Thanks for all the birthday greetings, everyone! Jeff and I had dinner at Centro
(2472 Yonge St., Toronto, ON M4P 2H5 Tel: (416) 483-2211). It's become an annual tradition: once a year, I pick a top-end restaurant in Toronto for dinner. I ordered ostrich just because I've never tried it. It was good, more like beef than chicken, but not as tender as I had hoped. I loved how the desserts are offered: in tiny sample sizes ($4 each). We shared a mini banana split which looked nothing like a traditional banana split as well as very decadent chocolate croquettes which were served with a lemon custard. Yum. The restaurant was also GREAT for people-watching. :-)

My Corel Painter 9.5 arrived yesterday, a birthday gift from Jeff! I'm super-pleased with the improved brush response...much smoother and quicker. The boxed upgrade also came with two DVDs of training videos from Lynda.com, an online software training site that I've used before. And new user manuals, yay!

Because of work and FKO prep, I haven't had much time to read the manuals or play with the program yet, but I've posted a few of the quick experiments I've done so far. The picture at the top of this page was done using the new Image Hose elements in Corel Painter 9.5 and was the first image I created with my new software.

This was my second, an experiment with the Digital Watercolors:

The Digital Watercolors now allow the user to keep the layers "wet" between sessions, and you can even specify how much of a wet "fringe" you'd like.

I also knew that Corel Painter 9.5 had a new Artists' Oils set of brushes, so tried these out while doing a quick sketch of some gorgeous tulips that Ruth brought me for my birthday:

I used the Eyedropper tool to pick up colours from a photograph I took a few minutes before. I love the way the paints mix on the "paper"...much more like the real thing than previous versions. You can, of course, control almost every aspect of the brushes AND paints, including how they interact with each other. Looking forward to doing more experimenting with these virtual oil paints!

But now I have to finish some work and packing, because I'm leaving for FilKONtario today. Have a great weekend, everyone!

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