About Jinny Brown

Photo © Bill Holman, used with permission from the photographer.


Hi everyone,

Unless you're very new to the Painter community, you probably know my name is Jinny Brown.That's me above, and in my avatar. The photo was taken by a co-worker the year I began learning how to become an illustrator. It was a very long time ago, but a time full of happy memories.

My home since February 28, 1975 has been in the south San Francisco bay area, in the foothills above the freeways. For many years before moving here, I lived down in the "flat lands", in suburbia. I have two "kids", five grandkids, one great grandson, and a 92 year old mother who says she's tired now. Who can blame her?

Coming from generations of military family, I've lived in a lot of other places including Maryland, Panama, Georgia, Texas, New York, Washington State, Washington D.C. and as a very young housewife and new mother, in Germany for a couple of years.

Much later, my "career" began and included almost 28 years as a:

• Tech illustrator,
• Graphic artist,
• Production artist,
• Proofer,
• Editor,
• Typesetter,
• PMT camera operator,
• Trainer of newcomers,
• Greeter of clients,
• Whatever other hats needed to be worn to produce print ready art and just keep things going, and finally,
• Tech writer and illustrator.

Of the almost 28, I spent 5 years as a freelance illustrator and approximately 10 years doing temporary assignments. During the last few years, my job title was writer/illustrator, and my days were spent producing manuals from scratch to finish, writing, illustrating, and using FrameMaker to produce them.

Among my employers and clients were:

• High-tech Silicon Valley companies like Hewlett Packard, Intel, and Applied Materials,
• Government contract companies like Ford Aerospace (now Space Systems Loral), United Technologies, and Lockheed,
• Text book publishers Addison Wesley and Wadsworth Publishing Co.,
• Graphic designers,
• Small graphics houses where I did work for, among many others, NASA/Ames and HP, small tech writing companies, and odds and ends individual clients.

One of my favorite memories is of working for a very small tech writing company, as an illustrator (and everything else that needed to be done... typesetting, proofing, quality control, PMT camera work, "fetching" coffee for the boss, and oh yes, drawing and inking).

There were only five or six employees, the owner (a writer), and a freelance writer. We were hired to work on a single project, writing and illustrating the manual for the home built aircraft, the Christen Eagle II.

It was a biplane, small enough to build in your garage and one of the fun parts was that we couldn't tell anyone about it during most of the time we worked on the manual, not until the Christen Eagle II was debuted at the Oshkosh Airshow in Wisconsin:
Oshkosh Airshow

Three of the illustrators were men (er... guys) and they absolutely loved this project!

We were all thrilled when we finally saw photos of the plane. The way it was painted was a wonderful surprise!

The two links below show first a small photo of the plane and the kit, then a larger and much better photo so you can see how cute the plane was and how it was painted:

Christen Eagle and Christen Eagle II

Cristen Eagle II

The Christen Eagle II was an aerobatic aircraft and we heard later that it rivaled the Pitts Special (they told me that was sumthin!) at the OshKosh Airshow.

I'll bet everyone who worked on that project still has fond memories of the experience, just as I do, nearly 30 years later.

Phew! and that's only some of what working as an illustrator and tech writer led me to and through. I'm glad that stage is over now, though it was both interesting and challenging.

Now for the Fractal Design Painter, Metacreations Painter, and now Corel Painter part of the story (my favorite so far):

Fractal Design Painter came into my life just a few years before I retired and it was such a blessing! Organic, colorful, exciting, and not for a minute dry or boring. I spent every free hour playing with it and it truly did save my life. All those years I'd been earning a living, now I was living!

Though I no longer have Painter 4 installed, I do have six full Corel Painter versions installed as well as three "lite" versions, the Painter software that comes bundled with Wacom tablets.

All told, I have 12 years of experience with Corel Painter, starting with Fractal Design 4.0 and continuing through Painter X.1. As some of you may already know because you did too, I worked on the last three Corel Painter version Beta teams. I use Painter every day and travel the Painter related forums daily (several times a day, actually), helping Painter users out of pickles and into having fun. My two websites, PixelAlley launched in October 1999 and TutorAlley Forums launched in August 2002, are both Corel Painter focused sites. As you may read on the home page, I'm in the process of updating PixelAlley, a huge job that will take a long time, working on it between other things.

Let's see now. What else?

