Wired 2011 Together 2011 painting

A week or so ago I was invited by Wacom to paint a picture live at the Wired 2011 Together event. With only few short days I was advised to deliver something simple so I knocked a quick portrait together - saving the image halfway through so I could paint the image to a finished stage at the event.

So Wacom tablet (Intuos) and Photoshop CS5:-

More CS5 Painting

Inspired by a creative mashup session yesterday (more on that later) I put another painting together in Photoshop CS5, the brush tools really are incredible with quick buttons on the menu to force complete control over to a Wacom tablet, I have been a big user of tablets for about 10 years now, working my way through the Intuos range, with a slight detour into a wireless Graphire at my time at Apple (awesome for presentations) and cannot recommend them more for digital creatives, the fluidity of a pen interface cannot be matched in photographic, illustrative or even video work.
































This image started life as a few blocky colours on a page before being shaped into a coherent painting, I don't often remember to take stages pictures (when free hand painting I usually just draw on one layer..) but I did snap a before image:
































Plus a quick shot of the brush tool overlay - this accurately maps the positioning of the Wacom Stylus over the tablet and if you watch the screen closely while you work it allows you to see how your making brush strokes, coming from an analogue painting background - it was great to see my motions with a brush were the same in a digital environment.

iPhone to CS5 Workflow

I have been experimenting with the iPhone as part of my creative workflow - I already use a variety of applications to get interesting and creative results out of my iPhone photographs such as Photoshop Mobile and Shakeit Lite - and I wanted to see what the possibilities are for creating a full design using the iPhone as a launchpad.

My first iPhone app in this workflow is Adobe Ideas - a simple vector drawing tool for making notes on photos and creating sketches and proofs of ideas in note form. I'm also a big fan of Shakeit Lite and other 'effects' apps for the iPhone - the camera on a 3GS is not actually all that bad and performs very well in daylight. I really like to use it as a visual journal - I'm not going to take a Canon 1Ds MkIII with me everywhere all the time its simply too bulky. I have started to take a few of these 'digital polaroid' images every day with the intention of making a project out of it at some point.

I enclose below a simple workflow diagram for working with the iPhone and Photoshop CS5:

White Rabbit - Photoshop CS5

I have been Beta testing Adobe's CS5 Master Collection for a while now, with the embargo up (as of 7.00am this morning) I am able to share my finding and feelings about the new features. My first post will cover the new brush engine in Photoshop CS5.
As an illustrator I have always been a fan of painting in Photoshop, early versions had customisable brushes and later there was support for pressure sensitivity via a graphics tablet input - all great features for those wanting to use the program as a digital canvas. Digital painting has one major drawback - the fluidity of natural media is lost in Photoshop, the painting is almost too precise and there is very little room for creative mistakes.

Until now.

Adobe's latest edition of the tool includes a fantastic new feature for painters - a "bristle" brush. This added level of brush control (in addition to pressure sensitivity) allows the emulation of bristles on a surface - the brush even rotates to match the rotation of your pen on the graphics tablet (something that really has to be seen to believed..) this really brings in some of the randomness back into drawing and painting - I have been using a variety of Wacom tablets for about 10 years now and I have never seen the level of control and natural feel of Adobes Photoshop CS5 and a Wireless Wacom Intuos 4 - its a fantastic combination.

So I have done a few doodle's I would like to share - I set myself a task - a one hour speed paint using the new toolset.































I hope to get some more of these up on the blog in the next few days.