Friday and Nothing's Done

Okay, a little more than nothing has been accomplished today. Have you ever had a day where the phone rings before you get the chance to get off of the call you're already on again and again? That's what's happening today. Not a bad thing when all the news is good news, which is the case today, but it sure does stop the "to do" list from getting done.

I did study a bit more on blog stuff today and I really didn't learn a whole heck of a lot that I hadn't figured out already.

Anyway, I started experimenting with painting in Photoshop recently. I've learned so far that while a person CAN use Photoshop as a lovely painting tool just like a pencil or paintbrush, there is an enormous bit of a learning curve to make it intuitive.

By intuitive I mean like when you pick up a pencil you basically know what to expect if you start drawing with it as far as the pencil's behavior because you've been drawing in one way or another with it, even if it was just in the form of writing, for basically your entire life.

Enter the drawing tablet and the gobs of brushes and options in Photoshop and the tablet. I think it's great to learn about everything you can (thus my studying all I can about blogs at the moment when it really is a simple subject), but ultimately drawing and painting is called an art form for a reason. You have to develop a very personal instinct with the tools you work with and your ability to translate what you see (either in life or in your head) onto your medium of choice. That's all good and well, but when you get into the labyrinth of Photoshop and a tablet, woe is it a new world. It's super fun, but seriously, it's way new and different to me and I believe it will take awhile before my instinct takes over and the nagging mechanical feeling I have each time I paint a stroke subsides.

All this being what it is, above is one of my first experiments with a tablet making a sphere with shading.