March 6, 2004 Newsletter

The splash page for the upcoming Artistic Network was loaded this morning at www.artisticnetwork.net. The new Artistic Network will be very similar to this site except that it will be less personal.

After reading David Leonhardt's commentary on being a hermit, I was reminded to blow the dust off a novel I've been writing for a few years called The Hermit Colony. It's a satirical adventure of a man named Jeremiah Williams who gets into trouble with a law ... I'll add a few chapters to it online, though I intend to publish it in book form eventually.

For anyone who hasn't noticed, I've been trying to squeeze time to create new paintings with CorelDRAW Graphics Suite. I love the program intensely, and I've been hanging out in the Corel Newsgroups lately to see what's going on. One of the comments I read there recently got my nerves on edge--one post stated that Corel PHOTO-PAINT wasn't as good a program as Adobe Photoshop, and he pointed to all the great design accolades that go to Adobe designers. Well, most of the credit does go to Adobe... but it's more because the talented artists going to college are taught to use Adobe instead of Corel--those same designers would make the same or better work in Corel if they had been taught in Corel instead.

As time permits, I will continue to add axamples and tutorials on how to use Corel products. I enjoy using CorelDRAW Graphics Suite so much, I won't even bother installing the so-called "industry standard" Adobe products.

As always... have a great weekend.
Shawn