Photoshopping with The New Creative Artist

Several days ago I received email from Jerry Walter that brought a big smile to my face. Here is the content of his three emails, along with pictures that he and his friends, Rick Finney and Bev Teagle in Taos, New Mexico, have created using my book as their source of ideas:

"We want you to know how we are using your book. The three of us get together once each week for 4 or 5 hours (!) in front of a computer and work at Photoshop. One of us ran across the 1990 edition of The Creative Artist at a used book store, and we decided your guidance would stimulate us and lead us along the path to artistic Photoshop endeavors. So we each bought copies of The New Creative Artist. We're taking it slowly -- maybe 10 pages per week. During the week we each work at our own computers to create images, develop ideas, and face roadblocks. At our mutual sessions we "Share the Ride", discuss unique situations, solve problems, and work out tutorials. So far we are only on page 41, but we already know the path you are laying out is the right one. We find that so many of your words and thoughts apply directly to Photoshop. This would be a good example of experimenting with techniques and tools we've been afraid to use on something "good". We'll check in again to share our progress. Thanks for this wonderful book!"

"That first image I sent was my creation. Here is one of Bev's, which is just about as autobiographical as you can get, inspired by the earlier part of The New Creative Artist. I think we decided we were going too fast in your book, because each page gets each of us thinking about a new idea we'd like to explore. Each of us is somewhat proficient in Photoshop; it is the artistic guidance that we are looking for, and we think we found it."


"Okay, just one more. This is Rick's piece, combining the same image multiple times. Rick is the most playful of the three of us in our little Photoshop group. He takes your suggestion to the limits, and if we don't have differences, variations and patterns, we create them."

"I recently took a short writing class from author Natalie Goldberg. She helps her students to ignore criticism (often imagined) from the outside world, and also ignore the inner critic, which she calls "Monkey Mind" -- that little person sitting on your shoulder that tells you you can't do it, you can't write, you can't create, you can't be introspective and write about what's inside you. But with her writing exercises, and practice, practice practice, you find that indeed you can do it. So far I've seen that same philosophy reflected in your book, frequently."

Thanks for writing and sending the images, Jerry. It means so much to me when people write me about how they're using my books. This makes it all worthwhile. These images are so exciting. Now I'm wondering if I could do more with Photoshop by using my own book to generate ideas to get started. Hmm.