Corel Painter - 13 - Magazine, Art, Digital Painting, Drawing, Draw, 2d

PC and Mac

TEXTURES | STOCK PHOTOS | HUMAN REFERENCE FILESBrush primer

The best options for getting the most from Crayons

Draw horsesHelpful techniques for drawing and shading believable horses

Realistic waterThe advice you need for painting and colouring waterscapes

Issue thirteen Visit us online w

ww

.paintermagazine.com

Of cial Corel Painter TM M

agazine

ISSUE THIRTEENISSN 1753-3155

9 7 7 1 7 5 3 3 1 5 0 0 0

1 3

www.paintermagazine.com

6.00

Createdigital art today!

FREE CD INSIDE

Official Magazine

40pages oftutorials

Over

Artistic project

Pencil portraitsTurn photos into a

tonal drawing

Prime photosPrime photosEdit your images and create the

ultimate base for cloning

Inspirational walkthroughsCreative guides to art skills

Tools and options explainedQuick start PDF on the CD

brushesDiscover which brush options will give you the perfect painting tool

Creative8-page practical guide

Paint like KlimtMake your own gilded masterpiece

001_OPM_13 COVER.indd 1 10/1/08 16:29:53

stuartdixonRectangle

5

Jo Cole, Editor in [email protected]

WelcomeIf you are using photos in your artwork, a bit of time spent manipulating the start image will help you achieve far better results. With just a few adjustments, you can create the perfect base for

whatever style of art you like. Is watercolour your thing? Reduce the brightness, apply some Blur and then get painting. Prefer oils? Boost the shadows, enrich the colours and slap on your digital paint. For more ideas on how to prime your photos, turn to our great feature on page 20.

Klimt is a favourite artist for many, and this issue we show you how to re-create his style, including some ideas for embellishing the inal image in order to achieve the sumptuous gold inish of the original. See whats involved on page 42. Other skills on the menu this issue include monochrome pencil art (page 30), painting water (page 52), drawing horses (page 66) and using the Brush Creator (page 38).

Enjoy your painting!

This is THE magazine for anyone wanting to further their Corel Painter skills or learn how to become a better artist

ISSUETHIRTEEN

Visit our website!If you find that the magazine isnt enough to satisfy your Corel Painter appetite, you can always visit our website. Pop on over to www.paintermagazine.com and register as a user. Once this is out of the way, explore the pages and enjoy great content such as: Downloadable resources Online galleries to share your work Special forum for meeting other Corel Painter users

Brush Controls: General

Pg 56

Get perfect brush tips with the powerful options in here

Paint like: Gustav Klimt

Pg 42

Drawing 101: Horses

Pg 66

The tips and tricks you need to get perfect equestrian results

Luxuriate in the golden glory that is Klimt

005_OPM_13_welcome.indd 5 14/1/08 17:22:20

news even ts resources even ts resources even ts letters websites websites websites letters websites lettersTutorial xxxx

10

newly published graphic novel, from renowned illustrator Kyle T Webster (www.kyletwebster.com) and

writer-creator Andy Horner, is already attracting many admirers. Light Children, the irst part of a planned trilogy, is a haunting story that combines solid storytelling with stunning artwork created solely in Corel Painter. No other application comes close, in my opinion, to replicating the feel of natural media, says Webster. The degree of control available for each tool is incredible.

The major undertaking is likely to consume several creative years, so Corel Painter is the ideal tool for Webster to lay down this widescreen epic. I am comfortable with drawing and inking on paper, but with the added convenience of Undos, layers, multiple versions of

PORTFOLIO

Dazzling new graphic novel showcases Corel Painter talent

There is a lightthe same image and the lack of an actual physical mess, working digitally has become the only way for me to go.

More used to single-image editorial illustration, the creation of Light Children(www.lightchildren.com) has also set new challenges for Webster. Not only must the art be a pleasure to view, but it must also transport the reader successfully into another world, help move the plot forward, remain consistent in terms of character likenesses and behaviours, and the list goes on.

As for the future, Webster is extremely optimistic and hopes that eventually a much wider audience than comic-book fans will see Light Children. We have big plans, a ilm adaptation for instance, and I know that Andy has some other stories in the works. For now, it is a thrill to get to work on something so fantastic.

Despite its sophistication, Light

Children is Websters first graphic novel,

in collaboration with Horner. A planned trilogy is expected

to take several years to create

Commun ityNEWS EVENTS RESOURCES LETTERS WEBSITES INFO FORUM

The graphic novel has an ever-growing cast of characters and an ever-

evolving universe of plot twists, explains Webster

Webster is an illustrator living in North Carolina. His work has appeared internationally on book covers, in magazines, posters and packaging

010-011_OPM_13_news.indd 10 14/1/08 11:14:18

websites websites websites info news even ts resources even ts resources even ts letters website letters website letters info news even ts

11

Ecstatic about Etsy f you have ever wanted to sell your Corel Painter creations without the fuss of setting up your own online shop, then Etsy (www.etsy.com)

is for you. Founded in 2005, this online marketplace for buying and selling all things handmade is a hive for creative talent. As well as art, Etsy offers sellers a place to showcase just about anything from clothes and accessories, books, toys and home furnishings. Setting up your shop is free, although youll need a credit card for Etsy security reasons and ideally a PayPal account for receiving customers payments. Listing an item costs 20 cents per item and theres a 3.5 per cent sales fee on any goods sold. For buyers and those looking for inspiration, Etsy is an Aladdins cave of wonderful creativity.

