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Visitors Book and Email |
If you have any comments on my pictures, or any tips on technique, or if you know of any good web sites featuring digital painting or manipulation, it would be great to hear from you. I have been running a guest book for some time but recently spammers have discovered it and I have had to discontinue the Form element. Instead, please either email me  , or if you use Hotmail or another web based email service, email me at david.cole12[at]btinternet.com replacing the [at] with @. I will post your comments below in the usual way, and respond when that seems helpful. My Visitors' Book was started in January 2005 and over time it will form a history of my web site - so do please leave some comments or questions if you'd like to. |
| Thanks for visiting. |
| David |
| Visitors Book 1 |
4 February 2010 Hi David, I recently joined the DPF and was blown over by your portrait of Marcella. I could look at it all day. I tore myself away from it to visit your website. I had already pre-ordered your book from Amazon, because of your tutorials in Painter mag, but I hadn't been aware of your work in watercolour, which is my main interest. I am so pleased to have found it. I am really looking forward to your book. I would like a DVD too... if you can... Next I shall investigate your online tutorials. Will you be doing any articles/tutorials in the new Digital Artist magazine? I'm borderline cancelling my subscription, but if you have been asked to do any more, I'll hang on in there. Thanks so much for your work and website. Hilary Thanks for writing to me. I'm glad you like my pictures - thanks for letting me know. Watercolour is my first love and simulating it digitally is not easy. I find Painter of little use for this and almost always turn to Photoshop. Despite having a lorry load of Watercolor and Digital Watercolor brushes I have never found ways to make those brushes work for me really satisfactorily. I continue to search for a process but haven't really found one - nor I have to say, has anyone else as far as I can see. The watercolour approach I have grown started with the process set out in pages 212-217 of 'How to Wow, Photoshop for Photography' - by Jack Davis and Ben Willmore published by Peachpit Press. I strongly recommend this as a place to begin - particularly if you are interested in simulating transparent watercolours. Amazon sell it. My picture of Marcella was made with Photoshop. I just did three or four tutorials for Painter magazine - some time ago now - and have not been asked to contribute anything to the Digital Artist magazine. I believe that the editorial staff of Digital Artist are the same as for Painter Magazine so I am not expecting to be asked - I seem to be out of the loop. I haven't actually seen a copy of Digital Artist but in principal I like the idea of it being cross-software. The reality is that most of us in this area use Photoshop and Painter in our pictures, as well as some filters and plug-ins, and it is good to acknowledge this I think. No word on the book yet. It was due out in December but it seems to have hit a rock and is still with the publishers. No DVD yet either I'm afraid. I must get round to it. But do look at the Wow book I mentioned above - the watercolour technique is quite good. Good luck with your painting and best wishes. David 5 February 2010 Hi David, Thanks very much indeed for such helpful advice. I have ordered How to Wow and am now engrossed in learning Photoshop. I see Wow is for advanced users, not beginners, but having experienced the learning curve of Painter, I am starting PS with a beginner's guide to Elements 7! We have got CS3 - it looked a bit daunting, so I got Elements last year, but never got round to using it. About time I did! Next step, CS3, next step, Wow. When my head is going round too much in curves and histograms, I watch the SAA's TV Anytime watercolour tutorial videos on YouTube. I think I'm probably going to have to get some actual paint as well. I bought John Derry's watercolor brushes, and was interested that in the video tutorial, he goes into W&N watercolours, and suggests making a color set from that to create the authentic look. He probably needs to go even further. Painting from scratch, I suppose each brush needs to be limited to its appropriate hues - granulating or clear, transparent or opaque, or the choice of colour will still look not quite right. Let alone the traditional English way of mixing a few carefully selected colours for harmony, and depth and distance. Mixer palette, and some Really Real brushes to pick up subtle colour changes in the brushload, I think, and push the opacity slider right down... |
