[Claire]

I just got my first issue of Photoshop User featuring a wonderful study by Fay Sirkis on photo painting. This is what I like to do and want to learn more techniques for improvement. You can do a Google search for "Fay Sirkis" and see her gallery. I take a lot of pictures of people in informal settings, and like to crop the closeups and "paint" them. You don't really have to know how to draw to do this and have a pretty good outcome. You couldh't do it with a mouse. I have the Intuous 2. Now the Intuous 3 is out with a pen-brush that gets better results, but I will have to wait a while before I upgrade to that. Following the magazine's study, I have done this much on a photo of one of my friends -- I had to stop last night and decided to pick up again when I have time:


More shading needs to be done and, of course, finishing out the picture. I'm also using Painter IX along with Photoshop CS2.