Website for handmade creations offers opportunity to sell your Painter artwork

AiLmeART was created by Darren Di Lieto, the founder of the wonderful illustration portal LCSV4. This collaborative project

involves drawn or painted submissions being sent on envelopes or packages through the post. Designed to test your skills, make you some money and give you the chance to have a bit of fun and win prizes, MAiLmeART has so far received hundreds of submissions. I needed

to have something tangible from the artists and illustrators

involved in order to be able to sell the product and make money for the artist, explains Di Lieto, and in the early months of 2008, MAiLmeART will be holding an exhibition. Artists will receive 70 per cent of any sales as well as some great exposure. View submission details at www.mailmeart.com.

Its in the post

ne of the best ways to learn anything new is to watch others showing you how they

work. Sclipo (www.sclipo.com) is a excellent free social utility that allows people to share skills and knowledge through video and webcam. If you wanted to learn a language or Corel Painter, you had to ind a teacher or school in your neighbourhood. Sclipo changed the rules of the learning game, by integrating an easy-to-use webcam teaching system, enthuses Sclipo CEO Gregor Gimmy. The team also offer SclipoLive, a webcam-based system for live teaching and learning.

Broadcast your skills Show your skills and win at MAiLmeART CONTEST

RESOURCES

With hundreds of wonderful

submissions so far, MAiLmeART

is planning a major group

exhibition for early 2008

Etsy is an online marketplace for buying and selling items, including work created with Corel Painter

LEARNING

Sclipo is a video site that lets users post short instructional videos relating to a number of topics

Watch and learn with Sclipo

FEB

In shortCreative happenings from around the world

Print and publish your own work with Lulu Lulu (www.lulu.com/uk) is a cost-effective way of professionally self-publishing your own artwork, calendars and books. With more than 4,000 new titles added each week, its also a great marketplace to sell your work. Lulu prints and dispatches each item as its ordered, and you collect 80 per cent of the creator revenue.

Worldwide free stock photo searchWoophy (www.woophy.com) is a funky photo-sharing website where members can put their photos on a world map. With around 30,000 cities so far covered, its a great way to explore the world without leaving cyberspace. With an excellent forum for sharing photos and tips, this is an online community well worth joining.

28 Issue 14 of OPM on sale!Pay a trip to your local magazine shop and pick up the latest issue to hit the shelves. In addition to the usual inspirational tutorials, youll find a great feature on garden art and will be able to discover how to turn your own garden into a masterpiece.

Grunge is good Grunge Textures offers users over 600 atmospheric textures for personal and non-profit projects, free of charge. High-resolution, well-worn textures include aircraft aluminium, asphalt, brick, concrete, graffiti, metal, paper, cardboard, wood and tombstones. This is a great site if you want to add some textures to your creations. Visit www.grungetextures.com.

010-011_OPM_13_news.indd 11 14/1/08 11:14:45

12

news even ts resources even ts resources even ts letters website letters website letters info news even ts resources resources resources even ts resources even ts

The power of panoramasLike a lot of people, I have come to Corel Painter after time spent using traditional art materials. I never got to the stage of making my own canvases, so would have to rely on whatever was available in the shops. My daughter bought be a copy of Painter a couple of years ago and I started dabbling in different-shaped canvas sizes. One of my friends is a panoramic photographer and I decided to try the format in my paintings. Now its all I do! I ind it liberating to be able to capture the whole of a landscape and make the

our Lettersviewer feel as though they are in there. Sometimes I will curve the reference panoramic photo to suggest the bend of the Earth. Its something I encourage everyone to try.

Frank Michaels

Thanks for your letter and we completely agree with you. The panoramic format is a fantastic way of widening the scope of the viewer. As you said, it works well on landscapes but is also good for full-body portraits, sections of still lifes or just abstract shapes. It does mean investing in a large-format printer, though!

In the abstractIncredibly complex or photo-realistic images has never been my forte, so you can imagine that I have been drawn towards abstract art. I wanted to send you a couple of pieces that I have done. Im particularly proud of the cloudscape, where Ive relied on the texture and brushstrokes to hopefully stop it being an image of some random shapes!

Sean Church

Good to see you flying the abstract flag, Sean. Its a style that a lot of people overlook, mainly because they arent too sure of where to start. I like that you have taken a thing in your cloud image and then applied abstract principles on it. When you paint in the abstract, you

Welcome to the part of the magazine where you can come

and share your thoughts on anything you fancy!

