Happy Halloween, and Happy Anniversary Muddy Colors!

Well being that time of year, you know what I’m gonna do- time for a Halloween art demo in the free program Alchemy!!! Just like these ones I did here! It’s kinda my thang!

What do you mean I can’t use Alchemy any more on my 2020 Imac- shut your face!

Oh… crap you are right, it won’t work on the latest OS… and the interweb is telling me IT WILL NEVER RUN AGAIN on my Mac. Nooooo! If you knew how much I rode that dinosaur- wait you do know how much I rode it. If you are an OG Muddy colors reader, you’ve seen the posts. I literally start almost every piece I’ve done for a decade in Alchemy.

Hold on… do you smell rotting flesh? Hear groaning? Sweet mother of all that is decomposing, its back! Well It’s actually been back, but I’ve never used the FREE online  web-based version called Webchemy. Desperation has found me there. Time to join the party, eat some brains and make some art! You got 15 min of video ahead of you so grab some candy corn and kit-kats, and buckle up. If you missed that link a second ago, find the program here. You literally click that and start painting. Nothing to download. Actual time into that demo? Two hours.

My final review of it? It is awesome, I am home again. They streamlined the interface more for web use. But my main tools- being the shape fill, mirror mode and gradient, are still intact! I can’t seem to eyedrop, which slows me down a bit. (EDIT: There is an eyedropper! It is ‘option’ (in old alchemy it was the letter ‘i’) Great news, thanks Tayete!) The program seems to smooth out some of my shapes, as if I had ‘smoothing’ on in photoshop. But on the flip side they have an Un-do there! (Which is actually blasphemy for Alchemy! I’d kinda prefer they didn’t. It makes every choice count when there is no Un-do. but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t use it a bit… You know, if you are gonna hang with zombies, you gotta eat what you can get!) I took this pretty far, but really for me Alchemy has always been about early sketching and thumbnails. Oh and making props that I can import into P-shop and use in Paintings! Did a post about that too see it here.

BTW another way to get a rad shape fill took is in the IOS program Infinite Painter. I did a post about that too, here! But I am still more fluid in Alchemy or Webchemy.