Steven Powers (SMP): February 2012

The Gamut Mask Tool Overview


This is a free online tool for creating Gamut Masks which aids in refining a color palette. This tool was created by Richard Robinson and is hosted on his site Live Painting Lessons.com HERE. The Gamut Mask can be either printed or taking a screen shot with another free tool Greenshot and saved as a PNG (PNGs have more detail than JPEGs). From there you can easily create a color palette in Photoshop or GIMP (not shown here.)


Color & Light Book Review


"Color & Light" by James Gurney is an excellent resource for any artist.  He explains many nuances on the topic of painting color and the interaction of light sources have on our perception of color.  He quite easily simplifies a very complex topic that all artist encounter as some point in their studies."Color & Light" can be found on Amazon or on James Gurney's blog Gunreys Journey.  This book is a great resource that you will come back to again and again..

-Steve

Blender 2.6.2 Released


Blender Foundation has released version 2.6.2.  Blender is a professional grade CG suite and has come along way since their 2.4 version.  Even Lynda.com has created tutorials on Blender HERE.  What irony ...a commercial tutorial for an Open Source application.  Blender 2.6.2 change log and download can be found HERE.

-Steve


Digital Painting instead of Traditional Painting?


Why Digital Painting instead of Traditional Painting? I get asked this question a lot.  Of course neither is better than the other but for me there were many advantages starting with digital painting.