Digital Sketching

Have you ever experienced times when several coincidences occur that are related that makes you suspect that maybe coincidences are something more sinister than mere chance? A friend Brian Thuringer just gave me a heads up on a new open source digital sketching program in development called Alchemy. Alchemy too is cross platform, Mac, Windows, Linux. If you go over to their website you can download it and try out the alpha version. The focus of this software is for speed sketching but it really does stand out from other sketching programs I have seen for the concept art niche. They don't make the download obvious but you can go here for the download, or just join the mailing list to get notifications when new versions come out etc. If you like Corel Painter, Art Rage, or Alias Sketchbook, you definitely should check Alchemy out. The interface is super minimal and it is not bogged down with tons of options. Overall it is a real pleasure to work/play with. After test driving it I found it somewhat unconventional with no undo's, and the choice of output (what formats you can save in) is odd. I liked being able to save to pdf though. That way I can open it in Adobe Illustrator and everything is in vectors, so you can delete stray lines and edit it to your heart's content add fill or strokes, do colors/ gradients etc. Being able to do this more than makes up for the lack of the undo function. Then of course you could put it in Adobe Photoshop and further enhance it. I have found this program an excellent and easy way to create interesting geometrical backgrounds and designs for my various school projects with just a little post processing necessary.