When I first heard that the Federation of Canadian Artists was holding its first ever Digital Exhibition (for works created digitally), I thought that would be perfect fit for my technical side and my creative side.  A creative spark was born!

I made several attempts to create something with Photoshop, a program I use extensively to crop, combine and alter photographs prior to painting them.  But the attempts I made to create an image by selectively cropping and combining photos fell flat and the painting tools just didn’t work for me. The creative spark dwindled to a small ember.  The deadline was looming and I wasn’t getting anywhere.

But the idea stuck with me and I spend some surfing time browsing software that would allow you to paint directly on the computer.  I found a program I liked called ArtRage and downloaded the demo.  Over the next week or so, I played with the demo, experimenting with the various tools and figuring out how to get the colours I wanted out of the colour picker (where is Burnt Sienna anyway?).

Then I got some news that fanned the small ember back into a spark!  The deadline for the show had been extended! I purchased ArtRage and got to work. A day and a half later, I had my first digital painting.

I submitted the finished image to the show and was accepted.  Success!  But wait – that meant I had to get it printed and mounted on canvas.  Got that done and sent the painting in to the FCA Gallery on Granville Island in Vancouver.

I was very pleased just to have met the challenge and combined my computer skills with my artistic side.  So you can imagine how pleased I was to hear that my effort won an Award of Excellence in the show!

Thanks to the FCA for recognizing this new medium and holding a show to display what can be done with it.