunities to enter your Painter creations in juried competitions. Getting the opportunity to have your work judged against other artists is illuminating for several reasons. It provides you with a measuring stick to assess how your work stacks up compared to others. This measurement pushes you to stretch your artistic vision and grow as an artist. It can bring recognition for your efforts, as well.

Organize/Clean up your computer's files. Nothing slows down a machine more than overcrowded files. Why not spend a few hours trimming down your hard disk. Backing up files to another medium, like DVDs, ensures that you won't incur a loss of valuable files representing untold hours of hard work when the inevitability of a disk failure occurs. Clean 'em up, back 'em up!

Give traditional media a try. Even if you're not a traditional artist, pick up a pencil, chalk, brush, etc. and experiment a bit. Direct experience with traditional media like painting, pastels, watercolor and the like helps to develop a more complete understanding of Painter's Natural Media equivalents. The experience will enhance your digital work.

Join a forum. There is a lot of Painter expertise online. Take advantage of it. Joining a community of like-minded individuals provides a re-enforcing mechanism that helps you improve your knowledge of Painter and its application as an artistic tool. When you are linked in to a forum, the answer to a question is never far away. There is a full listing of Painter-related forums on the Corel Painter Community page. There is almost certainly one tailored to your interests.

Now that I've written this, I better practice what I preach. I'm heading for my studio to bench-press a few million pixels.

A Happy and Creative New Year to All!

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 is currently serving as Corel's Painter Ambassador-at-Large. John's web site is at www.pixlart.com.