Several months ago I decided April 1st was my quit smoking day. Obama has just given me even more incentive to succeed this time. I know April first seemed like a strange day to choose but I liked the irony of it. I must not be the only one who believes in irony.

Here’s hoping for fine weather and clear sailing through the spring and summer. By fall I’ll have it kicked! You’ve had your warning, expect an even more grumpy me than normal for a few weeks.

I joined 3DCommune shortly before I had brain surgery in 2003. In fact I was taking a Bryce class at LVS Online that got rudely interrupted for a lil trip to Duke Brain Tumor Center :p Anyway, the place used to be a lot funnier and livelier than it is these days. Folks left for various reasons, new interests, no computer, so it’s pretty quiet there now. I think a lot of people just prefer talking privately instead of in a forum. Well, I don’t do that well at keeping in touch privately so heh…here I am. Anyway, two of the coolest people have popped back up again so I gotta share. They are both incredibly talented.

First I saw Mel3d post a new work. She uses Painter and her latest image Sweety Cat shows that she has been busy while she was gone. She was good back then but this one is just ..wow

Then my friend Roy popped in, we used to be Bryce moderators together and he is a great guy. My funny pic a couple posts down? He’s the one in the plaid with the purse. lol. He started painting with oils so he pretty well disappeared too. He send me a mail a couple days ago and I sent him here to my blog so he could see what I’ve been up to, and he started a blog with images of his oils. He used to fix up his Bryce images in Painter too and is so much more talented than me with that program. But now he’s into oils and he’s come a long way. So go check it out at Royc8’s Blog. I love that guy, he was always my friend even when I didn’t know how to like myself

I am still a moderator in the Bryce gallery at 3DC but I’m not there much. I tried to bring it back to life but it takes more than one person. They are going to be moving to new software any day, I wonder if that’ll help or hinder.

I have to show you an image of mine I made in Bryce a while back. I called it ‘Lost my horse, I knew I shoulda folded.’ lol Then Roy performed magic on it I just can’t do that. I am not being negative because I’m sure if I applied myself I’d at least get better with Painter, I just need to persevere like I did in Bryce. Does he not do awesome work?

Here’s my Painter masterpiece! lol, okay I was entirely too fascinated with that furry brush

I can do landscapes too but oh, it’s hard to make a good one. This is my masterpiece The trees and much of the grass is made with this nifty little program called Context Free. Other than that it’s pure Bryce.

This is what the grass looks like, you can add it as a 2d image or put it on a terrain or lattice so it’s 3d, just add texture and you are done! You should check out their gallery of the many cool shapes this program can generate.

Here’s one of several versions of trees.

I was inspired by Barb’s image of wine and bread and decided to break open my Bryce. It seems to be working just fine. I’m glad to see I haven’t completely forgotten how to use it. I’ve been wanting to do a still life for a while. In fact I want to have a still life challenge at 3DCommune, but I keep waiting for them to get their site switched over. Hopefully they won’t have lost all their members by then :p