The joys of being a butterfly and of course, owning a fund.

I have a pen fund and it's doing rather nicely at the moment. Though my wife and I disagree over the morality of owning such an expensive pen. We did discuss what we'd do if it reached a £1000 and I spent this on a pen, but I doubt it will go this far. Though if it did I have identified a nice pen, which I could import from Japan for around this price. They are exceptional pens. You can also purchase many limited edition pens for at least this price. I think my mont blanc will be discreetly less than this. This is not the purpose of the post, it is to discuss that I can, and do have a penchant for being a bit 'faddy' at times. My present fad is my umming and arrghhing about buying a graphic tablet for christmas as I downloaded a free 30 day trial version of Corel Painter 11. It is used by professional graphic artists to paint digitally. I like to think I am a little arty myself, well my art teacher did and he always put pressure on my mum to send me to art school after GCSE's, but I liked history. I am more talented with a pencil than a brush, mainly because pencils are abundant and cheap compared to brushes and paints and it's a regret I will probably never get good at paint, which frustrates me when I try to. I think it may be a retirement project, along with the PhD. Both of which I haven't yet, technically discussed with my wife!
So, back to the corel painter, now this is £250 of software. Now, this is beyond my means at present but if you are interested in this and have the money, oh man. It is genius.What I did find was a programme called Artrage, which has a free starter edition, so I downloaded that to see how it worked and compared to painter 11 it's basic but actually a good, as it says, starter programme. As I am using a mouse, I havent decided about the tablet yet. It is horrendously difficult in painter beacuse its so darn professional. but Artrage is pretty good. Today I have painted to pictures to try it, here is my first effort with oils!

Not quite sure what I was aiming for here, just to play with the brushes I think, though it has a landscape feel to it which I actually like. Although it looks fairly amateurish with the strokes.









So, girding my loins, I had another try and I actually like this one. Again, fairly simple as I am getting used to the programme and also having to use a mouse instead of a pen input graphics tablet which apparently provides better detailsprovides better details. I went for a kind of a beach painting with a hot african, dusky type sky. It also was the complete opposite of the dark weather days we are having at present.

I kind of like this artrage programme. Who knows I may well get better and better!