Featured galleryOur favourite readers gallery this month

John Boamwww.paintermagazine.co.uk/user/tazOur beautiful cover this issue put us in the mood for some illustration. Johns gallery helped satisfy that need and we wanted to showcase the images with you. As you can see from these examples, John has a diverse portfolio, but with a very strong sense of colour. Even in the more traditional paintings, he injects strong saturation to catch the eyes attention. Our favourite image is Ruby. After a couple of attempts, John settled on this striking creation (see right). Visit his gallery today!

John Boamwww.paintermagazine.co.uk/user/tazOur beautiful cover this issue put us in the mood for some illustration. Johns gallery helped satisfy that need and we wanted to showcase the images with you. As you can see from these examples, John has a diverse portfolio, but with a very strong sense of colour. Even in the more traditional paintings, he injects strong saturation to catch the eyes attention. Our favourite image is Ruby. After a couple of attempts, John settled on this striking creation (see right). Visit his gallery today!

Ofcial Corel Painter Magazine, Imagine Publishing, Richmond House, 33 Richmond Hill, Bournemouth, Dorset BH2 6EZ, UK

If youd prefer to contact us via email, send your message to [email protected]

Send your letters to...

Experiment with different formats. Youd be amazed at what using a different canvas size can achieve

Ruby

Readers tipReaders tipShare your Corel Painter wisdom

Squint and seeI teach watercolour techniques as a hobby, and one problem that a lot of students encounter is being able to decide on tonal range. The best thing to do (at least its what I nd easiest) is to squint when looking at what you are painting. The colours become simplied and its easier to nd the shadows, mid-tones and highlights.

Audrey Taylor

Ruby

Our favourite readers gallery this month

John Boam

John Boam

John Boam

First flight

The golden tree

012-013_OPM_013_letters.indd 12 14/1/08 12:06:47

13

Come and join our forum and website

resources resources resources letters website letters website letters info news even ts resources letters website letters website letters info

are more free to explore colour and texture without worrying about making something recognisable. Are there any other abstract fans out there? We would love to see your work and can run a tutorial if anyone is interested.

I want issue two!Is there ANY way I can beg, borrow or steal a copy of issue two? I have managed to get my hands on all the other back issues but that one eludes me! I have tried eBay, I keep checking out your shop to make sure I dont miss it, but its always out of my reach. Can you help?

Noel Murphy

This is going to look like a complete setup, but we are working on archiving issues that have all sold out. It might be in place by the time this

issue is on sale, but if not, keep checking on the website blog as it will be announced there the instant we get it up.

Traditional skillsIve noticed that your Drawing 101 section seems to be popular with people and so I thought Id let you know about a website I found. Its called Art Graphica and has a decent supply of free lessons that show how to paint and draw. I only found the site myself a couple of weeks ago, but have already downloaded some of the tutorials and have tried my own interpretations of a couple of them.

Sadie Appleby

Thanks for the heads up, Sadie. We went along to Art Graphica and were also impressed with the help on offer. If anyone else is interested, the address is www.artgraphica.net. As an aside, the site also sells some really nice journals. If anyone is feeling generous, I like the compact sketchbook!

Shun the shackles of realism and start to explore abstract. Thats exactly what Sean has done

www.paintermagazine.com

Not only do we deliver inspirational and practical tutorials on your favourite program every month, we also have a dedicated Corel Painter website that you can visit to get your artistic ix while you wait for the next issue. From here, you can join up for a free account and then create your own gallery for the world to see! You can explain the process or inspiration behind each of your images, and you can also comment on other members artwork, share your wisdom and take part in regular challenges. Theres also an area to download tutorial iles from previous issues in case your CD has gone missing. If you feel like a bit of creative interaction, we also have a forum for you to come and leave your thoughts on the magazine, ask Corel Painter questions and also pass the time with other digital artists. So what are you waiting for? Visit www.paintermagazine.com today!

Make yourself known!www.paintermagazine.com

Dont be shy everyones welcome to enter! Go to www.paintermagazine.co.uk/competitions

ENTER THE WEBSITE CHALLENGE

Shun the shackles of realism and start to explore abstract. Thats exactly what Sean has done

Cant get enough of painting? Pick up some new skills at this siteCant get enough of painting? Pick up some new skills at this site

Gone but not forgotten soon you will be able to get your hands on sold-out issues!Gone but not forgotten soon you will be able to get your hands on sold-out issues!

012-013_OPM_013_letters.indd 13 14/1/08 12:07:08

Interview Jeremy Sutton

14

pending the afternoon in the company of Jeremy Sutton, visiting London from his home in San Francisco to see family and

friends, is a heart-warming experience on a chilly winters day. Although weve only just met, Im welcomed as an old friend and soon become the subject of one his much-admired portraits. Suttons enthusiasm for life, art and Corel Painter is so contagious, youll quickly ind yourself eager to start drawing and painting. Artist, author and educator, Jeremy has just produced a lavish tutorial DVD-ROM, How to Paint from Photographs Using Corel Painter X: Creative Techniques with Jeremy Sutton. Taking a different approach from previous training

Among the impressive surroundings of Londons Tate Modern, Nick Spence meets Corel Painter Master and all-round nice guy, Jeremy Sutton

Jeremy Suttonresources, the new DVD-ROM covers real-life case studies from beginning to end, sharing along the way Suttons worklows, organisational systems, creative processes, decision-making strategies, techniques and tools.

