Painter Screen Grab

There are those who don't believe me when I say that the majority of my illustrative work is digital. Or I should say some viewers take a second look when they find out that my watercolour art is painted in Painter. So I thought it would be nice to post an image capture of Prudence on my old gamer PC. (Yes, I use a PC to paint, not a Mac. I like Macs and I use to work on one in college, but I bought a PC, and I like it!)
If I work on a sheet of 8.5 x 11 inch copy paper, I scan it in at 600 dpi and clean it up in Photoshop. Then I drop the dpi down to 300. Scanning in at 600 and then lower the image to 300 makes the drawing nice and crispy for painting and printing. Plus at 300 dpi, it's still larger than the original drawing.
So that's how I prepare it for Painter. Before I begin to use the digital watercolour brushes, I select the image, copy it then paste in place. After that, I change the default selection in the Layers window to gel. Then I use 'Equalize' on the copied image to lighten the 'gel' layer linework.
Now I'm ready for painting!
I hope you can figure out the different brushes on the screen capture. If not, don't hesitate to ask!

enjoy
~p~