ArtWorks has been my big purchase this month. When I've had a graphical design task to do in the past, I've principally made do with Draw and Paint. However, I wanted this new website to impress. Buying the premier RISC OS art & design tool suddenly seemed essential. ArtWorks cost me £167.
Ouch !
Installation of ArtWorks onto my Iyonix was routine. I was in a rush. Casting caution aside, I launched the application without reading the manual. A mouse click on the resulting window caused in an explosion of activity.
 
As things settled, my eye focussed first upon the newly presented toolbox, reproduced to the right. I'm adept with Draw. Draw has nine tools in its toolbox. ArtWorks has thirty-four. To me, this collection of icons initially looked meaningless. Then I realised that amongst them were variations on the familiar Draw tools, shown below.
 

 
I figured the best way to proceed was to predominantly use the tools that were likely to do actions with which I was familiar. I resolved to pick only one of the new tools to explore in this, my first ArtWorks session. For the launch issue of this webzine, I used a table to format the pages with the help of another RISC OS software package, WebWonder. In that first incarnation I had been pleased at being able to construct a layout that allowed advertisements down either side of the main content.
 
For the second issue, I wanted the ads down the right hand side only. By reducing the screen width used by the adverts, I thought there'd be enough room to throw a border around the columned pages. With such thoughts in mind, I reached for the familiar tool to draw rectangles. Before I selected it, I noticed a similar tool which gave the rectangle rounded corners. I used that instead. See below, left.
 

Naturally, I was keen to use an ArtWorks effect that was not available in Draw. I had an idea, from one of the RISC OS show demonstrations, that some subtle colour transitions were accessible from the circle tool with grey shading that varied from black to white from bottom to top. See above, right.

As soon as I clicked on this tool the info bar switched to graduated fill, confirming that this tool was as I had suspected. It was a trivial puzzle to work out how to use it.
 

 
Before long I'd got a rounded rectangle with a beautiful transition from deep blue on the left edge across to cyan on the right.
 

 
If you are viewing this on a Risc PC without a viewfinder graphics card, in 256 colours, you will not be seeing it as I do. There will be visible boundaries where the limited number of shades of blue and cyan meet. On my Iyonix, in 16 million colour mode, the transition is wonderfully smooth both in ArtWorks itself, and when viewed with the NetSurf web browser.

I next applied the same effect, using red and white, to the RISCOScode.com heading. I thickened up the black outlines. Then I concocted the orange decorative decals which, if you click on them, return you to the front page. The graphical design of issue 2 was done. Cutting it up, using Paint, and inserting it into a web page table, using WebWonder, was yet to be done. A story for another time.
 
I am delighted with my new software. I am an absolute ArtWorks novice and yet I have been able to produce, in a restricted time, an attractive and modern looking design. In fact, I'm cursing myself for taking so long to buy what has for long been regarded as one of the RISC OS killer applications. I'm looking forward to using ArtWorks much more, and reporting progress regularly on RISCOScode.com.