I guess that's more than enough except to say thank you all for stopping by to read my Bio, and please pay a visit to PixelAlley where you'll find lots of tutorials, other Painter and Corel information, and resources for several Corel Painter versions. The newest tutorials are in the section named New Tips and Tutorials by Jinny, link in the right column on the home page.

Cheers!


Jin (or Jinny if you prefer)

© 2007 - 2008, Jinny Brown



Here begins a Bio demonstration for which I'll supply the HTML code to show you what tags to use to produce various formatting.



Type your greeting (i.e. Hi everyone!).

Here is where you begin your Bio. It may be several parargraphs long.

Second paragraph.

Third paragraph.

You may want to include a bulleted list:

• Apples
• Oranges
• Bananas
• Grapes
• Lemons
• Cherries

You may want to include a numbered list:

1. Apples
2. Oranges
3. Bananas
4. Grapes
5. Lemons
6. Cherries

You may want to indent some text:

Note: It's wise to use Painter's File > Iterative Save command as it adds a new number at the end of the file name each time the file is saved and produces a numbered series of files. This way, you have several versions of your image to use, if you change your mind and want to go back a few stages or if you just want to begin with one of those versions and alter it to create a whole new image.

You may want to make some text bold, italics, or underlined:

BOLD

Italics

Underlined

Or use a combination of these three text formats:

Bold Italics

Bold Underlined

Italics Underlined

You may want to include links to other artists' websites or to other images and text on your own website and make the links bold:

John Derry's PixlBlog

Here's My Heart

HERE BEGINS A SECOND TEST:

 Hi again,

 As you may have noticed, I've posted a message in the Painter Factory Help forum demonstrating how to use HTML tags when posting a Bio.

 
It occurred to me tonight that we might be able to accomplish the same thing more quickly and efficiently by typing and formatting the text in a Painter Discussions message, view the message in HTML format (while still in the editing window), copy the HTML, then paste it into the Bio editing window.

I'm going to try that here, using all of the formatting options provided in the Painter Discussions editing window. Then I'll paste it below my existing Bio and HTML code demonstration and let you know in this thread how it goes. Whether it works or not, I can use this to show people how all of the controls in the Painter Discussions message editing window work. I've explained them in order from left to right across the top row, then from left to right across the bottom row.

Here begins the test:

Font Family -

Andale Mono
Arial
Arial Black
Book Antigua
Comic Sans MS
Courier New
Georgia
Helvetica
Impact
Symbol - doesn't seem to work
Tahoma
Terminal
Times New Roman
Trebuchet MS
Verdana
Webdings - doesn't seem to work
Wingdings - doesn't seem to work

Font Size -
1 (8 pt)  2 (10 pt)  3 (12 pt)  4 (14 pt)  5 (18 pt)  6 (24 pt)  7 (36 pt)

Text Color -  

red orange yellow green blue
teal cyan purple brown magenta

Background Color - 

 
 Teal background 

Cut -
Copy -
Paste -

These controls didn't work for me. Using Firefox with the Cut, Copy, and Paste icons at the top of the message editing window, these controls are not available. There are other very familiar ways to do the same things, anyway.)

Paste from Word -

I don't have MS Word to test this but text can be pasted into the message editing window using the familiar methods.

HTML -

Used while typing the message, this control opens another window to display the message in HTML code.This is the window you would use to copy the HTML code and paste it into your BIO editing window... providing this method works.

Bold

Italic

Underline

Strikethrough

Indent -  

This paragraph was indented using the Indent icon.

Outdent -  

This line was typed after the above paragraph was indented and was also originally indented, then outdented using the Outdent icon. 

Unordered list -  

• This bulleted (unordered) list
• was created by typing
• several lines of text,
• highlighting them,
• then using the Unordered list icon.
  

Ordered list -

1. This numbered (ordered) list
2. was created by typing
3. several lines of text,
4. highlighting them,
5. then using the Ordered list icon.
   

Insert/edit link -

This link was created by typing the link text, highlighting it, then using the Insert/edit link icon and typing the URL.

Unlink -

This link was unlinked by highlighting the two words "This link" that were originally a link to the main page of The Painter Factory, then using the Unlink icon.

Insert/edit image -

The image below was added using the Insert/edit image icon. That icon can also be used after the fact to edit the URL to the image file. 

Content Selector - 

The image below was added using the Content Selector icon, and selecting an image I had already uploaded to the Painter Factory server. That icon can also be used to upload images from your hard drive to the Painter Factory server, then to manage your uploaded files.