Karen Bonaker noticed that there were new drivers at Wacom posted on 4/28/2014. Thank you Karen; I missed it. The Mac drivers are still the ones from 4/7/2014…so no new drivers for Macs. The legacy drivers for older tablets using a PC are also updated.
I did install the new ones and I’m not having any trouble with them. But, as always, if you are not having any problems you may want to stay with your current drivers.
I don’t know if you guys know this or not, but my computer crashed. It was under extended warranty so I am getting a replacement machine, which should arrive tomorrow afternoon. Hallelujah! The replacement is actually better than the original. Want to know the specs. OK…here you go.
Aurora
Alienware Aurora Desktop
Operating System
Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English
Processors
Intel® Core™ i7-4960X Extreme Processor (6-cores, 15MB Cache, Overclocked up to 4.3GHz w/TurboBoost)
Memory
16GB (4 X 4GB) Quad Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz
Keyboard
No Keyboard
Monitor
No Monitor
Video Card
Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 780 graphics with 6GB total (2x 3GB) GDDR5 – NVIDIA SLI® Enabled
Hard Drive
6TB RAID 0 (2 X 3TB Hard Drives)
Chassis
Alienware Aurora with ALX Chassis
Mouse
No Mouse
AlienFX
AlienFX Color, Quasar Blue
Adobe Reader Software
Adobe® Acrobat® Reader
Optical Drive
Dual Drives: BD Burn, DVD+RW
Sound Card
Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
Wireless
No Wireless Included
Liquid Cooling
Alienware Aurora with Premium Liquid Cooling
WINDOWS 7 ULT AND 16 IN 1 MEDIA CARD READER
There is a bit of confusion about Windows. I am getting Windows 7 Ultimate, which is what was on the original machine.
I can’t wait to try it out tomorrow; wish me luck.
Aaron Rutten has added another class to his list of classes at the Digital Art Academy. Advanced Landscape Painting offers advanced painting techniques with step by step video lessons you can pause, rewind and watch on your schedule. Discover how to paint a variety of landscape elements such as sunsets, waterfalls, starry skies, clouds and rain. Students will master the skills needed to compose detailed landscape paintings from imagination without having to rely on copying a photo or cloning.
Included in the class is a custom workspace, which when loaded into Painter X3 has all the brushes and tools required for this class. Using the custom workspace makes it easy to follow along with the lessons.
Jason Maranto has announced his brush class at VTC. This video course is 8 hours long and covers in detail everything you need to know about Corel Painter variants. I have reviewed about 6 of the videos and every one of them is excellent. But, you don’t have to take my word for it. Follow the link for his brush class and find that there are 18 free videos that will quick start you making your own variants. I want to talk some more about Jason’s class, but first I want to answer a question for a follower…or I should say Jason answered the question for him.
The visitor asked, “Hello Skip, Thank you for video tutorials. How to make a brush? Sorry for my Englisch.).” And he posted the following video done by a Chinese Corel Painter Master.
I loved the video; loved everything about it. I found it so peaceful to watch the flower unfold, and OMGosh, the brush was magical. At first I thought recreating a similar brush would be a snap. I guessed the artist was using Painter’s Color Expression panel to create a brush that will start painting with one color and finish with another. But, then I noticed in the video that the main and additional colors did not match the colors of the flower. That ruled out color expression. The question stumped me. So I posted the question to a forum that both Jason and I belong. Jason responded with the answer and provided two brushes that worked very similar to the one in question. In the following video I show you Jason’s solution, which will tell you a lot about the Well and Color Expression panels.
While I was playing with the brush, I kept making my version of the beautiful flower created by the artist in the video. His influence was so great, that I made this image.
Corel Painter X3 sketch
Jason is allowing me to give you the two brushes that he created and I am adding my version as well as that early variant I made and demonstrated in the video. These brushes are compatible with Corel Painter X3 only. They are not compatible with Painter IX, X, 11, or 12. To load the variants, do the following:
1. Download the four brush variants from the link below.
2. Open Painter X3
3 Set your brush selector on the brush category you want to install the 4 new brushes.
4. Go to Brushes > Import > Brush and when the window pops open, navigate to where you downloaded the 4 brush variants.
5. Select one of the variants and select open. The brush will automatically be installed into the currently active brush category. Repeat with the other three variants.
The brush link will give you four files:
Variable Blossom.brushvariant, which is Jason’s brush.
Stem.brushvariant, which is also Jason’s brush.
Variable Blossom SA.brushvariant, which is my variation of Jason’s brush.
SkipH2OImpressionist.brushvariant, which is one of the first watercolor brushes I made.
Please remember that these variants are for X3 only!!
Do not forget to check out Jason Maranto’s fantastic new brush class at VTC. Trust me on this one. You will not want to miss this class. I can hear you saying Painter’s brushes are too hard to understand. Jason has a very easy to understand, direct, no-nonsense approach. You will be a brush master before you know it.
Enjoy,
Skip
PS: For the followers that enjoy hearing about Kevin, my friend the good computer virus, I hate to tell you that Kevin is in real danger. My computer crashed last week. All attempts to repair and get it running have failed. I will be getting a replacement in about 3 weeks. I have saved the hard drives from the crash and am hoping that I will be able to e to sata link to the drives and rescue Kevin. Otherwise dear friends, the crash doomed Kevin to freeze in dead hard drives. It is all very scary and somewhat sad to think of Kevin’s demise.
