Learning to paint

On This Week in Ontario Edublogs, we featured one of Colleen Rose’s blogposts and she was listening to us during the show. Not only was she listening, she was also creating and blogging. You can see the results of what she was doing on her blog at this post.

I was humbled that she included me in the discussion and was super interested in the activity that she describes in the post. I don’t have an Etsy account but my daughter who was sitting on the couch so I gave her a $1 coin and she downloaded the picture that Colleen had made available. You can see the original on her website as the first thing you’ll see when you land there.

There is just so much detail. I expanded the picture and marvelled at what I saw. I can only imagine what the original painting looks like.

So, all we have to do is paint like Colleen. I’m guessing the preferred direction would be to bring it and then use crayons or paint to do your best.

Another alternative would be to do the job digitally which is what Colleen did. She used an old iPad as her tool; my iPad is even older than hers, I’m sure. I do have Gimp and a Wacom tablet on my desktop but the skill to make the magic just wasn’t there.

Maybe I’ll have better luck with my Chromebook. With a touchscreen, I can draw with my finger. I downloaded Krita (for free) and installed it since Procreate isn’t available on that platform.

I’ve always been intimidated by painting programs as they have so many features.

The functionality is like so many paint programs I’ve used in the past. Yes, intimidating but the key to use is to understand that you don’t have to use all the features.

It’s installed and I’m working with Colleen’s project. I’m having at least a bit of success but nothing share-worthy when I look at the original. But I’m going to continue to work at it. I hope to get proficient but this is going to take a while. I’m not an artist by any stretch of the imagination and I’m sure that mindset would be very helpful at this time.

My takeaway for you – download Colleen’s colouring piece and see what you can do with your favourite paint program. If you’re looking for one to start, Krita might be just what you’re looking for.

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