I finally got a chance to talk with one of the “stars” in the Psyko community – Karl Schatz. He has been super psyko active, producing more than 250 paintings to date. Actually, if you’ve been following the Gallery more closely, you might have seen that Karl usually produces a few paintings per day. Truly amazing!
Great to finally have a chance to talk with you Karl, could you first tell us a little bit about yourself.
I have spent more than 30 years on the road with a truck. As you can imagine, I have learned and experienced a lot on those drives and all this serve as inspiration for me. I also spend a lot of time with my family, do sports, pastel painting and now, of course, Psykopaint!
So, what’s the story about your psyko beginnings? Why did you start painting, how did you find about it?
I am currenly overgoing chemotherapy and I was looking for an alternative to pastel painting. Luckily for me, I found Psykopaint, which has just been wonderful for me.
How do you share your paintings with others? Do you use Facebook, maybe a personal blog/gallery?
I have my own web site where I post pastel paintings and my Psykopaints. Check it out here: www.kreidemaler.webnode.com
Where do you find your photos to start painting on? Any good sources of free photos that you can recommend to the rest of the psyko community?
Before I start painting I search around the web for various inspirational royalty-free photos or wallpapers. The web itself has proven to be a great resource for me.
Which paintings from your vast collection (more than 250 Psykopaintings at this moment) are you the most proud of?
I am really proud of one of my latest paintings – “Nothing is what it is”.
Besides this one, I also really like:
I noticed you are developing a very interesting new technique over on Psykopaint, where you emphasize the eye balls and totally change the faces of people. Can you tell us a little bit more about it – what’s the inspiration for it, what brushes you usually use for it, etc.?
I like to give the paintings a specific expression, a part of me, involve my emotions… Faces are very suitable and I usually use the smudge tool (spray can) and the Vann Gogh brush. They are both very effective face changers.
If you had to choose your all-time favorite painter, who would that be?
Tell us, what’s your favorite brush in Psykopaint?
Van Gogh and Bazille are by far my favorites and most often used brushes.
What’s next for you – do you maybe aspire to present your digital Psykopaintings in a real life exhibition?
I am currently satisfied with exposing the paintings on my homepage.
And for the very last question – would you like to share something special with the Psyko community?
Of course I am always willing to share my experience and knowledge with the community. You know, painting is one of the most beautiful activies for me and people interested in it deserve to be supported.
Thanks for the answers once again Karl! What do you think of his work? Who from the Psyko community would you like to see interviewed next? Let us know in the comments below!
Have you ever wanted to see how your hair would look like in different color?
Sure – you can go to the nearest hair saloon – but that’s hard and you can not just try and revert it back if you don’t like it.
And tools that offer this kind of operation on the internet … are a joke. They simply don’t work.
Pyskopaint happens to be the best online tool for this!
Step by Step
1. Choose an image – make sure the hair is not too bright and not too dark.
2. Open the COLOR tab and select a color you would like and start applying it.
IMPORTANT: don’t close the Color tab. Plus points for playing with the size and transparency of the brush (in the Brush tab).
3. Try MULTIPLY and Overlay blending modes in the LAYERS Tab.
They did some magic in my case! Play also with the opacity slider here to fine tune your choice.
4. Let’s try different colors.
Go to FILTERS (FX), choose the filter “Change Colors” and apply it only to Your Painting (top row).
5. and Voila! Here is our final result – girl with funky hair color styles in just a few minutes
This is just one of the many examples of how you can use some of the new functionalities of Psykopaint. Can’t wait to see what you surprise us with! See you in the Gallery!
Here we continue our series of posts that we started with Susan Holsan’s recent tutorial. This week Sandra Pinto explains how YOU can paint with her Polygon technique that many of us have fallen in love with recently.
Check out some of her latest paintings painted with this technique:
Step by Step
1. Select the Knife brush + Polygonator style and start selecting and painting big parts of the image.
2. Continue painting the big parts and don’t worry about the details for now.
3. After you’ve finished painting big areas focus on small ones.
How? Use space bar extensively to help yourself see the original painting.
4. Now you can start focusing on the details: start painting really small parts and add the shadow.
And that’s it. Hope this inspires many of you psykos to try out new painting styles!