You started working with computers way back in 1991. How has creating artwork changed digitally since then?The digital art tools I started off with back in 91 were the following: a Macintosh IIfx with 128MB RAM, 40MHz speed, 160MB hard drive space, which seemed big at the time; a variety of painting programs that included SuperMacs PixelPaint Pro, a very smooth painting program; ArtMixer, a French program that did wild and

friends, is a heart-warming experience on a chilly winters day. Although weve only just met, Im welcomed as an old friend and soon become the subject


Jeremy SuttonAn interview with

friends, is a heart-warming experience on a chilly winters day. Although weve only just met, Im welcomed as an old


Jeremy Sutton

WEBSITE www.jeremysutton.com and www.paintercreativity.comJOB TITLE Artist, author and educatorCLIENTS Corel Corporation, Sir Richard Branson, Barry Bonds, Apple and Sony

Below and below-rightNick Spence sits for a quick portrait at the hand of Jeremy Sutton in Londons Tate Modern

Jeremy Suttonwonderful things; TimeArts Oasis that John Derry helped create, and which had a great interface; Fractal Design Painter, and a Wacom 12 x 12-inch tablet.

My average inal ile, often saved as PICT ile, was typically about 600KB or 500 x 600 pixels. A complete project may have included ive to 15 versions, adding up to a few megabytes. I backed up my images in duplicate onto CD-ROM. My prints were typically either Scitex Iris prints up to 24 inches on watercolour paper, or large Vutek billboard prints on vinyl, some four by six feet. Most of my early digital work was live portraiture, reminiscent of the thousands of pastel portraits I had made over the years. When I used photographs as reference, I painted them from sight, not using cloning. My prints were the inished artwork; I didnt work onto them with other media.

I now use Corel Painter X with a variety of computers, still all Macs and mostly about ten times faster than my old IIfx, such as the MacBook Pro. I use a range of different Wacom tablets, from the Intuos3 6 x 8 to 12 x 19, and the Cintiq 12WX to 21UX. My work is a mixture of live portraits and photograph-based paintings, in which I use a variety of techniques including cloning, and collage portraits. My average inal ile, usually a TIFF ile, is about 80MB, or 4,500 x 6,500 pixels. A complete project now includes 30 to 70 versions, occupying about two

Pegg

y Gy

ulai

Pegg

y Gy

ulai

014-018_OPM_13_interview.indd 14 14/1/08 12:55:26

15

A portrait of Picasso from 1993. Drawing since a small child, Sutton had his first

major one-man show in 1989 at the Gordon Biersch Restaurant in

Palo Alto, CaliforniaAll o

rigi

nal a

rtw

ork

by J

erem

y Su

tton



16

Antonio Stradivarius is a 2007 pigment ink and

acrylic on canvas mural. This striking, large format mural

was custom-designed to suit the Stradivarius Suite at Chenery House, residence of

Robert C Pritikin

An early portrait, Glyn, from 1991. Born in London in 1961, Sutton has lived and worked in San Francisco for many years, returning home regularly to visit family and friends

Flamenco Jam is a 2007 mixed media on canvas creation, inspired by seeing professional Flamenco instructor Virginia Inglesias perform at the Thirsty Bear in San Francisco


17

to three gigabytes. I back up in duplicate onto DVD-ROM. I output my work primarily on canvas, typically up to 40 x 60 inches, and work onto my canvases with a variety of traditional media. So, in summary, creating artwork has evolved technically to be faster, more powerful and versatile, and yet at the same time the creative process of painting remains much the same.

And how specically has the Corel Painter software changed?The irst time I saw Fractal Design Painter 1 at a Macworld Be-In event in January 1991, I wasnt that impressed. I didnt like the multiple circles that seemed to follow each brushstroke. At that time, PixelPaint Pro was much better. Now Painter is in a league of its own that far surpasses anything else I have seen. The level of control, the variety of brush looks and effects, the versatility, etc, is breath-taking.

You have taught workshops and given presentations throughout the world is there a typical Corel Painter user?I have taught Painter to ages ranging from seven year-olds to people in their eighties, to professional photographers, artists, lawyers, doctors, policemen, retirees and a Major League baseball

player, to name but a few. The only thing typical is that every Corel Painter user I have come across cant put their Wacom pens down once they start using Painter.

Although you offer help, advice and inspiration via your DVDs and books, whats the best bit of Corel Painter advice youve ever been given or read?The eloquent words of Walter Murch, legendary sound editor for ilms such as Apocalypse Now, in his fascinating book In the Blink of an Eye (Silman-James Press): You may not always succeed, but attempt to produce the greatest effect in the viewers mind by the least number of things on screen. Why? Because you want to do only what is necessary to engage the imagination of the audience. Suggestion is always more effective than exposition. Past a certain point, the more effort you put into wealth of detail, the more you encourage the audience to be come spectators rather than participants.

