Hey there,...

Hi, Taron,
I have had this program downloaded on an obsolete computer for a month or so, and finally got my touchscreen acer up and running again. After downloading and installing a few programs, (verve being one of them) i opened verve and i just lit up the moment i slid my finger across the screen. Ive played with plenty of gimmicky fluid-dynamic painting tools on android and ipad, but this is just incredible! I can't wait to put it to work!

btw,
I'm Dewey, I've been out of college after studying fine arts for about 2 years and have been having trouble finding a way to bring my personal style into a popular platform. (my concentration was printmaking, which is a bit 'antique' for the modern world) But i think i can truly represent my own style digitally now, looking forward to using it!

[Taron]

Wow, Dewey, that's one heck of a beautiful message! THANK YOU! I can't wait to see what you'll do with it, but I'm mostly happy to imagine you enjoying yourself with Verve. That's exactly what it's for, besides giving you a chance to explore your creativity in a different way...almost more directly, I'd say, but also as wicked as one wants to get, haha!

Anyway, thanks for letting me know all this and I'm thrilled Verve can help out a little!

Hi!

I'm originally from the Netherlands, but nowadays live in Finland, and lived in Denmark as well for a long time. I'm a biologist who doesn't know how to draw/paint at all (never had it in school even), but I'm trying to learn a bit as I do enjoy it. As a scientist, I think I'm a bit too perfectionistic, and have a hard time letting go from 'it has to look real'. Hoping to expand my mind a bit in that sense, and just have fun at painting instead of trying to drawing real looking things (I don't know how to do perspective and shadows etc.).

Ah well! Here's to learning!

[Taron]

Again, welcome to the big Verve family here, and I'm thrilled to have a biologist on board!
The whole "real" thing to me is something I always want to keep a distance from, because the virtual "reality" allows nothing but a different approach to be creative. Verve draws from considerations about "real fluids", rather as an inspiration, really, and has no aspirations to ever become a totally proper simulation of real media. That being said, there are plenty of additional features real paint and physics have to offer, which I continue to explore for the sake of more and more intricate ways to express your creativity, imagination and plain joy of manifesting something visually.
You cannot measure love and even joy is ultimately relative, thus you won't have to measure density or saturation to indulge in the world of art. Celebrate with us the expected and unexpected alike!

Thanks for the welcome!

I wasn't really talking about the simulation of real paint though (which I think is really good, bought myself some water-soluble oils half a year ago), I was more thinking about I have no idea how to do 'abstract' painting. I always feel the need to add realism in the picture...even though I have no clue how to, and thus I get angry at myself, which is not necessarily relaxing ^^.

[Taron]

OOoooohhh, duh, , sorry about that.
You have not yet liberated yourself from the urge to recognize complex patterns as definite entities. Tonight, when you are in bed and just about ready to sleep, close your eyes, relax and let your mind calm down carefully while remaining alert. Wait until you begin to see them clouds of color drift by and begin to try holding them still, sharpening them and then, eventually, give them a concrete color of your choice. Everything will begin to take shapes, shapes that you cannot really control, but they begin to appear purposeful or deliberate in some fashion. The clearer and sharper your visions get, the more you familiarize yourself with a form of abstract imagery that actually happens within your mind this entire time. It is notoriously difficult to gain control over it or hold on to a single slice of time, but as a painting artist you have to make a choice that can communicate and provide orientation. We've always tried to encode a certain language of it by observing color psychology, proportions and so on. While those schools have boiled down everything to mere compromises, things like the Golden Spiral or Golden Section are absolutely brilliant to help construct your image and pure color theory is equally solid as a guide. Both these fields go deeper than you know, once you explore the stuff that has not been mentioned, but derives from the logic they provide.
I won't ever get much out of provocative jerkiness some artists favor, when they make like a freaking blue canvas or some other smart-ass garbage. But there's a certain magic in things like Jackson Pollock's works or Friedman, another abstract artist with great sense of form and patterns. Anyhow, we're searching for something as human beings, we embrace that which can inspire us to understand or to suggest new directions.

