The photo of Jinny was taken by a co-worker the year she began learning how to become an illustrator. She says, “It was a very long time ago, but a time full of happy memories.”

Photo © Bill Holman, used with permission from the photographer.

Unless you’re very new to the Painter community, you probably know Jinny Brown. For the past decade, she’s traveled the Corel Painter community daily, offering help to Painter users in many forums. Read John Derry’s very nice comment about Jinny in the September 2005 issue of The Painter Canvas newsletter, paragraph six. Beginning in July, 2007, Jinny also moderates Corel’s community forums for Painter at The PainterFactory.

She lives in the south San Francisco bay area (Silicon Valley), in the foothills above the freeways. For nearly 28 years, Jinny worked as a technical illustrator and graphic artist, and wore whatever other hats were needed to produce print-ready art. During the last few years of her career, Jinny’s job title was writer/illustrator, and her days were spent producing manuals from scratch to finish, writing, illustrating, and using AutoCAD, Adobe FrameMaker, and various other programs. Among her employers and freelance clients were:  High-tech Silicon Valley companies like Hewlett Packard, Intel, and Applied Materials; government contract companies like Ford Aerospace (now Space Systems Loral), United Technologies, and Lockheed; text book publishers Addison Wesley and Wadsworth Publishing Co.; graphic designers; small graphics houses where she did work for, among many others, NASA/Ames and HP; small tech writing companies; and individual clients.

Fractal Design Painter came into Jinny’s life just a few years before she retired and she says, “It was such a blessing! Organic, colorful, exciting, and not for a minute dry or boring. I spent every free hour playing with it and it truly did save my life. All those years I’d been earning a living, now I was living!”

All told, Jinny has 13 years of experience with Corel Painter, starting with Fractal Design 4.0 and continuing through Painter X.1. She worked on the last three Corel Painter version Beta teams and the Beta team for Corel Painter Essentials 4. Jinny uses Corel Painter every day and travels the Painter related forums daily (several times a day, actually), helping Painter users out of pickles and into having fun. Jinny’s two websites, PixelAlley launched in October 1999 and TutorAlley Forums launched in August 2002, are both Corel Painter focused sites. TutorAlley Forums is no longer active but was originally launched to provide private forums where Jinny taught Painter classes. PixelAlley is continually updated with new tutorials and resources for Painter users to enjoy.

For more, read About Jinny and Corel Painter at PixelAlley.