Several famous subjects have sat for you when painting traditionally. Is it possible to do the same when working digitally?All the more so. My live portrait subjects, who have sat for me and been depicted using Painter, include Sir Richard Branson, Barry Bonds, Graham Nash, Clarence Clemons, the list goes on.

This striking painting is based on a photo Sutton took of professional Tango dancer Christy Cot and her partner Darren Lees, performing at Pachamama restaurant in San Francisco to the live music of Trio Garufa

San Francisco Heart is a tribute to the adopted city Sutton now calls home. Every image, including the fireworks and the central heart, contained within this artwork is a scene from the city and is based on photographs I have taken over the last few years



18

You supply your own custom workspaces including your Corel Painter preferences and settings with your DVDs and books. Do you think everyone should customise their settings, and if so, why?There are no right and wrong ways to do these things, just ways that work more effectively and powerfully. My goal is to empower myself creatively, to make the tools disappear so I can be totally focused in the painting process. My settings help me achieve this and have been found very useful by many other people. I always encourage everyone to try things out and adapt them to their own personal worklow and habits. The short answer to the question is yes, I think everyone can gain a more ergonomically eficient and creatively powerful way to work if they take the time to load my customised workspaces which include my settings, extra brushes, art materials and short-cut palettes or develop their own.

As someone who knows Corel Painter inside out, what are your favourite tools and features?Thats like asking me to choose favourites between children! I like to challenge

myself by purposely using brushes I dont usually use. Having said that, I love the Sargent brush, Dens Oil Funky Chunky, Square Chalk, Sherrons Blender Wood, modern art in a can, and Jeremys MishMash Scumble. I also love the huge time-saving capacity of the new workspace management system and the fun of seeing what the Kaleidoscope plug-in layer reveals on any painting.

Finally, as a Corel Painter Master, what would you like to see from the next version of Corel Painter?My wish list includes adding an explanation to the Liquid Ink and Watercolor error messages that helps people know how to proceed when they are told they cant paint with a non-Liquid Ink or non-Watercolor brush on those layers; making the Digital Watercolor and Impasto appear in the layers list rather than act as mysterious virtual layers; the addition of a Drop Impasto command, similar to the Dry Digital Watercolor command that drops the Impasto texture into the background canvas and allows you to paint over it, and having the Option/Alt short cut be dedicated to the Dropper tool.

Chunky, Square Chalk, Sherrons Blender

fun of seeing what the Kaleidoscope plug-

are told they cant paint with a non-Liquid

layers; making the Digital Watercolor and A portrait of Albert Einstein by Sutton,

who regularly offers training seminars

in Painter from beginner to advanced

My one greatest wish for the next version would be for Corel to pick up the scripting and animation capability where it was left off many versions ago, and remains to this day, and develop it so it is truly integrated into the program and becomes a reliable and easy way for users around the world to record, play back, animate and share their complete painting processes, including those that make use of multiple clone sources.

Sutton based this impressionistic scene on a visit to the Great

Gatsby afternoon at Dunsmuir House in Oakland, organised

by the Art Deco Society of California

I love the huge time-saving capacity of the new workspace management system


Feature Prep photos for painting

Editing photos before cloning can reap rewards. David Cole shows you some techniquesEditing photos before cloning can reap rewards. David Cole shows you some techniques

Prep photosfor pain tin g

20

020-27_OPM13_Photos.indd 20 14/1/08 16:34:29

Imagine Publishing Ltd No unauthorised copying or distribution

21

n the Seventies, a high-end hi-i equipment manufacturer used the expression Rubbish In, Rubbish Out to help sell its expensive equipment. The message was that the music coming out of a hi-i system could only be as good as the signal irst introduced into the system. This pretty much

goes for photographic manipulation too; in general, bad photos make bad paintings.

You can, of course, hope to salvage an unexciting photo in the painting process, but it is much easier and much more fun to start painting from a photograph that looks right and stimulates you. You dont want the painting stage to feel like a chore.

While what stimulates us visually is a matter of individual taste, there are a few ways in which photos created or retouched for painting differ, or should differ, from photos made to be seen primarily as photos.

First, and in general, paintings do not have the same level of detail across the image that photos have. Painters use detail creatively so when we manipulate photos for painting, we need to get the best imitation of simpliication we can using Painters selective blurring and sharpening tools. This is important because in painting we also need simple areas where brushstrokes can breathe and be read clearly. This is why Painter Xs Smart Blur is a very useful development.

Second, we ought to chew away at the composition until its right. Of course, photographers are just as concerned with composition as painters, but in photos for painting we need to use cropping in tandem with simpliication to get the base image settled. There is no excuse for poor composition in painting where the painter has control over what appears on the canvas.

Thirdly, dynamic range. Paintings have a very wide range of tone and hue and this degree of subtlety is really only seen in HDR (higher dynamic range) photographs. HDR is often produced by combining three photos with different exposure ranges in a composite that looks quite painterly. Painter does not yet have native tools to do this, but you can approximate it using three differently exposed but otherwise identical photos as clone sources for a single painting. If you check out some HDR images, youll see what can be done. HDR really helps getting a photo ready for painting.

