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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1339792
How does Painter help you in the development and creation of your artwork? I am a massive fan of artists like Drew Struzan, Norman Rockwell and Ernie Barns. Some more contemporaries are Alex Ross and Jason Seiler. I love that I can mimic some of those styles in my work. Especially Drew Struzan, I grew up watching movies and the main reason I went to see what I did was because Drew had painted the movie poster. Now I incorporate that look into my work. I’m able to use colored pencils and oil pastels and traditional tools like that in Corel Painter. I love that you can mix mediums that you cannot in real life for unique looks. I do all my work in Painter and then do some color correction in Adobe Photoshop before I send it off. What’s your favorite Painter feature? I am a massive fan of the Scratchboard Tool. It’s an oldie but a goodie and I use if for 99% of my work. The Scratchboard Tool and colored pencil is pretty much how I create everything but I’ll also mix in some oil pastels. The clone Auto-Painting feature also helps with my process. I like to start out with random pictures, clone paint them and then hand paint on top. I hate painting on a white page so I like to throw down something that is organic and messy and then paint on top of that. I find that there are a lot of little happy accidents, like Bob Ross would say, that take place. What are the challenges involved with being a full time artist? The major challenge with being a full-time freelance artist is that I don’t have a regular paycheck. Some clients pay net 30, some 2 months. Sometimes it can take clients quite a while to pay and the bigger companies you have to submit paperwork before you can even get a purchase order number in order to submit an invoice. That can be a bummer along with the fact that you don’t have health insurance. Juggling work and keeping everything going is challenging but I’ve been doing it since 2004 and making it work.