The lovely people at Corel are celebrating 20 years of their fantastic CorelDRAW graphics suite with a great little Flash game called Balloon Racer. First released in 1989, CorelDRAW is a graphics suite combining vector editing, photo manipulation, and much more. The Balloon Racer game sees you floating the program’s logo through environments based on the years in which different versions of the program were released. If you’re fed up waiting for your copy of Painter 11 to arrive, entertain yourself for a while with this little gem. Visit http://www.balloonracer.com/?ibx_sc=1019 to play for free now!

Hi gang, I just want to let you know that this week’s pic is going to be delayed until tomorrow as I’ve had an emergency come up. In the meantime, you can use the comments section below to let me know about any paintings that you think deserve this week’s accolade!

For those of you who are fans of videogames (and there are a fair few of you painting Lara Croft and other characters!) Imagine Publishing is pleased to announce the launch of the NowGamer web portal today. From the people who bring you GamesTM, Retro Gamer, Xbox 360, Play and Total PC Gaming, this innovative site aggregates news, reviews and previews from videogames of all formats and genres and gives you access to over a decade’s worth of commentary right from launch. Its Publisher’s Premiership ranking system and fully searchable archives can be filtered by style and platform to focus on the areas of gaming you’re interested in. You can even fully customise its clean, mature interface, choosing theme, colour scheme and much more. You might even find a familiar face in the reviews section…

 Visit www.nowgamer.com to register, log in and create your own customised profile with all the games coverage you want!

I just couldn’t resist this little guy - look at those puppy dog eyes! More practically, this demonstrates a really good use of Painter’s brushes to render that lovely silky fur texture. You really do want to reach out and stroke this little fella. The contrast of painting styles between the very photorealistic dog and the more Impressionistic background is nicely managed too.

As ever I’ve got several more honourable mentions along the way. Another shaggy dog story is Hal Smith’s Dad, Let’s Go - a sweet and fun image with a lovely use of colour and light. Were is an image from Jordan Dill’s fascinating Court of Leaves concept collection and it’s characterised by her signature device of a smoky, warped face swimming up out of the shadows, but deviates from her normal autumnal tones with a rainbow effect which makes the figure’s haunted and haunting expression even more eerie. I’ve also been following new user Phillipe Geric’s work with interest - these surreal figures, chimeras of animal, human and plant, such as Centaure, are reminiscent of the work of Roger Dean.

This stunning face study from Michael is definitely the runaway favourite for the Pic of the Week - delicately toned and subtly painted, it displays a beautiful  contrast between soft matte and smooth shiny skin. The combination of grey and pink for most of the composition creates a luminous and fresh portrait while still allowing for a sombre style of lighting, and the restrained complementary colour palette really makes the green of the eyes stand out. Check out Michael’s La Dame au Diademe image too, which is accompanied by a fantastic little series of works in progress to show you how he builds up these gorgeous portraits.

In complete contrast, Mr Sour Face by Theodore Miller also caught my eye. First it looks like Leslie Crowther chewing a mouthful of lemon-flavoured pins, which made me chuckle, but more importantly it displays all the expressive verve of a good speedpainting - quick, significant brushstrokes with nothing wasted and essential details captured in a few sure lines. Mel Rigot’s Bridge in Early Morning displays some of the same qualities in a peaceful, minimalist landscape scene - quick rough strokes and scribbled colour are at odds with the tranquil hazy place that’s portrayed yet the juxtaposition works perfectly, partially thanks to the very restrained colour harmony used. Not Another Clone by David Taylor also displays some of these elements, but in a more finished and vibrant piece with a bit of Painter comedy thrown in. My final honourable mention this week is The Farewell of King Boabdil at Granada by Kristina Gehrmann. I’m a sucker for convoluted, verbose, 18th Century style titles - the longer and more flowery, the better! Having been drawn in by the name of the piece, I discovered that it was a wonderful history painting in Kristina’s signature storybook style, of an event largely forgotten in European art.

 Yes, it’s that moment you’ve been waiting for - our second Painter-based bookazine is here! The Complete Guide to Digital Painting Volume 2 presents a great range of tips, techniques and tutorials designed to expand your digital painting skills and inspire you to new heights of creativity. Over 250 pages are packed with a range of tutorials, from photo cloning and compositional techniques for beginners to guides to working with Painter’s more advanced functions for more established digital artists. Whatever your skill level, you can benefit from our advice on representing a wide variety of subjects, from sunlight to skin tone, and our Paint Like tutorials on a range of Old Masters and young geniuses alike will have you painting like a professional in no time!

You can pick up The Complete Guide to Digital Painting Volume 2 from http://www.imagineshop.co.uk/item_show.php?itemID=1146&action=maglist but get in there quickly to guarantee your copy of this essential collected edition as its predecessor sold out in record time!

We’re a day late on this Pic of the Week thanks to the snowy conditions in the UK which kept me from the office yesterday (Although my daughter had a wonderful time off school with snowmen, snowball fights and all the other frozen delights we don’t normally get in the south of England). I’m a big fan of steampunk so this image instantly caught my eye. I even toyed with my own entry for CGSociety’s Steampunk Myths and Legends which Sandra has created this clever and otherworldly image for. In particular I love the idea of the steam-powered, robotic caterpillar with the Mad Hatter and March Hare inside, evidently using it as a vehicle - they become less insane in the Carroll style and more eccentric and inventive like the characters created by Jules Verne instead, as the design references the fabulous machines imagined in tales like Journey to the Centre of the Earth. And Alice reading Tesla’s treatise on wireless power is just priceless - it instantly got me thinking of some of the great steampunk authors like William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling and of course Jeff Noon, who pepper their work with all sorts of little scientific, literary and pop cultural in-jokes, of which this is the visual equivalent. A great subject for a painting in this style and a very well-executed rendition of it - the colours and in particular the castle in the background are delightful.