I have been very busy with classes, both at The Artist's Quarter with Tim Shelbourne and at DAA with Karen Bonaker and Skip Allen.

I am going to spend some time really learning how to use this blog and will be updating the layout and adding photos of my artwork over the next few weeks.

Please check back for my progress and don't hesitate to get on me about being too slow with the updates. :)

A Lot Has Been Going On

Shortly after my last post that horrible tornado swarm on 4/27 hit our area, we did not get any damage other than some seriously frayed nerves.

I have to admit that rattled me pretty good and it's taken me a while to feel comfortable again.

I'm back in classes, Karen Bonaker's Summer Open Studio, all about watercolors and painting flowers in Painter. I have a passion for watercolor and so so want to learn to paint it both digitally and using real media.
 I'm having a wonderful time learning to loosen up and just have some fun, but I am really learning a lot at the same time.

Speaking of Painter, Painter 12 also released so that has been another distraction for me. :) I have to say bugs and all I love it, finally 64 bit and multicore support.
Of course there are a lot of other new features I'm enjoying as well like Individual brush tracking (calibration) and the new improved custom palettes. There's a lot to learn about the new features and changes and I've only begun to scratch the surface.

I also started another class with Tim Shelbourne at The Artist's Quarter http://www.theartistsquarter.com/
So I've technically got 3 classes going if you include Tim's Advanced Drawing class. This class is The Finishing School to learn how to tweak your finished paintings to make them pop, and a lot of other great things. You should check it out.

I'll see if I can figure out how to post a photo here and show you my latest painting, done in Summer Open Studio , tweaked in The Finishing School, and Painted in Painter 12.

It Has Arrived

Less than 48 hours after winning the auction on my new Fujitsu T 730 Lifebook it arrived at my door.
I'm pretty impressed with Fujitsu's shipping speed even though I live in the same state as their US office.

They are in Memphis and I am near Chattanooga at the opposite end of Tennessee, and Tennessee is a very long or wide state.

I decided to purchase a refurbished machine, not something I normally do, but I had reassurance from a number of artists at the TabletPCReview site that this was a safe thing to do. Many if not most of them also purchased refurbished models and feel that if anything it should be even more reliable since it has gone through more thorough testing than the new ones.

The machine itself looks absolutely brand new, not a mark on it anywhere, the only thing that shows any sign of prior use is the quick start guide.

It is in the process of setting itself up right now so I will give further updates on my first impressions later after I've had some time to play with it.

My Latest Adventure

Until the iPad came out I didn't know anything about tablets at all and like many others I thought the iPad was the first. The fact is tablet computers have been around for quite a while.

I was tempted by the iPad but being a PC user rather than Mac I decided to wait until there was a nice tablet that interfaced with Windows more seamlessly. I read all about tablets and paid close attention to what artists had to say and the one thing that continued to come through was that there was no pressure sensitivity. It seemed to me that without pressure sensitivity a tablet wasn't really going to be much more than a toy for me. I already have a Droid X phone with a multi touch screen, I didn't want a tablet that was basically a little bit bigger version of that without the phone capability.

A few months back at the big tech show in Las Vegas they debuted the ASUS ep121, a tablet with a Wacom digitizer screen with pressure sensitivity, this looked like it might be what I was looking for.

I watched and waited and it was finally released and it did look very interesting if a bit pricey, and just try to find one, they were grabbed up the minute anyone got stock. While waiting I began to think that was a lot of money for something with only a 32 or 64 gig HD, but it appeared that those were my choices.

One day someone posted a link on the Concept Arts forum to a place called TabletPCReview.com  and I went to have a look around. I found a forum there with a ton of information and discovered that what I had been looking for had been around for years. I discovered that there were tablets with no keyboard, tablets with a detachable keyboard and convertible ultra portable laptops. The convertibles have a rotating screen that you can rotate and fold down over the keyboard to use as a tablet when you don't want to use the keyboard.

These convertibles are really a full laptop computer with powerful processors and real hard drives that you can install Photoshop CS5, Painter 11, and ArtRage on and actually use. You do have to be careful though as the digitizers in these are not all created equally. There are 2 types of digitizer screens, Wacom and N-trig and while the N-trig digitizers are getting better they aren't quite ready for prime time for an artist. They are good for note taking and maybe quick sketches but for an artist you really want one with a Wacom digitizer.
The tablets with a Wacom digitizer come in two different types as well, active and dual.
The active only works with the pen and the dual has both active and a capacitive screen with multi-touch.

These can be quite pricey as well, but you can find some good deals on ebay.
I decided on a Fujitsu T730 with a dual digitizer screen, it has an intel i-5 processor and a 320 gb HD so it will have space for my art programs and the power to run them.

Fujitsu has been making laptops for professionals for many years and is considered one of the best quality with a very low failure rating and best of all their outlet store is an ebay store. You can get brand new in box discontinued models and manufacturer refurbished models for half or less than half the original price. Many of the people on the TabletPCReview forums are using refurbished models that they purchased there and are very happy.

HP and Lenovo also make convertibles with Wacom digitizers and many really like them.
They do have a higher failure rate, while in the acceptable range.
Having just gone through a year of nightmare computer crashes with a high end HP I'm still a bit gun shy though so I decided to go with the one with the lowest failure rating.

My T730 shipped this morning so I will let you know more about it when I get it, but in the meantime you can go to "forum.tabletpcreview.com"  and see what people have been doing on their tablets if you are interested. The forum is The Tablet PC Life/ Post Your Tablet PC Art.

Claudia

Thank you Kirk

With Kirk's help I have managed to make some progress, thank you so much.
I have a long long way to go on this but it is a start.

An Introduction of Sorts

I come from an artistic family and had believed all of my life that the talent had skipped over me. I always had an appreciation of art and could see the world with the eye of an artist thanks to my grandmother, but could never actually create any of my own. I dabbled in many crafts and enjoyed them, but never was able to do what I really wanted to do, draw and paint.

I learned to groom dogs in the 70's and was able to express my artistic side with clippers and scissors and became quite good at what some have called canine topiary. In 1998 two years after the death of my husband I moved to Southeastern Tennessee and began a new life. The incredible beauty of this place had a profound effect on me and still does. The desire to paint and draw began to almost haunt me.

I decided to try a Donna Dewberry One Stroke Painting kit, and wow! I could actually paint. Those early paintings weren't great but they were a start. In time I started painting animals on the beautiful smooth Tennessee river rocks and some of these were pretty good.

I had done quite a bit of photo manipulation and graphic design on the computer and had used an early Wacom tablet which I had come to rely on. In 2008 I had to get a new computer and the old Wacom would no longer work with it, I really missed it and my partner got tired of my talking about getting a new one.
He got me a Bamboo Fun tablet for Christmas that year and included with it was Corel Painter Essentials 4. the day I installed that it was all over but the shouting.

I played with PE4 and the Bamboo tablet and found the Essentials Cafe on the net, there I met people who directed me to the Painter Talk forum. Once there I found out about the DAA classes and decided it was time for me to take a class and really learn something about painting since I had not even had any art classes in school.

This eventually led to Painter 11, a Wacom Intuous 4 tablet and classes with Skip Allen and Karen Bonaker.
I also met Tim Shelbourne there and last fall began taking his drawing classes. This has opened up a whole new world for me and I have to thank these people for helping me achieve my dream of being able to draw and paint.

In time I'll get this blog thing figured out and post some of my art work, but for now this will serve as a beginning. :)

Claudia