Corel Painter Master - Marilyn Sholin

Name: Marilyn Sholin Occupation/Profession: Portrait artist Employer: Self Location: Miami, FL Hobbies: Travel, learning new multimedia art techniques, my pets and my family

Biography

How long have you been in this profession?
Twenty-five years.

Why did you choose this profession?
Photography and visual arts have always been a part of my life. My brothers and uncle always had the latest cameras and our family had professional portraits taken no matter how tight money was. My mother made sure I had a great art education through taking me to NYC museums as a very young child.

My older brothers had a darkroom in the basement that I hung out in with them. Eventually, almost 20 years later, that packed-up darkroom became mine and I printed my first photographs of my son as a baby on the same enlarger that my older brothers printed our childhood pictures on.

How did you get started?
Using a borrowed 35mm camera from my older brother, I took adult education classes at night to learn how to use the camera and eventually started photographing my friends' families. From the moment I shot my first roll of film, I won a local Kodak contest that gave me incentive to continue to explore the possibilities of being a professional artist.

What are your most important accomplishments?
My most important accomplishment is yet to come. All that has come before now—awards, magazine articles profiling my work, speaking and teaching engagements, two published books, developing my style of painting and raising over $100,000 for the Miami Children's Museum—are all just the beginning to the "Best is Yet to Come."

Describe a special moment in your career.
Current Special Moment that I am very much looking forward to is my first art gallery show in Los Angeles that accepted five of my hand-embellished canvases for the artist show in August 2005.

Marilyn's web site is www.marilynsholin.com.

History with Painter

How long have you used Painter?
First Painter class was in April of 2001. Before that, I owned Painter 5 and Art Dabbler for over two years and played with them both, but didn't truly produce usable work until I took the class.

Why did you choose Painter?
There is only one PAINTER. There is no other choice when it comes to natural media software to produce artwork.

What are your top five favorite Painter features:
Cloning from multiple sources, scripts to replay at higher resolutions, brush choice and adaptability, the control Painter allows of all its features, the true-to-life painting experience through the brush controls, undo, undo, undo, undo, undo…UNDO. Lets me "try out" creative ideas. It's so CLEAN!

What are the Painter features that allow you to distinguish your art?
Painter allows me to clone in various colors from multiple color versions that I develop in Adobe® Photoshop® and then import into Painter as the basis for paintings. I can clone in real photographic parts of an image in a very light version that retains the portrait when I am working for a client. With the multiple choices of brushes and mediums, the painting is created. I love mixing the mediums, such as charcoal with smearing and acrylic brushes with some sponges or oils. With Painter, I can create textures that were previously impossible in the art world and didn't make sense before. Now with digital painting, anything is not only possible, but the creation of new art techniques has allowed creativity to expand to new levels.

Technique

	Step 1: I love using the Impressionistic Cloner and Flemish Rub brushes for backgrounds.
	Step 2: I create multiple different paintings from one finished painting by changing a brush or changing textures or background effects.
	Step 3: Because I photograph many families by the ocean, the Distorto brushes are especially good to create waves and textures in the water as a painting technique.
	Step 4: Bold and Strong colors are my signature palette. Painter allows me to experiment with new colors by mixing them myself on the Painter Mixer.
	Step 5: Grainy Water is my favorite brush to enhance photographic portraits and soften them and perfect them, give hair a soft flow or smooth skin. It's the first brush I teach in my classes.