Digital Painting in Paint Shop Pro

[Gail Kavanagh]

Paint Shop Pro is usually regarded as the poor cousin (or poor rip off) of applications like Corel or Illustrator. But I have been using it since its first release (admittedly at hat time because it was easier to learn than Adobe and a bit more creative than MS Paint.) Still,I had discovered that even MS paint can be extraordinarily flexible (mainly through the experimentation of my son Chris) and so found PSP to have many unexplored possibilities. Since then, PSP has grown exponentially into a very good creative application.It is still the one I use most, even though I have now learned to use the others, probably out of habit and the fact that most of my WIP files are PSP images.

I don't claim to be a digital artist - I dabble still. But I am developing a style that seems to very much my own, even if it cannot compare to the eye watering images others can produce.

Digital painting, for me,is always the concept of working with a canvas, colours and brushes, much like real painting. But there is an almost unlimited palette and tools for moving colours and creating effects that a paintbrush and canvas doesn't offer.

Take Ophelia (you'll find this image on my photo page). This is a painting that could have been done in the traditional way, with oils or acrylics. I chose to do it as a digital painting, because I wanted to see what PSP could do. It's quite an early work, about four or five years old. At first, I drew the outline of the image in MS Paint. That was my preferred technique at the time, because I had found MS paint to be quite an effective drawing tool.

I had a vague idea of Ophelia flowing in the water, surrounded by flowers. I wanted just her face, for more impact, and in MS Paint I was able to sketch out what I wanted. The I called it up in PSP to `tweak' it.

I was just learning to use he Smudge Tool then,and it became my best friend for this image. I found if I made the Smudge Tool large, I could get a rippling water effect that worked well on the floating strands of hair as well. I also used it to 'fade out' the flowers, which looked harsh and unnatural when I painted them in. I left just one whole,a buttercup, because it looked like it was caught in her hair.

The translucency is due to layers - layers are wonderful, you can pile them upon top of each other, select and area and fill or fill the whole thing then fade it back to the merest wash of colour - I discovered most of the techniques I use by simply experimenting with layers.

[Gail Kavanagh]

Bettina, your painting is lovely. It has the translucency I love with digital painting, and it's such a joyous image.
Alicia, I do intend to make this blog about using PSP, with links. All mine are old at the moment, so I will check them and get back to the blog with some.I know there are many places where you can learn different techniques, like making tubes, and can download stuff, like brushes.

[Alicia Edwards]

Gail, thanks for posting this. I use PSP but primarily for resizing and cropping images. I've wanted to find out how to use more of the features, but haven't seemed to get that far. Are there sites you like for tutorials that might be helpful for PSP?

[Fairywebmother]

OOps! I forgot to mention that I love your picture! Nicely done!

[Fairywebmother]

I love painting in the computer! Smearing rocks! I use an old program that may not work for much longer. It is the precursor to Corel Painter called Micrografx Webtricity. Sooo user friendly. My avatar was done in Corel Painter and is a photo with painted images. Not like painting from scratch...which is my favorite way to make art. Here's a little doodle I did, a few years ago.

I have PSP, as well and love to play with it, now and then. This is a great blog and I'm glad you brought this up. There is so much that can be done in this machine, without using photos, though digital collage is fun, too!

Bettina