My name is Tiffanie Gray, I live in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. I have been using Dogwaffle since version 1.1a, in 2001!

I originally started using PD because I am a traditional artist (colored pencil, graphite, ink), and I wanted to branch out into digital, but wanted something that was more like traditional media without the steep price of the better known programs.

Dogwaffle fit the bill and I began learning it with glee. Amazingly, there is still a free version that works great, version 1.2 available here.

I started out with coloring some of my work done in pencil and scanned. But I also played with creating art from scratch. I didn't have a tablet to begin with, so the mouse did all the work.

I especially liked what you could do with particles (optipustics, at the time).

I could also design cool web graphics from scratch with ease.

All of my art experience is self taught, which means I read or took small workshops to learn my traditional art. PD was the same, I watched the free demo videos, read the tutorials and talked to Dan Ritchie and Philip Staiger who were developing the program and doing great things with it. The Yahoo group community also had lots of good questions and answers for someone starting out with the program.

I have 5 kids, four of which are teenagers now, so it's not so much a problem finding time to work on my art, as it was when they were younger. One of the handy things about colored pencils is the ability to stop where you are and pick it up again later without having to remix paint, clean messes, etc. That same advantage is to be found with ditital art programs, especially PD Pro 4 (which I use now), which has the ability to save custom brushes, custom alpha selections, save in layers and save custom paint wells, so you can pick it all back up when you are ready.

        I primarily draw fantasy and science fiction pictures, but have dabbled in still lifes and landscapes. My favorite subject is currently space scapes. I like how quickly I can put a space scene or spacescape together and how easy it is to refine the piece. I don't have to rely on filters to achieve the effects I want, yet there are a number of filters and effects available to use if I want to. Plus many of them are adjustable.

I hope to do tutorials for PD Pro one day to help out other people who aren't sure where they want to go with PD. I like that there are still so many aspects that I haven't learned about PD, so that I can keep learning and enhancing my art.

I have work in Colored Pencil at Elfwood, an amateur art gallery. I also have colored pencil tutorials at: Here and Here.
Here's a tutorial that I used to create the blonde hair. It was made for Photoshop but also works great with Project Dogwaffle!

More of my space scenes, all done in PD Pro 4 are available for viewing Here.
I also have some artwork for sale at CafePress, which is accessible from the Elfwood page.

I am working on my homepage (using PD Pro 4 for the graphics), but it is in a state of construction at the moment. It can be found: (removed)

I also do web work for several non profits and I use PD for graphic design for that as well.