Guest Art page

4 Star Stories Staff Artist

I first tried computer art in 1970 at the University of Minnesota on a smart desk calculator with graphing capability (it couldn't be called a desktop computer because they didn't exist then). I had to wait a long time before I got another chance. I did have a brief encounter with "fat bits" on a Macintosh when I worked at Federal Express.

Windows 8 came with a really great art program, but they removed it when they released Windows 8.1. I would like to say that Windows Paint fulfilled my expectations, but it had limitations. Among others it had an alarming tendency to crash when stressed beyond its limits. I used its various incarnations for the 4 Star Stories graphics from day one. I finally was able to use Photoshop and then later Gimp 2.x, the open source version of Photoshop. To check out some of the results, look at the early issues of 4 Star Stories, when we had an in-house artist to illustrate the stories. The cleanup and shading on the completed pen-and-ink drawings were done in Photoshop. But enough about me.

The subject of this Guest Artist feature is computer art created on the Windows 11 version of Paint. It was considerably upgraded for Windows 11, in fact that was one of the reasons I bought a Windows11 computer. I was curious what I could do, and after a couple of hours screwing around I came up with the art shown here. So far I have just attempted abstract compositions, but with a little practice, I think I can do representational art as well.

There's not much to say about the art itself except I used mostly the three primary colors with a blue or black background and pens and brushes from the pull-down menu for the graphic effects. I was particularly interested in the layers feature, something I found useful in Photoshop. There are other features I would like to see Microsoft incorporate in Paint, but the interface is user friendly, and you can judge the results for yourself.

More information on upgrading to Windows 11 and the enhanced versions of Paint and Notepad appear in the Webmaster's rant.

This piece is an abstract design composed of various lines ad shapes. I really like the juxtaposition of yellow lines and the black background. I added rectangle, triangle , and circle shapes. I used the fill tool to color the closed shapes, including those where intersection of line segments formed closed figures.

-- 4 Star Stories Staff Artist

Notes on Photo Gallery Images:

Abstract Piece 1 - Classic abstract art piece using monochromatic background lines and shapes in black, white, and shades of grey.

Abstract Piece 2- Series of intersecting lines generated by straight-line segment tool.

Abstract Piece 3 - Calligraphy pen tool used to create closed spaces. Use of primary colors produces strong contrast.

Abstract Piece 4 - Overlapping ellipse shapes in various orientations. Fill color in intersections depends on ellipse colors.

Abstract Piece 5 - Intersecting straight and curved lines in the background color. Fill colors create the look of abstract shapes in space.

Click on the thumbnail to open an enlarged version in a new window.

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