An "ah ha!" moment with Painter

I had a mental breakthrough in Painter this morning. I was just experimenting with brushes and irritated that the airbrush tilt is not working correctly when it occurred to me that the color seemed flat and uninteresting. At that moment I had an "ah ha!" and when into the brush controls and altered the color variability, as it sprays I made the brush vary the hue, saturation, and value. Above is an image sprayed from the Broad Wheel Airbrush 50 variant, note how it look like I've taken a green image and added noise. The cool thing is that I have control over how much it varies in hue, saturation, and/or color. If I just wanted to have the hue vary, I could do it subtlely or wildly. This is a great way to add a subtle texture and depth to digital painting while maintaining control in a somewhat natural way.

"Ah ha!" moments are what makes learning addictive. Especially when you've had a mental block for sometime, like I have with Painter. You can read about a technique, watch someone do it, but the thrill comes when it finally clicks while you're doing it. In fact, I'd say that is a good order of events for learning a complex tools like Painter, Flash, etc.