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Buy the Bamboo Wacom Tablet at Amazon

I received the Corel Painter program as a birthday gift from my mother.  Honestly, it blows my mind the kind of brushstrokes it creates.  As someone who grew up in the nineties, I played with computer painting programs as a child but this?  It amazes me at how realistic the strokes and lines I can create thanks to this program.  The brushstrokes and paint feel so real, I cannot imagine the time it took to create this.  With his ideas on Hyperreality, I wonder what Jean Baudrillard would have thought about this piece of technology.  While I still enjoy painting and drawing for real, I love the sense of organization that comes from Corel Painter and Bamboo canvas.  I do not have to worry about making a big mess with my notebooks and painting utensils.  Not to mention the near endless possibilities this offers me.  I can choose whatever canvas, paint, ink, pencil, and spraying tools I want, in whatever size I want.

Probably my favorite type of tool from this program comes from the Thin and Thick Paint section.  I am currently turning my photos into paintings, and they enhance them.  Essentially, I am giving my photos a sense of depth.  However, some photos just look like I put plastic or glass over them during the transformation period.  In other words, I do not make them as clear as the original.  Also, I find that I work best with a stylus than I do with a finger when creating my work.  Finally, on the “draw like an Impressionist” part, probably the Van Gogh tool does not produce the best results.  The strokes just look ugly to me.  I did like John Singer Sargent tool.  Furthermore, the jury’s still out on the Georges Seurat device.  Plus, it amuses me that this program only names painters from the Modern art era.  The program does have the “Classical” tool in the Color section, but no specific artists.