I am more than sure that many of you have had problems looking for free photos on the internet. You wanted to find some photos and use them for either your website, an article or a psykopainting But it was hard and painful to check if you can use and modify them (not to mention the rights to redistribute those images).
Wanna find this kind of beautiful free photos?
We decided to give you a hand with it. Finding free photos to paint on Psykopaint should be easy as cutting a slice of bread. Moreover, checking out those sites is a also a great way to get inspiration for you next psyko masterpiece.
Find photos on Flickr
I am sure most of you know Flickr. It’s a great site for uploading, storing and discovering images.
So why not use it to find your next free photo:
Go to http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/by-2.0/
Type in a topic for an image search
Pick a cool image
Go in and download the Full size image (it’s always good to have big images; they look much better)
Find photos in Google Image Search
Go to http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search
Type in your desired photo topic (e.g. beach, Portugal, etc.)
For the image size option select “Large” (you can try also other options but it’s great to have big images)
For the usage rights option select “Free to use, share or modify even commercially” (to be sure regarding licensing)
Press Search Images and pick a photo
Other great resources
A short list of other great sites that offer free inspirational images:
http://www.reusableart.com/
http://pixabay.com/
http://images.google.com/hosted/life
http://opengalleries.org/
http://finallycreative.com/gallery/
http://www.photos-public-domain.com/
http://www.freephotogaleries.com/
http://picdrome.com/
http://www.alegriphotos.com/
http://www.arspublik.com/
http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/
http://www.easystockphotos.com/
You know any other great sites with free photos? Please let us know in the comments, we are happy to update the list with your suggestions.
* Creative commons: license where you only have to specify the attribution (aka, name the original author of the photo)
Ever wondered how some of our users do those crazy colourful effects? Here is a simple step-by-step tutorial by our super user Susan Holsan!
1. Select a photo you want to use, adjust your color, brightness, contrast, etc.
2. Next, choose a color (I chose blue) and adjust the slider bar at the bottom of the Color Tab to the intensity you want
3. Choose your brush and paint the areas you want to detail with blue
4. Now put the slider bar back to its original position
5. Start putting in the details of your painting until you have what you want!
And voila! This is it! If you have any other tricks that you would like to share with the psyko community, please let us know on doctor@psykopaint.com!
Yeah, it’s that time of the year again. You’re struggling with ideas on what to buy to make your loved one glamorously joyful on the Valentine’s day. Don’t worry, you are not the only one
What if you could create something really awesome, just by yourself? Like paint or draw something? But ok, that’s hard, it takes years to learn how to paint pieces that actually look decent.
Then Psykopaint might just have a solution for you. Watch the video below to see how we can help you out with this:
That’s why we created Psykopaint – the easisest and craziest photo editing application. It allows anyone, yes, really anyone, to upload one of your favorite images, paint over it and create a beautiful looking painting.
Ok, that’s cool but how to then send that image in a nice way? Easy, it has all been taken care in Psykopaint: right after you finish painting you have the option to send your painting as a FREE E-CARD via email or even as a REAL POSTCARD.
Interested? Follow the thorough steps below:
1. Find a great photo and upload it to Psykopaint
There are tons of great free images available on the internet. What kind of images should you be looking for? Roses, hearts, special messages – you probably know even better what your darling adores. When you find an image that you would like to transform to a painting, just download it and start painting over it in Psykopaint.
But we have also decided to help you a little bit if you have problems finding a cool photo to start of with. You are free to download and upload to Psykopaint any of these pictures below (just don’t forget to mention the original authors – you can see them if you hover over the image a little bit). We think they are pretty cool
2. Paint your photo in Psykopaint
If you are a pro psykopainter you already know the drill here so you can skip this step. This one is more for all you new guys out there who are maybe struggling to get used to the interface and all those options. You’ll quickly see it’s not that hard at all.
3. Make the coolest E-Card (or even order a real life printed card for a cheap price)
This one is really easy. Just click on Share & Save when you are satisfied with your painting then choose an option Create a Card. After that you only have to fill in a special message for your loved one, pick a theme for the back of the card and you are good to go.
