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Program Description

Review

Nature Painter Digital Canvas (NPDC) is a software program that sort of mimics how one would paint with, well......paint.  It includes a number of different brushes and a palette knife.  You can adjust brush pressure, amount of paint, angle and size.  Colors include a list of standard colors, or you can mix your own.  When I went to save my feeble attempt at a masterpiece I was given the choice of saving it in .bmp or .jpg format. 

There is an easy-to-follow tutorial that covers the basics of the program and few basics of painting.  Advanced tutorials can be used to learn about such specifics as skies, mountains, trees and sunsets.  There is also a list of "inspirational" images to which you can add your own.  I am not sure about the purpose of the inspiration images except, possibly, for one to practice technique by copying them.  This was a fun program to play with, but the one missing ingredient that such a program cannot supply, of course, is artistic talent.

That said, I have a number of caveats about this program. 

NPDC asks if you want to learn to paint or improve your skills.  These are valid questions, but there is no way to compare using a mouse or trackball with using a real brush.  These are two distinctly different activities, and I think it's a bit disingenuous to assume that ANY software program can come close to being the same as holding a brush in your hand while applying paint to canvas.  There is absolutely no way to duplicate the fine and delicate movements, that a hand is capable of, by using a mouse or trackball.  Further, though the tutorials do offer some simple effective techniques, they in no way provide any kind of basic art instruction.

NPDC offers no sketch function.  Creating an image is based on the use of brushes and palette knife only.  And I would have expected that any computer program would have some kind of undo or erase function.  This one does not, except for the standard Windows undo (ctrl-z) function.  Beginners might experience some frustration with having to start over because of one wrong move with the paint brush.

Nature Painter Digital Canvas tries to be as simple as possible--I guess, that is, as simple as brushes and paint.  However, I found that some aspects of the program were not as intuitive as one might have assumed they could be.  For example, your human hand can move much more quickly over a "canvas" than the program allows movement over the digital canvas, so, after a number of quick brushstrokes, you can watch the program catching up.  I didn't see any warnings about this. 

Using NPDC, I found that the brush type must be chosen AFTER choosing or mixing a color.  And I found color mixing to be a bit cumbersome and something that required some detailed color knowledge.  I am still not sure why the colors don't mix into one hue but rather show up as many stripes of varying hues.  This might have been explained in a manual that did not come with the evaluation copy.

I think that, contrary to what the home site, http://www.naturepainter.net/, says, this is, in fact, a program for people who already know how to paint and what to try something a little different.  NPDC was a 4.2MB download that installed quickly and easily and would be a nice little program to use by the pool or anywhere else that an easel, paints, canvas and brushes just wouldn't work.  This really is a program for those who are already experienced in how to create art with paints and brushes.  Artists, I highly recommend this program. 

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