Last week, I downloaded a trial version of Corel Painter 11. It's a little buggy, but I am still lusting after it. I was on holiday, so had a few days to mess around. I ended up designing a dragon theme for iGoogle. You can add it to your Google home page from here (and please do add your comments and ratings! I believe they might help improve the ranking of the theme, which in turn would get it in front of more people).
I'm still using the same old Wacom tablet I've had for years and it's doing fine. With Painter, I found that the pencil tools were convincing enough within the programme so I didn't need to do what I normally do (which is to draw with pencils first, scan the result and continue digitally).
There is no way I can afford (or even properly run) Painter just now, but I will budget for it once I upgrade my desktop PC. Maybe next year. My desktop PC is also getting on a bit and unlike the Wacom tablet, this is starting to be a problem.
(Cross-posted from the portfolio blog).