8 September 2009 David love your oils. . Would you be doing any DVD's in the near future? Are there any trainings or books or DVD you can recomend? I have done your tutorials and can't get enough. Here [attached] is a new image emulating watercolor even though the file says oil. I would like to master oils like I handle watercolors.. Thanks for your help! Your work really enspires me. Your an amazing artist! Warm regards, Mitch The cowboy is very well done. The treatment looks to me like an oil with a lot of watercolorish texture effects like splashes and drops added. You might try to get the actual look of dried watercolour which often has sediment fringes and granulation effects. Of course, gouache is also a water based medium but is opaque so it looks more like oil or acrylics. With gouache you don’t get the texture effects you get with transparent watercolour. Here is a wonderful watercolour sketch by John Singer Sargent ["In Switzerland"] that illustrates how transparent watercolour often looks on watercolour paper; you should note all the watercolour characteristics [http://jssgallery.org/Paintings/In_Switzerland.html]. I liked your version of the boy’s portrait from my Painter Magazine tutorial you published on the Painter Magazine gallery. A little heavy on the canvas texture perhaps – you were having too much fun with that Grainy Sargent brush! I have a book coming out in December about digital painting – I assume the publication date is still December – I haven’t heard from the publishers for a few weeks. It is advertised on Amazon now. I am also hoping to make a DVD on oil portrait painting to sell from my website around the time the book comes out. I’m still trying to find a suitable photograph and then I need to get my head round the software. But it’s possible. David |
20 August 2009 David, I happened to stumble upon your site. I must congratulate you on the quality of your work. You're obviously a chap I have a lot in common with, and you're doing fabulous things with Photoshop. Just wanted to let you know how much I'm admiring your efforts. Excellent stuff! Kind regards, Tim Shelbourne. |
20 August 2009 Hi David.. I am writing you from the states. Your digital paintings are awsome and really inspire me! Your portrait style is organic with wonderful tension you create with color! I can use some help here with the tutorial in painter magazine.. Getting creative with brushes... I don't seem to pick up the texture that you create with the custom sargent brush. I also having difficulty with the bristle brush as impasto is much too strong and looks artifical. I am using Painter 11 and followed the instructions very careuflly. I know the paper works as if I use a conte brush i get the desired texuture which is illustrated in your finsihed picture. It just does not work for me with the brushes you explain in the tuturial. Would love to see more of your tututorials.. Are they published anywhere else? Much appreciated!! Warm regards, Mitch Would you kindly share with me how you achieved these paintings.. Particualry the texture and the brushes you used. Typically when i use the oily brush its much more wet and you dont see the texture of the canvas. Not sure what to tweek. Thanks in advance! Warm regards, Mitch As I recall it, both pictures were made with a customised Sargent brush. In the Brush Creator and on the General page, change the Method to Cover and the Subcategory to Grainy Hard Cover. Then set the Opacity to 100% and the Grain to 11%. David |
23 July 2009 Hi David, I'm brand new to digital painting, although I've been an artist and graphic designer for many years. In the past couple of months, I've spent many hours checking out websites and galleries of digital painters, and you are without a doubt one of the very best. I first became aware of you through your cloning tutorials in Painter Magazine's bookazine "The Complete Guide to Digital Painting" Vol. 1. The painting of Josh in your advanced cloning tutorial made my jaw drop and my heart race. So it was possible (with a whole heckuva lot of practice and the blessings of the art gods, of course) to achieve a painterly style with digital tools! Since then, I've kept an eye out for your name and your work. I'm very excited to hear that you're planning a DVD (more than one, I hope). In the meantime, I would love to study some of your digital paintings at their original size. Is there any way I could do this? I'm a member of Digital Painting Forum. Could you please give me links to your tutorials there? I wasn't able to find anything using your name as a search term there. And if you have links to tutorials of yours elsewhere online, I'd really appreciate those, too. Back in January of 2007, you said "so far I have not been able to get a decent watercolour