Finally, colour. This is, of course, also related to dynamic range and hue intensity, but in colour cloning it is also about producing colour harmony in the photo to be painted. In Painter, this can be achieved by using two or three versions of the source photo as clone sources, each with a different but harmonious hue. These can then be brushed into the painting. Or you can use the Adjust Selected Color tool to play around with individual colours in your source photo to achieve a colour scheme you like.

So this article is about selecting and editing photos for painting. It will suggest some preparatory steps that you are probably familiar with, but should also give you some ideas you not have tried before.

Prep photosfor pain tin g

020-27_OPM13_Photos.indd 21 14/1/08 16:38:37



Painter has many effects and tools that can be applied pretty easily to help photos before you start to clone them. Broadly, there are tools that change the anatomy and orientation of an image, ones that

change the tonal values in an image, ones that change the images focus and ones that change various aspects of the photos colours.

When preparing a photo, its wise to start with the big things do I like the image? Is the subject too close? Not close enough? Does it need to be cropped? Is the horizon straight (if you want it straight)? Is the subject too central (remember the rule of thirds)? Do you need another tree to the right or some hills to the left to make the composition right? If you do, source them from another photo and paste them in before you start painting. We need to get comfortable with the basic image before we start painting. Take your time over this.

The main tools for changing the physical dimensions and view angles are in the Menu bars Canvas and Effects drop-down menus. Under Canvas, check out Resize and Canvas Size, under Effects see Orientation and also the Crop tool in the Tools palette.

Having got the basics of the photo the way we want it, the next thing to look at is whether it has the right tonal values. Are the highlights blown? Not bright enough? Are the shadow areas


This photo of a duck is poorly framed. The duck is the subject, but it is lost in the picture and the dark waterfall overwhelms it. We need to decide on a better angle of view and the right, tighter crop. Luckily, the image has sufficient resolution that we can choose quite a tight crop if we wish.

Getting the composition rightOften, the problem lies within the framing of a photograph

22

Basic editing

change the tonal values in an image, ones that change the images

too dark, to the point where they are losing detail? Or are they not dark enough? Is the overall arrangement of light and dark pleasing? Once you have made your assessment of which changes are needed, or if you just want to experiment, you can change darks and lights and the relationship between them in a number of ways.

The easiest way is to change the values is with the Brightness/Contrast function at Effects>Tonal Control>Brightness/Contrast. Brightness determines how bright an image is and Contrast adjusts the difference between light and dark values. We can adjust these parameters to taste and try out a number of different values. A rough rule of thumb is that we want to avoid wherever possible blown-out highlights very light areas that are so bright, no detail remains in them, and also shadow areas that are so dark there is no detail in them. Broadly, blown highlights and solid black shadows that are like this in the original image cannot be salvaged, and we want to avoid blowing highlights and losing shadow detail when we adjust Brightness and Contrast.

Changing the brightness and contrast will, of course, affect your colours. But we may also want to add colour intensity to the image to make it come alive this is adding colour saturation. Or

In this instance, we are going to crop the photograph just enough to make it clear that the duck is the subject, and to get it to fall on a third node (regarding the rule of thirds). To achieve this, we used the Crop tool from the Tools palette.

Original Photo

Cropped Photo

Bring out detail in your shotsFixing the brightness and contrastThe exposure is not bad on this photo but it is a little overdone and the colour is rather bleached. We also need to add some contrast to make it read better. Why not look at the original photo on this issues disc and then download it to try out the techniques covered for yourself?

01 Reducing the brightness This doesnt require a vast reduction in brightness, enough to make the lighter tones more distinct. We dont want to lose shadow detail.

02 Adding contrast Contrast can add sparkle and punch to an image by making darks darker and lights lighter. Ideally, strong contrast should be concentrated in the centre of the image but we will add some contrast all over and if necessary, remove it selectively later.

03 Dodging to lighten selectively We need to lighten the ducks head, around the eyes particularly, using the Dodge tool found in the Photo brush category. This should be done carefully at a very low setting.

Control the size and angle of your canvas to get te best composition

020-27_OPM13_Photos.indd 22 14/1/08 16:39:10


23

we may want to change the overall nature or hue of the colours, for example, to cool or warm our picture. Painter allows you to change all colours or just one colour, and in this article we will look at the one you will probably use most often Adjust Colors. This can be found in Painter on the path Effects>Tonal Control>Adjust Colors.

Finally, it is worth mentioning some of the developments in tools for photo preparation since Painter 9. Initially, Painter 9.5 introduced photo-painting palettes and then Painter X improved on that by added an Underpainting palette that includes colour schemes based on various media styles, such as Impressionist, classical, modern, watercolour, sketchbook and chalk drawing. If it suits your need, you can also choose a colour scheme that matches the colours of any open image. These are very valuable tools when preparing a photo to become a painting and are worth checking out.