Anyway... if you want to learn realistic painting, uh, you should only start that, once you've understood strongly color and composition, because otherwise you may get the moves down for realism, but nothing would come out of it other than some curious sketches. There's also fantastic motivation behind understanding what to do to the whole, how to set your own stage, as I like to think about it.

Hmmm...that's all way too much for "Hey there..." already, haha...

Hello, everyone. ^)
I am Viacheslav or Slava, 17 years old teenager from Kazakhstan. For many years my hobbies have been connected with some handmade things. However I dived into painting/drawing only about a year ago. Books, tutorials, first graphic tablet... And of course I am still an amateur only knowing a bit about basics and general principals of painting. I spent most of my free time with pencils|pens or Photoshop, my first photo editor and graphics editor. Later I found different editors, more or less alike but with some unique options. And one day when I was looking through videos on YouTube I discovered Verve. And it was such amazing discovery : )
There are some things besides painting which I love: music and poetry. There are moments where I can do nothing but write. But like in painting I am just an amateur. What about music... Well, I enjoy variety of genres and directions from classics to modern electro.
The last year was very long and hard. I had exams on all main subjects. And know I am trying to pass exams in the university on Math and IT. However, I am going to continue my painting experiments. My goal is to understand the world and myself better and to find my own way in it. Of course I need to practice a lot and there is a list of useful books I must read. And certainly this is nothing without understanding and your own experiment.
English isn't my native language as you could understand. Fortunately, we've had enough hours of it in school so I can write this : ) But am going to continue my study as I feel that I can't work with it absolutely free. (Especially in some lyric books ^)
So I want to say: thank you again for such a wonderful program. Hope that I will become skilled and artistic enough to use it on maximum.
P.S. Thank you, everyone, too for this great and hospitable community. ^ )

[Taron]

Welcome Slava, but you know already how welcome you are here!
Wowsa, 17, what a fantastic and terrible age, haha. You're just beginning to believe you would know what you are, but you have a mysteriously strong grasp of what you want. That's what you should hold on to and explore more and more. At the same time, don't forget to be 17 and go nuts a little. There is so much to explore for you and right now you have stunning strength to do so.
You are most certainly a very talented guy and I'm thrilled you've found Verve and this forum!

School, though, is part of the game that is called society and it tries to deliver its rules to you along with how you might function within that game. If you are comfortable with it, you are doing good to play it as careful and as diligently as you can, but even then, you should not forget that it really is a game. Reality and how it will matter to you asks for you to learn what you can truly do for others so that you find out how you matter to reality, because everyone of us does. Many times, though, we get drawn so deeply into the game, that was miss out on what really makes us important to this world. Inside of our will there lives a passion for something that, when we do it, gives us total joy and its nature is for the good of others. It is something that we give, that we create or a way in which we support. Always keep an eye out for that and you'll develop your powers properly!

Hi Taron,
Just wanted to thank-you for creating such a fabulous program.
I've been playing with 2d painting packages for years and this seems to be the first one I can really connect with.
I don't have to spend hours looking on forums trying to find something obvious.
The software is brilliantly designed from a users perspective and also very responsive.
So much nicer to use that many very expensive packages I've tried.
Well done and Thanks again!

[Taron]

Uh, soooo soothing to hear, Thudjie, thank you very much!
As I'm developing the next incarnation of Verve, I'm reworking the GUI concept, but will try to keep the same directness and potential simplicity. At the same time a few new traits will join in that require more visual access, which may will add a number of new components to the GUI. However, because of that any for a number of other reasons I will do my best to make the new GUI as customizable as possible. It's always difficult, if not impossible, to create something everybody can enjoy, that's why your message makes me so very happy and gives me a good boost for sure!

Thanks again and welcome to the forum!