Deborah Woehr

I received my first graphics tablet in the late 90s as a birthday gift. There were no definitive instructions on how to use the thing, other than how to install it. Around that time, I was playing around with the demo version of Corel Painter 8. The mouse didn’t cut it, so I thought a graphics tablet would be the answer. After several days of frustration, I disconnected the thing from my computer, stored it out of sight, and deleted the Painter demo from my hard drive. Then I returned to my novel-in-progress.

Fast forward ten years later.

I’m surfing the Internet for a decent stock photograph to use in a book cover. Most of the photos I found didn’t measure up to the concept I wanted to create. Then I found a digital drawing that fit to a tee. The only problem was that it cost over $300 to buy. I wasn’t about to shell out that kind of money for a free ebook.

I had seen the advertisements for Corel Painter X and decided to check it out. I downloaded the comp version of the image I liked. Then I downloaded the Painter demo and started playing around with it. I liked the program, but my mouse wasn’t doing the job I wanted it to. So, I scrapped the project altogether and put Painter and a Wacom Graphics Tablet on my Amazon wishlist, thinking that no one was going to buy me such an expensive gift.

My husband surprised me at Christmas with the software, which came with Jeremy Sutton’s tutorial DVD. I installed it, started playing around with the brushes, and shook my head. The mouse was not designed for painting. I had very little control over the strokes I made.

At this point, I began researching the different graphics tablets and found this great article Before You Buy a Graphics Tablet at About.com. I was glad that I read this article because I was thinking of buying a 9×12, since I’ve always enjoyed painting on large canvases. Sutton also recommended that size on his video. Both the article and the reviews helped me make the decision to buy the tablet I needed.

Should you buy a graphics tablet?

It depends on what you plan on using it for. If you mainly use Photoshop for image manipulation, then no. A mouse is more than suitable. For illustrators, it’s a must. The pen is a big improvement over the mouse because it’s pressure sensitive. This means you can control the thicknesses and angles of the strokes and/or lines you create.

If this is your first tablet, know that there is a learning curve. You’ll have to learn how to hold and position the pen so it will draw exactly where you want it to draw on the screen. Other than that, I find that it’s pretty straight-forward.

If you haven’t bought a tablet yet but are seriously considering getting one, I recommend that you read the About.com article first. It’s very educational in that it brings up potential issues that I hadn’t thought about, such as ergonomics as well as the pros and cons of the top models.

I found this video on Corel Painter Resource blog and thought I would pass it along. This reminds me of the times I would go to tourist spots and see artists sitting along the sidewalk or off the beaten path, whipping up a scenery painting within minutes. I admire anyone who can draw a face from scratch, because faces have always been tough for me. I’m not sure how long it took this artist to draw the likeness of Lost’s John Locke, but this five-minute video speeds up the process with some impressive results.

When I originally started this blog in 2005, I had a firm goal in mind: to promote my books and discuss writing. Since then, I’ve moved my original blog to DeborahWoehr.com/blog/, where I not only discuss these things but more. This area of my site has served as a landing page for the better part of a year until I started delving into designing book covers (see sidebar).

Last week, I moved my landing page up to the navigation bar under the “Hire Me!” link. Then I began debating about whether I wanted to use deborahwoehr.com as a blog or as a bulletin board to announce the publication of my future books. The idea sounded a bit redundant, so I gave it some more thought, finally making a decision when I wrote Goals for 2008.

I have several interests, but my first and second loves are art and writing. I earned my degree in Computer Graphics in 1993, only to find out that I was pregnant two weeks after I received my diploma. My life changed direction, and I became a stay-at-home mom for the next nine years, as well as a writer. This took me on another path, when I decided to self-publish my books on Lulu.com. I didn’t like the stock covers they offered, so I designed my own and fell in love with digital design.

You can do so much more with digital design than you can with traditional media. I might pick up my paint brush again someday, but I’m not promising anything. The computer has become my canvas, to express myself verbally and visually. This blog will chronicle my progress as I update my skills. I’ll also be trolling the blogosphere and the web to see what other digital artists are doing and to find the latest tips, tricks, and tools.

Stay tuned.

I’ve had a penchant for ghost stories ever since I could remember. Anyone out there remember Creature Feature? I saw my first horror movie when I was thirteen, when my aunt took me to see Friday the 13th and Prophecy. Of course we just HAD to go to a campsite for a family reunion that year!

I didn’t really become interested in ghosts or the afterlife until I lost my grandfather. Organized religion did nothing but confuse me. So I turned to books written by Betty Edie, John Edward, and Barbara Rommer. Rommer’s book turned out to be my favorite on the subject because I didn’t believe that everyone experience chariots and angels after they died.

It wasn’t until I lost one of my brothers that I began to write novels and short stories. Writing became my outlet and an obsession that my family has endured for the past decade. My first story was about a serial killer. This manuscript never saw the light of day for several reasons.

Shortly after I had published my first short story, I began to write a story that I eventually called Prosperity. Is death really an escape from all of our problems? Is there a Heaven and a Hell? Or, are we forced to face and deal with the problems that we avoided in life? These were the questions that kept pervading my mind as I worked out the plot for this novel, which was just released last weekend from Lulu.

Amanda Thorne is an embattled clairvoyant, who refuses to believe in God or the afterlife, even when the ghost of her murdered husband confronts her from his grave. More ghosts confront her when she finds herself stranded in a tiny town in Arizona.

Two of them mistake her for a prominent woman who was murdered 79 years ago. One of them wants to avenge him for the murder, and the other wants to kill her all over again. She and her misplaced deputy friend must uncover the truth about the murder before history repeats itself.

Right now, the book is available only from Lulu. I’m anticipating that it will be available on Amazon and Barnes&Noble some time in February, when I’ll be going on my first virtual book tour. More about that later.