EclecticArt

Great, thank you! I'm going to try it out now.

Thank you so much. I hope to see more of your mandalas. I think they would make a gorgeous colouring book.

Ooh, good to know! I've been trying to do as much as I can within the short amount of time I've got. I'm starting to really like it but I don't know that I will be able to ditch photoshop just yet.

It is a very long way from being dreadful, I don't think you can even see blah or mediocre from where you are. I quite like them. I've been wanting to make mandalas in animal shapes. Do you have pointers (I have 3 days left on my trial to try and learn the program before I make decisions about it) on turning single elements into multiple ones evenly spaced? I made a Celtic knot and a snowflake of Dachshunds for my friend to laser into ornaments this Christmas but I did it in photoshop getting down to the pixel level and it was a major pain.

Those are beautiful, and look like they took a lot of work.

Beautiful

Thank you, I like doing cheerful looking art.

Thank you very much

I have done digital paintings in photoshop for longer than I like to admit. I got this program to be able to do vectors, but I may now be able to ditch the obnoxious photoshop subscription. I am going to try the photo program that Affinity has to see if I like it, too, but I was quite happy with painting in Designer. This is not as realistic looking as my normal digital art, but it was fun and only took an hour or so. I can see that when I don't feel pressed for time before the trial runs out I could really go crazy with it and get more detailed than I did today.

I am still using the trial (5 days in) and trying to get a handle on the program before time runs out and I have to decide if I want to use it on my old surface (it freezes up every time I use the program, so I am trying to settle on if I want to save up and get a newer Surface or go to an iPad or just deal with freezing). I'm having a lot of fun and getting to where I'm understanding some of it I think. Free-hand and purposefully trying to keep it simple. This is a very different style from my usual digital art so it feels weird to me, but I am enjoying it.

Thank you everybody. I think I am going to be able to make this work. I am going to keep playing with it so hopefully I can get more comfortable with this.

It is all just lines, which I guess might be more problematic, but that is how I draw.

I tried the contour tool before I posted on here, but that didn't seem to work the way I needed. As I said though, this is my first time using the program, I am testing it out hoping I will like it. I could very well have done it wrong for sure. I've been doing digital art since '91 (started on a Mac classic with no hard drive, just b&w pixels, not even greys) and have had photoshop since version 5.0 so I'm really comfortable with that although I don't do my art the way you are "supposed to" since I taught myself. I am betting I would find Illustrator totally natural to use, but I really don't want to have to pay essentially $200 a year forever! I feel a little lost in this program but first day using it so that is to be expected. I try using the help files, but they don't seem to have anything related to what I'm wanting to do. At least Affinity seems much more intuitive than Inkscape, or at least to me. I was making Inkscape work, but it was like pulling teeth for some of it.

Alright, I tried the create compound, and this is what I got. I have made another layer that was a white fill so I can cover up the inner shapes, but that could become a bit annoying in future. I can't find (I have searched help) how to merge layers, which would probably fix this problem. I had already tried the contour tool, but that was even worse.

Ooh, ok, that sounds like it will do what I'm wanting, thank you.