I managed to get Fauve Matisse to run on both my laptop running Windows 10 and my main Studio computer on Windows 7. To be clear, this is so old and outdated that I kept around a clunky Windows XP laptop just to use this piece of kit and another favorite known as Halo Imager. Think about it. In these modern times, one would have to be a nut job to want to still run old software. There are so many drawing and painting applications out there, and they are so advanced that it almost makes no sense. Unless of course, you ever got to use Matisse.
For starters, it is indeed an old program. It was designed by two brothers who later sold it to Macromedia who then sold it to Adobe (who shitcanned it). I first came across Matisse in an airport for 10 bucks as a black and white program on a floppy disc. I ran it on an old 486. It was the first digital painting program I ever owned, and it led to doing my first ever color digital cover, that being for the Echoing Green's album Aurora 7.2. The Diary's, Page One was technically my first digital cover (but it was done in Freehand 7).
I literally knew nothing about digital art and as fate would have it, the chance encounter with this software and the opportunity to do a cover presented themselves almost simultaneously. This was around 1996 I believe. I can list a few things I had no idea about at the time... RGB vs CMYK, DPI, LPI, etc. It all shows on that first cover. Bit it's almost a record of the times themselves now. Pixels.
I was a total newbie with this stuff. But I stuck with it. There was no going back!
What I came to love above all else was the way I could design the textures and the brush's reaction to them on the fly (something that most modern programs are STILL clunky at). It never interrupted my flow at all. In many ways, it became a way to get to things faster, and it trained me to think about physical paint in new ways too. I even created my own brushes quite easily...
I have missed these brushes for some time. And look here, I have Painter X, Affinity Photo, Xara, Designer, and probably five or six others that I love and use every day. But there is always this missing factor when I begin a project, and Fauve makes this happen. It is for my digital art what an ESQ1 is for the music.
I have been drawing more since I was able to unearth it. Matisse and I are old friends. Together we stood at the beginnings of the digital age. And both of us are going to have a cup of coffee in the cafe of the soul, wondering and expounding where this has taken us. Together.
Fauve Matisse? I love you. Don't leave me yet, OK?