Today was extremely productive. This trip has already been totally worth it. I learned techniques today that will allow me to do stuff I’ve been doing ten times faster and with way better results! At the same time, it was very mentally exhausting. I didn’t get my morning Coke this morning and as a result I felt like my arms weighed fifty pounds each. Besides, the morning was filled with the same activities we had been doing yesterday: exploring the different Painter brushes by turning circles of color into shapes and working on a picture of two little girls by the ocean. The results from these works were cool enough, and the exercises were necessary to learn, but this afternoon we got to work on our own pictures.

Morphing a circle into a tree.

This class is being taught by Jane Conner-Ziser, a photographer and digital painter in Ormond Beach, FL. There was no way I could afford her one-on-one tutoring, but the class I signed up for is really just as good since I’m one of two students in it. The other student is Julie, a photographer who wants to learn Painter in order to offer portraits for her wedding photography customers. Her fine art photography is something else entirely — she takes pictures of things that look like they’re seen through the eyes of the legally blind. You can really not tell what the objects are in these pictures. I can relate, since I was nearly blind without my contacts or glasses before my corrective surgery. The pictures really do look like what it was like to view the world without my glasses. But so far, rather than sell these pictures, she takes the wedding photography for monetary purposes. It makes me wonder if there will be a market for the art I intend to sell.

As such, I’m glad that Jane is really going into the business side of digital painting in her classes as well. She’s really telling us a lot about the sort of things people look for in this medium. I figure if I can’t get enough business once I get my site all set up, I may look into contacting some photographers that I like to see if we could work together. I’m sure when people normally look for a portrait these days, they go photography considering to sit for a professional painter, the end result may cost them upwards of 15,000 dollars. She told us how digital painting still takes a lot of work, skill, and time, but since it can be more streamlined it offers this sort of luxury to people for thousands less.Of course, I can’t justify charging anybody that much at this point. I still consider myself to be an amateur. I think that 20 dollars an hour is fair, but to be honest, I really just don’t know. I’m pretty humble about my meager talents, and a lot of people tell me this is too low. I guess we’ll see what the demand ends up being over the coming months. In any case, this style of painting is definitely going to be a benefit to my future illustrations of my future stories. So at least I have that.

I will show you my awesome first painting in a day or two that I am very excited about. For now, I will leave you with a picture of a lady whose job is evidently “The Chick-Fil-A Bearer Of Wet Naps and Mints.” Her name: Happy. That’s really her name! And it also really seems to suit her well. It makes me wonder if naming your child Happy has a direct result. Do people treat you differently knowing that your name is Happy? I bet they do. And even if you ended up with a grumpy child, at least it would be ironic.

Happy said her black shoes and God get her through the day.