Painter Showcase
FROM FOREWORD IN PAINTER SHOWCASE, by Jeremy Sutton: This fabulous showcase of art and artists comes at a historic juncture in the development of digital painting. With Painter we have tools that could once only have been dreamt of! It is twenty years since the birth of the pre-eminent natural media paint program, Painter. It is just over two decades since the pressure-sensitive Wacom tablet, complete with a light-weight, battery-free wireless stylus, and in combination with an array of powerful painting programs that took advantage of the pressure-sensitivity, transformed the world of the artist and opened up a whole new vista of creative possibilities. Two decades on and digital paint, which was initially met with skepticism by the public at large and the fine art world of collectors, galleries and museums alike, is now an accepted part of the spectrum of fine art media. Earlier this year I walked around David Hockney s Bigger Picture exhibition, entering one hall after another of large digital prints made from his iPad sketches, in one of the most respected and traditional fine art institutions in London: the Royal Academy. Digital has arrived. This showcase is a testament to the powerful, evocative and beautiful imagery that one tool, Painter, can be used for in the hands of a diverse range of artists from all over the world. Over the twenty years I have been using Painter I ve seen it evolve and transform, like a painting itself. That excitement, passion and enthusiasm that I remember so well from the co-creators of Painter, Mark Zimmer and the late Tom Hedges, later joined by John Derry, at Fractal Design, is still present in the new generation of developers and designers on the Painter team at Corel. Painter was never just another program, another piece of software. It was always about the artists and their art. It was the genius of Mark, Tom and John that they decided to provide the artist with access within Painter to the developer tools that control the brush behaviors. They were not just providing a digital painting studio, but a tool-making workshop behind the studio where an artist could customize and hone their tools to suit their own expressive and creative vision, as well as experiment with new looks that they had never even imagined possible. That is part of the beauty of Painter: with the multiple brush technologies and possibilities built up over twenty years of maturity, there is always something to surprise and delight! The art showcased in the following pages demonstrates the joy and passion the contributors to this book feel for Painter, as well as their mastery of this powerful tool. You'll notice that there is no Painter look. Painter empowers every artist to express themselves uniquely. No two artists use Painter exactly the same. As legendary computer pioneer Doug Englebart expressed the idea of networks (i.e. computers) augmenting human intelligence, one can think of Painter as augmenting human creativity. It provides us with an unparalleled ease, efficiency and richness of visual expression. Congratulations to Cecil for doing such a fabulous job producing this book! As with all his book projects, Cecil does everything first class, with style and quality. Thank you, Cecil, for bringing together this magnificent, inspiring and educational collection of Painter art. Enjoy the book! Cheers, Jeremy Sutton Corel Master Painter --Foreword Inside Book