And that’s it! Wish you happy painting and the best Valentine’s day ever
I am really happy to present you a very dear member of our community – Eric Vinson, an attorney from Austin, Texas. He has been creating some of the most beautiful and profound paintings found in the gallery lately and I had great time chatting with him.
Great to finally have a chance to talk with you Eric, could you first tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’ve been playing guitar all my life but I have no experience with drawing or painting. In fact, I joke that I can’t even draw stick figures well. However, I’ve always admired artists and envied their talent. Finding Psykopaint has allowed me to create beautiful images despite my underlying lack of artistic talent, and I’ve really enjoyed learning how to use the various tools Psykopaint offers.
I also love seeing what other people are able to do with Psykopaint in their gallery – it really seems to me that Psykopaint is great for anyone who wants to be creative in a visual medium. The brushes make it incredibly easy to get started, and it appears that experienced artists are also able to enjoy and use the intuitive interface to make spectacular works of art.
So, what’s the story about your psyko beginnings?
I was looking for apps in the Chrome Web Store in the Art&Design section and I’ve always wanted to be able to paint and draw, but I have no artistic ability at all. So, I tried it out, I saw what other people have been doing with it and I thought it was awesome! I have painted around 30-40 paintings since December and I’ve really enjoyed it.
How do you share your paintings with others?
Actually I post all my paintings on my Facebook page and I’ve had some nice feedback from my friends, which is a lot of fun.
Where do you find your photos to start painting on, because some of them look really cool?
I really try to play by the rules and use stock images available online. I also have a friend here in town who is a semi-professional photographer Angela Davis (check out her photo blog and flickr stream). She is phenomenal and actually her photos sometimes look like art in the first place — she’s been very kind to let me use her material.
So are you satisfied with all of your paintings or are there any that particularly stand out?
I wouldn’t say I’ve hit any of the home runs with Angela’s pictures yet, but it seems like that every 1 out of 5 paintings turns out really good, where I can actually say: “Oh, yeah, that looks pretty cool!”.
Some paintings that I’m really proud of (check out other Eric’s paints in his gallery):
We also featured one of your pictures on our Facebook Page. It was called The cheeses, what can you say about that one?
Oh yeah, that one turned out shockingly well, even my wife was impressed with the one. If you gave it to me again, I probably wouldn’t be able to make it as good.
If you had to choose your favorite painter, who would that be?
That would probably be Degas, he is actually my favorite painter, by a mile. I became even more of his fan 8-9 years ago when my wife and I went to Paris and got to see all of his paintings and sculptures. I especially love his paintings of ballet dancers.
Tell us, what’s your favorite brush in Psykopaint?
Ah, it’s kind of boring; I usually use the Monet and Van Gogh brushes almost exclusively. I think the other brushes are a bit harder to use, you have to have a better artistic eye to use those them well. Because I don’t have a background in art and don’t have a lot of natural artistic talent, they’re harder for me.
Actually, I also do like the Sisley brush, the way that it creates all those crazy swirly looking effects. I tried to use the Degas brush on a painting by Degas, but that didn’t turn out very well!
And for the very last question – any painting secrets you would like to share with the Psyko Community?
Actually there is one and I’ve learned it from one of the Youtube tutorial videos and that is to move the color mix slider so that you can’t really see the painting and you’re just painting “on a blank canvas”. I think this small tip was extremely helpful for me, because it makes it feel like you are painting and it translates to a better product in the end.
Thanks a lot for taking the time Eric – Psykopaint wishes you all the best and I hope to see many more of your great paintings in the gallery!
You’ve probably admired Sandra Pinto’s paintings featured on our Facebook page or noticed how generous and supportive she is with her comments be that in the gallery or Facebook page. The time has come to get to know her a little better and find what are her painting secrets.
I’m from Torres Novas a small and quiet inland town of Portugal, about 1hr’s drive from Lisbon. I have 2 children, a 20yrld boy and a 5yrld girl. I have always worked with attorneys except in the 7 years I lived in London.
In September as I was seeking for a website regarding painting for my little girl, I came across and found Psykopaint . We tried it out and loved the experience! I was the one who ended up getting addicted .
