I am very new to the paint by computer scene. In fact I am very new to the painting scene. I’m more of a stick figure drawing type of artist and even those don’t come up to par with most cave drawings. Nonetheless my hobbyist ambitions to digital paintings have been satisfied with TwistedBrush. With the exception of the bugly DOS 3.1 interface this program had me feel like a painting pro within about thirty minutes.
Upon opening you are greeted with a lively help file that points out all the necessities of the interface for getting a quick start. Clicking out of this you are faced with a blank canvas if it is the first time opening your program. If not, the last document you worked on will open. TwistedPixels uses sketchbooks to organize your material. The program can hold unlimited sketchbooks with up to 100 pages each. Each page in the sketchbook can have its own canvas dimensions thus making each document unique.
Once I got painting I found that accessing and changing tools was very intuitive and all of the preset brush tips are currently more than a novice user would ever want to have at their disposal. Although I have not experimented yet the program does also have a feature for you create your own brushes as well.
Creating, storing and recording brushes and brush strokes are all a great feature within TwistedBrush. The neatest thing about this program is you can record an entire art project then play it back again in another piece of artwork as if you were painting on the spot. You can also tinker with the background textures or what might be called the canvas.
For a novice at this point I’m highly recommending Twisted Brush because of its vast features which are far from overwhelming. I know that sounds like a paradox but that’s how easy TwistedBrush is to use.
Truth be told, you will probably feel well served by shelling out some cash for the full version once your trial expires.