The above image started life as an A4 pencil drawing, I think it took me three or four hours to complete (I am not very good at drawing, and there was quite a bit of erasing and redrawing involved). I was quite pleased with the final result, but wished that I had attempted it with colour pencils, it need colour. I considered water-colours, but it was only on lightweight paper, so this was not really an option. So I just stored it away with my other "almost made it drawings".

Eighteen months or so later, I bought a magazine with a full version of Painter 5.5 on the cover CD (About 80% of the software on my computer is from cover CD's). I played around with it, but couldn't really get anywhere with it, it is a complex program.

Anyway a couple of months after that I was browsing the CD that Painter came on and discovered that the manual was there in PDF format. That made a great difference and I really started to make some progress with Painter.

Earlier this year, I was walking past the local Angus and Robertson's bookstore and they were having a sale on computer books. These were latest issue books with 40-70% discounts. I spent just under $100 and finished up with about $250 worth of computer books. One of these was for Painter 6, I only have Painter 5.5 but maybe version 6 will appear on a cover CD one day.

The book wasn't that much use, as the interface for version 6 had been completely redesigned and quite a lot of new features added. However as I was browsing through the book, I noticed a couple of samples where a pencil drawing had been used as a starting point. Until that time I had always kept manual and computer art separated. Usually getting out the pencils and paints when I needed a break from the computer.

Anyway, these articles jogged my memory of my pencil drawing, so I dragged it out, slapped it on the scanner and created a 300 dpi scan. I loaded it into Painter, cleaned up the scan and then attacked it with the water-colour and airbrush tools.

The result is the image above, although this is greatly reduced in size from the original A4. I am pleased with the result and so was my youngest granddaughter, who received a laser print of it as a birthday present. I think that I may try creating some more images using this method.