The artist writes:

I draw in different ways using Paint Shop Pro 6 and 7. I sometimes use an old AIPTEK digital pen and pad, but since I first taught myself to draw with a mouse, I usually just use the mouse. It may be a little more complicated, but I find it a bit easier for some reason.

For "weed" I used PSP 7, and just created a new canvas, using the butterscotch orange for the background, and a lime green for the line drawing. Using the Tool Options: Draw, I used a Freehand Line at a 1 pixel Width, Solid Line, Antialias, Close Path for some of it, Open path for other parts. I clicked "Curve" on the "Join" selection and Curve Tracking was set at 20.

But my favorite way to draw is on PSP 6, using the "Draw tool", Freehand Line, Filled, Width: 1, Antialias, Close Path (Curve tracking- varies, set on "2" at the moment, with Join- "round line". When selecting colors, it allows me to create fields of flat color with the drawing tool.

If I want to shade colors, I use the "freehand" (lasso shaped) tool, and draw a shape (or "selection" area) and then spray paint it at the density and opacity and color(s) of my choice. I do a lot of "painting" that way with the program -- while it is challenging, the results are whimsical and fun to do.

Artist-poet D.W. (Debi) Bender resides in Orlando, Florida, USA, where she has lived for the past dozen years or so. Her interest in combining her visual arts with her poetry began many years ago. At times she has experimented with concrete poetry, which eventually found its way into her haiku, haiku series, and "art-haiku" (contemporary "haiga") after she rediscovered haiku on the Internet in 1999. Since that time, she has been exploring the combination of visual arts and poetry in her haiku, tanka, "ren" (new-renga) forms, sijo, haibun and multi-genre poems. She has combined haibun with her artwork, photography, and concrete text-visuals, using the text to illustrate and expand meaning, as she has done in "Departure from Rattlesnake Island."

Debi views her multimedia efforts through the Japanese poetic forms as hybrid styles. Her art-poetry is meant to be different from Japanese haiga and haibun, but in their own right, a Western style of art which has grown "out from" Japanese forms, borrowing from their concepts for inspiration.

Debi has worked with the World Haiku Club in various aspects since 2000, and is WHC's Deputy Chairman and the Editor-in-Chief of its online magazine, World Haiku Review.
Websites:

World Haiku Club (WHC Official site)
World Haiku Review (magazine of WHC)
Paper Lanterns (Personal Website)