...and NOW I can see 'venus'! Yay! (won't spoil it for anyone else) Great idea to use the 'stamps' to cut out and make details

I spy with my little eye, something beginning with 'V'. The larger size is great.

Glad you guys could see it.
Since you guys are the DP gurus I have a question about brushes. I want to experiment with creating brushes using the various "stamps". I like the "stamp" technique but the work involved is tedious. For this drawing it was done the hard way- stamping by hand .

When i t comes to brushes, I am not clear on how the scatter pattern works. I created 2 images, stamps and scatter pattern I then saved them as jpg, bmp and gif (wanted to see which mode provided the cleanest brush). Not one single scatter worked. In some cases the pattern was either too tight or too loose. I have modified the pattern several times but can't seem to hit the sweet spot. Is there a magic distance/ratio between dots in the scatter pattern? Any suggestions.

Thanks Effie

Sorry Effie, I am a layers person. I don't even know what the scatter pattern is. Sit tight, I bet Matt or Major will come up with a solution.

Still Love Your Work.
Lori Ann

Hey Effie, sorry, I had to run for a bit, and I wouldn't even know where to begin trying to draw this. And I think it is wonderful. Something you might try to see if it hits your 'sweet spot', is making the left eye not quite so dramatic on the eye lid. I Love the right eye. Also, on the left side of the nose, maybe a simple line that gives it definition but keeps it clean.

Sit tight. I'm fixing to send another one of my drawings so you can tear it apart

J/K: I'm not trying to be critical, just offering some visions I see when I look at your work. I hope I haven't upset you. This forum is all I have and I really would welcome any and all input.

Lori Ann

Loriann - I don't think anyone could be upset by suggestions from interested members - I certainly wouldn't ever be and Effie seems genuinely really keen to get constructive feedback, so I wouldn't worry for a second! I have to say that now you've mentioned it I think I agree that the left eye could be slightly less darkly shaded and it would probably benefit from it a little? Again, it's no criticism - it looks fantastic as it is, just maybe a little tweak to add to something already very special?

Effie - I'm not *completely* sure what you're trying to do - feel free to email me any sample documents (no matter how simple/complicated) that illustrate what you're trying to achieve and I'll try my best to suggest what to do in order to get your results... There's usually a way of doing something, but it's often not clear, lol! You could use spray brushes or 'normal' brushes for this (with the normal brush set to repeat in a 'simple' fashion, I think) but whatever you use your starting point should be a stamp which is *black* and is saved as an 8-bit PNG image. By using this texture you'll be able to recolour it with whatever colour you like (including white obviously) by changing the line colour and it will be completely opaque, which is one of the problems you mentioned.

You are going to *love* X4's new blend modes - one of the options allows you to use one object to 'erase' away another object, so you could paint your stamp brush over the top of the outline and it could erase away the outline properly (rather than just colour over it in white)

If you show me a file you're trying to make work, then I'll send it you back with my best suggestions!

Cheers,
Matt

Loriann, Matt,

Thanks for your comments and no I am not upset in the least. My philosophy is simple; you place your work for public view you have to be open to suggestions and criticism. It would be an extremely boring world if everyone liked the same thing. The worst that can possibly happen is no reaction at all. Since I am not a professional artist everything I do is for my own pleasure and in many cases I experiment to see what comes out. The Venus illustrations are an experiment. I began with a clean drawing, and then switched to the B&W illustration and began to experiment with the “stamps”. In order to see the effect I had to increase the line thickness and fill the white spaces so I could apply the stamps. Since I stamped by hand I decided to finish after stamping a zillion times! Now thanks to Ken I have a better understanding of DP layer functions and can do the work in ¼ of the time, plus by sheer dumb luck I solved the brush problem so I will now enter the Stamp phase to see what I can do. Please keep the comments coming, I learn by observing all the posted work and by all your comments.

Matt - With no self interest and in the spirit of cooperation, I want you to know that I would carve time out from my schedule to test drive X4


Effie