September has been a pretty good month at The Artists’ Quarter. The September Atelier featured Creative Cloning in CS5 and had so much in it! It’s now available as a standalone, with support from Tim, so if you want to learn a whole lot more about cloning as a real art medium, using lots of creative brushwork and clever CS5 effects, sign up for this brilliant course.
The next two Ateliers are already being planned for October, so watch the sidebars on TAQ for more information! These Ateliers are excellent for working alongside other people, while still developing our own style. But we don’t have to attend every meeting, although it is great fun to do so! Tim aims to have the webinars at weekends with just one or two midweek – and they are all recorded for download for future reference, as well as for when we just can’t attend.
The number of times I wished I could just chat with other people trying to do digital art! And now through our experience with the ateliers, we can organise free weekly TAQ meetings where we look at each others’ work, compare notes on how techniques work, and just chat and have fun together. If you haven’t tried one yet, do sign up for the next meeting and give it a whirl! Ideally you need a mic/headset to be able to talk, although you can use the ‘chat’ box to type in messages and just listen with loudspeakers. In fact we’re going to make some meetings open to everyone registered with TAQ, so you can all see how they work and what fun they are. I bet once you try it, you’ll invest in a headset.
Freebies have included Tim’s terrific CS5 Mixer Pad, complete with mixing brush and demo video. Mixing your own colours helps to make sure your painting has unity, and Painter has long had a mixer palette – but how to do it in Photoshop? Tim has provided the answer! And Ray has invented a Photoshop Interative Save that can be shortcut into your tablet, and used just as easily as Painter’s built-in version. Tim has posted mini video tuts on a range of subjects, including restoring old and damaged photos with colour casts, and continues to build up the Resources video section.
Perhaps, now we have been going for six months, it’s time to have an Open Day, so visitors can see just what a fantastic place the TAQ studios are. Yes, subscriber members get a discount on classes and courses – but the subscription is worth far more than that. Join us at the weekend and see for yourself.
