Sometimes an idea doesn’t come in a flash. In this case it took years. It can happen to you, too. You just have to be patient.
This is a second piece using Emergence to create the abstract brushwork that is contained by the various shapes within the composition. I’m playing with the contrast of the underlying abstract brushwork with the sharp edges that contain the shapes.
I have many shots of turn-of-the-century Commercial style architectural elements to use as a resource. I am going to create a series of these paintings which should look good as a group.
Portland Fish Market
San Francisco-based artist Jeremy Sutton and long-time Painter instructor has been using Emergence lately (see the above image). Jeremy has asked if I’d demo the brushes for his PaintboxTV members.
I will be demonstrating my Emergence brushes on Jeremy’s PainterLab, a feature of his Paintboxtv website. PainterLab is an informal monthly virtual Q & A session, open to all current PaintboxTV Premium Members, where you can get help with your technical and artistic questions, feedback and advice on projects, learn more about Painter and pick up useful tips and techniques. You need to be a current member at the time of the PainterLab – it is included in a PaintboxTV Premium Member subscription.
If you are not a Paintbox TV subscriber, don’t worry. I will be creating an instructional video that essentially covers the same content. I’ll be posting it after the November 19th PainterLab demo.
Writer and artist L.A. James has created Artistic Journeys: Insights from Digital Artists Around the World, a unique series of interviews with a range of digital artists, exploring their backgrounds and what makes them tick. The series will cover an artist a month through August 2020. I am honored to be the subject of this month’s interview. You can read the interview here.
West Bottoms, kansas city
Ever since releasing Emergence, I’ve been working on how to best employ it in my own art. Emergence brushes are designed to create a complex texture within each stroke. As a result, this complexity needs to be contrasted against simple shapes and line-work.
I have a long history of taking photographs of architectural elements utilizing a flat orthogonal point of view. Using such a photo as a starting point, I have been able to break the composition down into its simplified parts and fill the separate areas with Emergence brushwork. The idea is to create a balance between the source photo and its painted representation.
Original Photo
An interesting byproduct of this balance is an internal compositional flexibility making it easy to crop the image into further related compositions similar to a fractal.
West Bottoms Detail
west bottoms detail
I’m going to be printing the full image at a scale that enables the textural complexity to compete with the simplified shapes and lines.
After a couple of hiccups, Emergence 1.1 for Corel Painter is now live. Current users have been sent an update email with download instructions. If you are a current user do not receive an update email, email me and I’ll get it to you. Emergence 2020 is also now available for sale here.
This update includes a Workspace file for Painter 2020. It additionally includes a manual installation option that can be installed in Painter versions 2017-2020. This enables the ability to create and save Look files that binds both an Emergence brush and desired Paper grain into a single custom button for easy retrieval.
The manual installation option can be installed into any existing Painter workspace. Many users have asked for this capability so that Emergence can be installed into a user’s preferred workspace.
If you have Painter versions 2017 thru 2019, you must use the manual installation to replace the previous workspace file. Choose a preferred workspace and install Emergence 1.1 there. I will not be updating the 2017-19 Emergence workspaces; the manual installation is now the standard installation for older versions of Painter. I am doing this to reduce the updating process. It is simply too time-consuming to create multiple different workspace files for all versions of Painter.
There are new installation and Look management videos that demonstrate how to create your own library of Emergence brushes. Please take the time to watch and refer to these videos for customizing your installation of Emergence.
I’m pleased to announce that a Painter 20/20-compatible update for Emergence will be coming out this Friday, July 12. This update will feature the ability to install Emergence into any existing Painter Workspace, which has been the #1 user request.
Existing Emergence users will receive an email (using the email used for your purchase) with a download link for the update package. An Emergence 20/20 workspace will be included as an alternative method of installation, as well.
New purchases of Emergence will include the 20/20 update as part of the package.
John Derry