effect from Painter in colour clone mode and prefer Photoshop for this." Have you been able to figure out how to achieve a satisfactory watercolor look with cloning in Painter since then? Although I like to do prep and post work in Photoshop, I prefer to do the actual painting in Painter X. So many questions! But you do inspire them, and me. Thanks very much! Diana Sparks Hello Diana Thank you for taking the time to write and let me know you like some of my pictures. Sorry I don’t have any full size versions of my pictures on my website or on the Painter Magazine website where I also exhibit – however some of the pictures are reproduced pretty large and you should be able to see quite a lot detail. I have not produced much new work for a while because I have been working on a digital painting book I have been commissioned to produce. I’m still working on it but I think it’s due out through Amazon sometime in December. This is not my book in the sense that it does not focus on my painting – it is about real media painting techniques and how you can try to replicate them digitally. En route there will be many walk through demonstrations which show how I approach my pictures. If I have time I will try to make a demonstration dvd to coincide with the book publication. There is a tutorial on my website, much of which appears in the book too. Look under “Art Links and Tutorials”. No, I haven’t cracked Painter for watercolour yet. I still reach first for Photoshop. Maybe one day... Best wishes and good luck with your pictures. David |
21 July 2009 Hi David I really like your style of art, is it for sale and if so approx how much? (for example your poppy art is really nice). Thanks. Tim |
30 March 2009 Hi David, I wanted to tell you that of all the artists' work I've seen, your use of Corel Painter is the most impressive to me. You have incredible sensitivity to the use of the program and I'm so impressed with your work. I was a plein air painter for over 20 years. I have since become disabled and I'm now learning Corel Painter X. I have been following your PDF tutorial (the portrait of the young man) featured on the Corel website. I have a few questions since using the PDF tutorial and I was wondering if I could pay you to help me with these questions. Is that a possibility? If you would be able to coach me a bit, I would try to zero-in on my questions so that I wouldn't take up too much of your time. Thank you in advance for any help you can give me. Cheers, Laurie Hi Laurie I'm glad you like some of my work. I'm afraid I can't take on any commitments at the moment because I'm working on a book I have been commissioned to write about Digital Painting Techniques. I'm not sure when the book is being published - this year I think. There will be a lot of material in there about the techniques I use. Having said that, do ask any particular questions you have. Painter has a long learning curve - I learn new things all the time. Just stick with it. Best wishes David |
30 March 2009 Good Day ... I hope your day will be a good day ... While wandering through the web, in search of anything related to PhotoArtMaster Gold 1.5, I came across your site. Artists, like you, have eyes attached to your hands and fingers, and that is why your works look so easy to do ... yet impossible, unless one is an artist. Great eye candy ! I 'use' PhotoArtMaster Gold 1.5 and enjoy the creations that flow from relatively easy input. Since the creating company has gone 'belly up,' I have not been able to find an answer to this: I can not get the program to run on Vista 64-bit machines; 32-bit machines, no problem. Do you know of anyone that has run PhotoArtMaster Gold 1.5 on Vista 64-bit machines? Any lead will be appreciated. Thanks for your time and consideration. Jim, in Michigan, USA |
| 24 March 2009 Hey, love your stuff. Ive been using buzz-pro for a while also. I kinda combine several different plug-ins to get my effects. One I particularly like to use with buzz-pro is Lucis Art. I get some good effects I am leaning more to using painter with a lot of my artwork these days. I have a lot of pictures from Venice also. One of my fav places to Buzz....so to speak. I have included a piece that was assembled in Photoshop CS4 and finished in Buzz-Pro Let me know what you think. Martin |
12 November 2008 Love your website... some terrific paintings there! We miss you at the Inn, but I see you are busy with your own site now. Feel free to advertise your work, if you sell it, in our new ads forum, near top of main index page. Or just stop and say hi and show off some of your favorite paintings in our digital forums. Phyllis Stewart, Innkeeper |