Make your hues singEnhance the colour

01 Adding colour saturation We can add additional colour saturation very easily. Go to Effects>Tonal Control>Adjust Colors and choose Color Saturation . We dont want the colours to be garish but we do want a little more intensity.

02 Changing a specied colour We want to desaturate the sky reections in the water a little. Select the water so only it is affected. Move the cursor over the second tool down on the left in the Tools palette and select the right-hand tool that looks like a key ring. Make a selection with this.

03 Completing the saturation reduction Now we go to Adjust Selected Colors at Effects>Tonal Control>Adjust Selected Colors. Move the cursor in the main picture on some skys blueish water reection. The cursor becomes a dropper. Now click in the reection area. In the Adjust Selected Colors box, change the value of S Extents to 139 per cent and lower the bottom Saturation control to -125 per cent. Thats it. Deselect the area and were ready to paint.

Are we happy with the colours, or are they too intense? Not intense enough? Do they fit the subject? In this case, increasing the contrast has already given the colours a push but we can add impact by increasing the colour saturation. We may also want to adjust individual colours.

We want to avoid blowing highlights and losing shadow detail when we adjust Brightness/Contrast

It may look odd, but Painter Xs automated schemes are great

020-27_OPM13_Photos.indd 23 14/1/08 16:39:57


24


In photography, particularly in portraiture and sports, selective focus is used to isolate a subject and draw attention to it. Adjustments in depth of ield can blur areas, such as the foreground and the

background, of a photograph that the photographer feels are distracting viewers from the main subject. By keeping only the subject in focus sometimes just the eyes in a portrait and in full detail, the photographer ensures that the viewer is not distracted by what is happening beyond the subject. This selectivity operates in the same way in painting, except that painters can choose either to create the look of a blur, for example, with a large brush or a palette knife, or actually simplify the detail in an area but keep the boundaries and colours in that area distinct.

Real in-camera simpliication maintaining outlines but simplifying colours and contours is impossible to achieve, but we can get a good distance towards it in photo-retouching using digital tools. Throughout its advancements, Corel Painter has recognised that this is an important feature, the process enhanced by its Selection tools and Blur effects. Simpliication of this sort is rather different to the effect of blurring. Painters may use it because they actually prefer to see their image broken up into a

Changing focuspattern of shapes with just a few points of detail and one focus of attention. There is just something satisfying to the eye about reduced detail.

Simpliication can also help to create the illusion of distance. So, crudely, things that are closer to us are more distinct in that they have sharper outlines. Therefore objects that are miles away in the distance are softer.

Blur can also be used to give the impression of speed in action photos, with motor racing for example. This can be achieved in oils with just a swipe of a palette knife and by photographers by hand-tracking a moving object. It is also straightforward to achieve this with digital tools like Painter where the single movement of a palette knife can be easily simulated.

In Painter, the Focus tools are found at Effects>Focus. There are a range of blurring and sharpening tools. The purpose of Camera Motion Blur and Depth of Field are self-evident; Motion Blur simulates camera shake moving your hand while taking a photo and Depth of Field creates a blur similar to the distance from the plane of camera focus in photography. Sharpening Focus heightens contrast by intensifying highlights and shadows. This creates the illusion of greater sharpness. Softening Focus blurs the transition

Changing focusChanging focusChanging focus

Super softeningWe used the Super Softener tool to throw the azaleas into relief. We used two versions of the photo to paint the (slightly sharpened) original and the super-softened one (setting: 50). With both versions open and the original version active, we brushed with the Straight Cloner, then used the softened version as the clone source for the background around the flowers.

Using focus changes to set up a loose paintingIn this walkthrough, we will use the Glass Distortion effect at Effects>Focus>Glass Distortion to prepare a photo for some loose brushwork and a vigorous treatment. Painter has plenty of brushes to help simulate loose brushstrokes, but sometimes its hard to know where to start. Using Glass Distortion will make the process a little easier by getting the starting photo closer to a loose-brushed treatment.

01 Poppies We duplicated our photo layer, set a Gel composite mode with a value of 52 per cent. Drop the layer and select Adjust Colors. Set Hue Shift to 0 per cent, Saturation to 11 per cent and Value to seven per cent.

Keep the flowers in focus

Soften and blur the background

Put the two together for a stronger impact for your painting

Play with focus using Corel Painters dedicated tools and options

Original photo

020-27_OPM13_Photos.indd 24 14/1/08 16:40:39


25

One of Painters hidden gemsThe Sharpening tool

We use sharpening subtly all the time to make an image more distinct. Here we use the Sharpening tool flat out to create an interesting variation of the contrast effect. The effect makes an image suitable for use as a clone source for a pen-drawing simulation. The settings in the Effects>Focus>Sharpen box are Gaussian, maximum for Amount, Highlight and Shadow, and Red, Green and Blue all checked. Load our start photo from the disc to try.

from one element to another in an image and Super Soften just does more of it. It takes time but gives you full control over the result. Zoom Blur unsurprisingly creates the effect of zooming in with a zoom lens, basically making a tunnel of blur with an area of distinguishable image at the end. You will notice that a number of these effects offer you different types of effects creation that is, effects based on Gaussian or Circular Aperture options just experiment with these.

