What Makes a
CorelDRAW Expert?
In some professions, it’s easy. Steve Young and Jerry Rice are experts in their field. So are Barbra Streisand and Pavarotti. Albert Einstein wasn’t too shabby either. No analysis or consensus is needed, and there would be no argument.
Our niche of the graphics community has no such easy barometers, and some of the more lively discussions that I have had with CorelDRAW users is on the subject of aptitude. What are the ingredients of a CorelDRAW expert?
Because DRAW is a tool, it follows that a master craftsman of the program would be recognized as an expert. My colleague Steve Roth refers to this breed of software aficionado as a “thunder lizard,” and he even formed a company by that name. But DRAW’s main purpose is to produce art, and that changes the formula considerably. What if you graduated with honors from the New York Academy of Art, but don’t know the difference between Group and Combine? Are you an expert if you can extrude your socks off but can’t draw a beach ball? After all, don’t we all know a few DRAW users who know the tools inside-out and blindfolded, but might as well use crayons to try to produce fine art?
This question always finds relevance at our annual CorelWORLD User Conference, where users, including acknowledged experts, come together from all corners of the user community, and indeed, the world. Each year, there is at least one member of our speaking team around whom this topic of expertise is particularly engaging.
The first time it came to the fore was back in 1994. One of our marquee speakers was Georgina Curry, who won 1993 Best of Show honors for “The Huntress,” her wonderful rendition of film star Clara Bow. Her presentation was one of the highlights of the conference, and she was called back for an encore. But when she wasn’t amazing patrons with her talent as an artist, she was a regular observer at the advanced tips and tricks seminars—the thunder lizards’ track, if you will. And she was in awe over the mastery that some of the presenters exhibited over the software. “Did you see what they were doing in there with Extrude?” she said at one point. “That was incredible—I had no idea you could do that with the software!”
When Curry gave her own presentation—in which she stepped through the creation of “The Huntress”—she began on a modest note. “I do not consider myself an advanced user of the software,” she said, “and I do not consider ‘The Huntress’ to be a complicated drawing.”
In unison, the house laughed. What a concept that this woman downplays her own skill with the software and describes her incredible drawing, all 2.1MB of it, as uncomplicated (over 2MB was a lot back then).
In fact, Curry was right. Her work is uncomplicated, while at the same time magnificent in detail and realism. And many of the readers of this article might be able to teach her the finer points of the Arrange tools, lenses, transparency, and other functions that make up DRAW’s arsenal of special effects. “The Huntress” boasts as its most sensational feature, the radial fountain fill. That, a few simple envelopes, and hundreds and hundreds of blended objects, mark this drawing. There are no extrusions, no contours, no power lines, no neon, no three-dimensional stars, and no balloons.
So just what is Georgina Curry’s expertise? She is a deftly-talented artist who doesn’t need CorelDRAW to produce her work. Instead, she has chosen DRAW as her tool. She doesn’t call upon it to produce sensational effects; she asks it to render the images and messages that she sees in her mind’s eye. She gives DRAW a good name, because in her hands, the tool produces the art, it doesn’t replace it.
What’s clear about the professional DRAW community, however, is that there are two, perhaps three, distinct types of experts. The most populous lot are those who are faced with practical business projects and looming deadlines. They might not be able to render even one of Clara Bow’s feathers, but they know all the tricks to churn out clean charts, diagrams, floor plans, and the like. They have killer templates that get them started, ingenuous scripts for creating repeating elements, and they can solve intricate design challenges with clever blends, a weld here and there, and a few good trims. Irrespective of the fact that they can’t design themselves out of a paper bag, they are nonetheless experts at what they do.
The third category of expertise is not as easy, nor as comfortable, for me to describe. On the one hand, I take particular pleasure in embracing that well known and self-effacing saying: Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach; those who can’t teach, write; and those who can’t write become high-priced consultants. On the other hand, I see the proliferation of books and video tapes on DRAW, and I witness the fact that several hundred users each year CorelWORLD. There is something to be said for lucid analysis, clear instruction, and an intelligible commentary on the issues of the software. But we journalists and commentators...are we experts? In the political arena, we would be called “pundits”—that term is probably more apropos.
What makes the CorelDRAW community such a fascinating study is the number of routes that people can take to reach the software. Are you a professional artist and illustrator? The odds say no—in fact, a significant majority of DRAW users have no formal training in the arts. If you take the narrow perspective that CorelDRAW is an artist’s tool, then you would have to conclude that there are very few DRAW experts in the world today. But if you view DRAW as a graphics and production tool, then we are rich with experts, replete with users who regularly send DRAW into overdrive to crank out the symbiology of today’s business world. Corel Corp.’s marketing campaigns might give you the impression that DRAW is a professional artist’s tool, and that its marquee users are all award-winning illustrators. While true, many true artists use DRAW, many more don’t.
Consider this column an invitation to the silent majority of DRAW users who did not graduate from an art institute. I want to hear from you on what constitutes a DRAW expert. What incredible technique did you devise to align and distribute 50 distinct objects? To what ingenious use have you put the Guides layer? And tell me about your latest script.