28 May 2008 Hi David, My compliments for your great tutorial on Charlie Gardening. I´ll try the steps with some of my pictures just to see the results I can achieve. I really appreciate watercolors and have tried lots of techniques trying to approach this feeling using Painter. Thanks for sharing your knowlege. []s. Marcelo Thanks, Marcelo. I’m glad you found the tutorial helpful. Your message prompted me to add some links to the tutorials I have contributed to Painter Magazine. I keep meaning to do a DVD and hopefully I’ll get round to it over the summer. David |
20 March 2008 Hi David, I've just looked through your website a little more thoroughly than last time I visited. I must say that your work really impresses. Do you share your methods? The portrait of Josh in Artwork 3 is amazing and I would love to know how you achieved the effect. I'm still looking for Buzz Simplifier. If you have any news on developments on that score, please let me know. Good luck with your amazing work. Ashley King Thanks, Ashley. You're in luck with the Josh portrait. This was done for a feature on Colour Cloning in Corel Painter Magazine. The article was called "Get Creative with Cloning" and was in Issue 10. The detailed walkthrough tutorial on the Josh picture was the third tutorial in the feature. You should be able to get back copies of the magazine from their website - http://www.paintermagazine.co.uk . The cover and Josh article look like this:
Sorry, can't help you with buZZ. Should be out there somewhere. David |
23 January 2008 Hi
Just visited your site. Your work is extremely well done. It shows what can be done with professional digital manipulation with the right skill set. You might want to take a quick peek at our site www.learndesk.com - nothing so great as what you have displayed here but some links and some examples of digital art that I have tried. I can see that I have a lot to learn from others such as yourself Dave. Thanks for a most enjoyable visit!
Cheers
I would like to provide a link from my website to yours. Would that be a problem? Thanks, Terry. It all takes time but it gets easier - and it's always fun. I don't mind if you want to add a link to my site on yours. Best wishes David |
22 January 2008 Hi David, I came across your website while looking for BUZZ Simplifier. I am so impressed with your portraits. They are amazing. You are an inspiration to those of us who would like to do more than just take photographs. Do you know of an alternative to Buzz that I could use? Kind regards Ashley King Thanks, Ashley. Glad you like the portraits. They are always interesting to do. On buZZ – see my answer to Cindy on 2 Jan 2008 below. I don’t know of any alternative to buZZ. Some people on the Retouching Forum of the Digital Photography Review website say that they have, or know of, Photoshop Actions that do the same job. I have never seen this myself. You can get a very crude approximation – and an unsatisfying one – using filters like Photoshop’s Surface Blur and Dry Brush but they are no substitute and I don't recommend them. What we really want is for Corel to buy the apparently failed buZZ company (fo2pix) and add buZZ to Painter 11. David |
21 January 2008 David, just discovered your fabulous website. What a tremendous amount of talent. I looked at your pictures and love your work. Do you teach classes? I would certainly love to learn some of the many things that you do. I have been at Painter for about a year now and simply love it although not too much talent. I find one does progress however! Thanks for your help. Thanks too for so kindly sharing what you do on your website. Janet Janet - thanks for getting in touch. Apart from doing tutorials for Painter Magazine I am determined to produce a demo DVD for release through my website later in the year. I keep saying I'm going to do it but this year I mean it. Painter is a great program that has so much depth you can spend years exploring it - and I intend to!. Good luck with your painting and have fun! David |
2 January 2008 Hello David - I came across your site while trying to find some information on Buzz software. I had the software years ago but lost it. I have been trying to find another copy but the company seems to be out of business. I would be most grateful if you could lead me in any direction to finding another copy. Surely someone out there out there could make a copy etc... any help would be appreciated. Your art is just beautiful!! Thanks so much, cindy mc..... Thanks, Cindy. As you say, the company that made buZZ seems to have gone out of business. I can only suggest that you Google to see if you can find a free download of the buzz Simplifier – the most useful tool – somewhere. Here’s a trial version of buzz Pro that still seems to work: http://www.download.com/BuZZ-Pro/3000-2192_4-7779052.html. David |