I think the program itself is very accessible for beginners which makes the learning process much more simple, but to be honest I don’t know how to make full use of Psykopaint. I’m still using the basic stuff .
When I asked Sandra how she managed to create so much (if you haven’t already please check out her personal gallery and you’ll know what I’m talking about) in such a short time she said it’s because she’s addicted:
Yes it’s true, I’m completely addicted The main reason is that I don’t like to sleep , so I’m left with all those fantastics hours to paint. Unfortunately, due to family reasons I had to leave the job, and since I’m spending most of my time at home, this allows me more free time for Psykopaint .
Where do you get your inspiration?
From day to day, from my friends posts, something that I’m reading online, watching tv, whatever comes to mind J. As I remember things I look for a photo straight away and save it as an image or in words. I have deleted dozens because after a few days they don’t make sense .
Usually, I choose the ones (photos) that I like the most, which reflect a meaning of that particular moment. I try to avoid the “political” and “religious”, at least on the Psykopaint Gallery. But, sometimes I like to put people to “think about it” .
Favorite artist:
Not really! My taste varies greatly depending on my “mood” state
Favorite brush:
The brush I use the most on my paintings is Van Gogh but gradually I’m starting to use Degas, and Guillaumin as I discover them.
It all started when I lost all my images and I had to ask for help from Psykopaint to recover them. So, I thought the best option would be to keep them online J. Initially, it was just for my personal viewing but then I decided to allow my friends “the same pleasure”
But then I thought the name would bring about some sort of conflict, I asked Psykopaint’s opinion and it was fantastically accepted with no problem J. and when I became liked by Psykopaint on their page it was a fantastic surprise . I guess that made THE difference .
Being “My Psyko Diary” my personal diary and because each painting has a “Why” in the way it is done, I always put a little quote or poem… (that’s me)
Painting secrets revealed/ tips & tricks for the Psyko Community:
Tips and Tricks let me see… In regard to me, I think I have patience to spare, I love what I’m doing while I’m enjoying myself. I think these are wonderful and essential “ingredients” to use with Psykopaint.
So, here you have it, there’s no magic recipe, to get better you just have to paint and enjoy the process, and before you know it you’ll be featured in this blog
On this update we’re introducing a new brush and help you get ready for the coming holidays with a Christmas Card.
If you are a Mental or Psyko member, you’re in for a treat. We developed an exclusive new brush for
you, the NeoPointillism brush. As the name suggests it was inspired by a sub-genre of impressionism called Pointillism.
It was made popular by Van Gogh, but Seurat was the one who created and perfected this style of painting.
It’s like painting using lots of little dots instead of long brush strokes. It gives scenery a very dreamy kind of vibe.
Have a look at the video tutorial to learn how to make full use of the brush and take it for a spin.
And since the holidays are knocking on our door we created a Christmas themed card that you can send to your loved-ones as a virtual card or as a REAL postcard.
Here’s how to create a postcard:
1.) Go to psykopaint.com 2.) Follow along the tutorial above with your own image 3.) Then Click File => Create a Card => Choose Postcard 4.) Type a little message and fill the addresses of the ones you love 5.) Click the ’Check Out’ button and enter your bank details in Paypal 6.) Your loved-ones will receive the postcard within 7 days
Enjoy!
PS: to send a virtual card just choose E-Card at step 3 and at step 4 insert the email addresses of your loved ones
My name is Stoyan Ivanov aka By ME. I live in Bulgaria I grew up in Sofia. I’m living with my parents in a house on the outskirts of Sofia.
I live surrounded by mountains and I love nature as you might guess from my paintings.
For now I am a student in High school. I study Architecture. Of all the world I most love my friends and my family.
I am interested in art since I was a little boy. I’ve been to a lot of art exhibitions . So I can say I know which painting are beautiful and original.
I’ve been playing guitar all my life but I have no experience with drawing or painting. In fact, I joke that I can’t even draw stick figures well. However, I’ve always admired artists and envied their talent. Finding Psykopaint has allowed me to create beautiful images despite my underlying lack of artistic talent, and I’ve really enjoyed learning how to use the various tools Psykopaint offers.
. We tried it out and loved the experience! I was the one who ended up getting addicted 
