I wanted to become an atheist but I gave it up. They have no holidays.
Henny Youngman



Spring has become my Christmas season, at least as far as illustration goes. Publishers production schedules have me creating a lot of Christmas themed images this time of year. One example, is this scene of Mrs Claus saying goodbye as Santa heads off on his big trip, painted for Metro Creative.

The image called for a warm, painterly kind of style that has a “hand-crafted” appearance befitting the subject. Typically, I would head off to Painter to capture that look. After all, Painter’s marquee feature is its out of the box tool selections that accurately mimic traditional, real world, media. But instead, I stayed with Photoshop exclusively, manning a set of brushes that I’ve created by simply modifying some PS supplied versions. The reason? I find it can be frustrating to try and create a nice thin to thick stroke using many of my favorite brushes in Painter, even though I’m using a pressure sensitive Wacom Cintiq. So when it comes to physically smaller assignments, especially those that don’t necessarily call for showing a lot of strong texture, (which Painter excels at), PS gets the nod.