I was originally working on a fun pen and paper design today, but then the Micron pen I was using started to act up on me (pretty much the last of the pens I had that was still working correctly) and so out of frustration I broke out the Photoshop and my Wacom tablet and I created something similar to what I was working on before the pen problem cropped up, but it turned out way more awesome this time. Not to mention that I finished this in like 20 minutes! Take that stupid old pen and paper.

You know, after spending so much of my time working with Photoshop I think I’ve ended up pretty good at it. I mean, there are still so many brushes, features, and filters that I haven’t even tried yet, so there will always be something new to experiment with. For right now though, I’m feeling confident that I could whip up just about whatever I wanted, and in a relatively short amount of time.

Personally, I kind of like how I don’t know exactly how everything I do in Photoshop will turn out. It’s more fun to experiment this way. I’m assuming it’s like this for real life painters (as opposed to digital painters), where they have a pretty good idea of what they’re trying to create, but the brushes and paints kind of take over at a certain point. Maybe that doesn’t make total sense to everyone, I dunno.

In my experience though, I have an idea of the colors I’m using at the start, and the theme (Today’s was outer space combined with the idea of a blue sky with clouds) and then I just kind of play around and see what works and what doesn’t. I’m pretty quick with everything, so I’ll jump around and try different settings and tools that I’m familiar with, and usually some new ideas start to take shape the image evolves from there.

Basically, the picture ends up quite a bit different than what I had in my head when I started. I think that’s got to be what makes it fun to be an artist. If I knew exactly how it was going to turn out, then drawing or painting would no doubt be quite boring. Having the process of creation be adventurous for me is what gets me excited to do this in the first place. I never really have any idea how it’s going to look in the end.