Painter X has a ine new simpliication tool. Smart Blur is quite successful in softening and generalising a subject while maintaining its boundaries. It gets closer to real simpliication than the other Blur tools and does not stray so far beyond the boundaries of the area you are trying to simplify as the other Painter blurring tools might.

Finally, there is Glass Distortion, which is one of the most interesting focus effects and one used for the main worked-up photograph. It rather unpromisingly offers the effect of images seen through a range of glass between the image and the viewer like a pebble bathroom window, for example. But in fact, this is a surprisingly useful tool to get a loose painting effect started, which we will explore in a moment.

25

02 Changing the paper texture We want a paper to interact with Glass Distortion for a heavily textured treatment. Open the Papers palette in the Tools palette and choose Hot Press (this is a smooth paper for watercolour but it will not look like this at all in our treatment).

03 Applying Glass Distortion Go to Glass Distortion and apply the following: Using to Paper, Softness to 35.9 per cent, Map to Refraction, Quality to Good, Amount to 1.44, Variance to 17.00 and Direction to 49 degrees.

04 More colour We want this to have intense colours so we need to add a little more colour saturation. Go to Effects>Tonal Control>Adjust Colors and increase Saturation to 11 per cent.

05 Nearly ready Apply Glass Distortion again to Poppies B . Use the same settings as before, except change the Amount to 1.22. This will remove some of the waviness of the previous treatment and you are now ready to paint.

By keeping only the subject in focus, the photographer ensures the viewer isnt distracted by what is happening behind

Altering the settings in a photograph can give the composition an entirely

different effect

020-27_OPM13_Photos.indd 25 14/1/08 16:41:15


26


In this section, we will look at how to choose and enhance the mood of a photograph for painting. There are, of course, all sorts of moods that relect different emotions happiness, loneliness, anger,

innocence, etc but we will go for a portrait of a young man with the sort of quiet intensity and simpliied palette common in Seventeenth Century portraits for example, see Rembrandts self-portraits. We will not be using primarily earth colours as he did though, we will allow ourselves a slightly larger range of colours, but we will try to get something of his sense of dramatic light and shade.

Moods are about emotions and it is dificult to create an affecting image with a photo that is lifeless, banal or with very lat lighting. As a starting point, there really needs to be a subject with which we sympathise and to which we respond. So the irst point is that the photographs subject is important. It doesnt have to be a portrait look at some of Andrew Wyeths pictures of objects and scenes to see what a brooding quality the everyday can have but it has to create an atmosphere.

Once you have a photograph with a suitable subject, you can enhance the mood it creates. Obviously what we do to it depends on the emotion it invokes. The elements to consider are the composition, colour palette, the intensity of the hues and the values how dark, how light and the sharpness of focus. At the risk of stating the obvious, bright saturated colours from a wide palette will usually be associated with spontaneity, or childhood and happy situations, while dark, mainly unsaturated colours from a limited palette are likely to invoke a sense of brooding, mystery or thoughtfulness. However, dark, warm colours could work well with a positive or romantic subject, and a vibrant colour palette can be associated with war and chaos. So there are no rules here!

The trick is to make sure that the elements of the photo, and the painting derived from it, are consonant with its mood. That way, the emotion carried by the image will be consistent and congruous.

In the following walkthrough, we will use the tools available up to Painter 9.5. However, we have to note here that within Painter Xs Underpainting feature, there is a very useful tool for photo preparation. Indeed, the inal result of the photo preparation we will go through can be achieved easier and quicker using the Underpainting tools; the photo colours we will be aiming for can be approximated pretty closely simply by going for the Classical Color Scheme. Such is progress!

Create a mood

Create a classical painting effectPortraits with impact

This photo is not a bad starting point for a painting simulation, but it will need some help. There needs to be more focus on the eyes and the background needs to be simplified so as not to distract attention away from the face. To achieve this, we will darken the area around the face, the side of the face not facing the light and also simplify the colours.

01 Create a duplicate layer Open up the start photo from this issues disc. Select All>Copy>Paste in Place. Make sure that Pick Up Underlying Color is checked (near the top of the Layers palette). Pick Up Underlying Color enables you to see the image below where you erase on the image above.

02 Apply a composite method We need to intensify and slightly darken the overall image, so we now need to set the composite method to Gel . This is rather like the Multiply blending mode in Photoshop. However, the resulting image is too dark and we should reduce the Opacity of the layer down to 25 per cent, or thereabouts.

03 Lighten the face Now we use the Eraser tool in the Tools palette set to an Opacity of 15 per cent to return to the lighter layer below and cover the right-hand of the face the upper cheek and eye and just a little round the left eye. Be gentle and brush evenly.

01Select All>Copy>Paste in Place. Make sure that Pick Up Underlying Color is checked (near the top of the Layers palette). Pick Up Underlying Color enables you to see the image below where you

There really needs to be a subject with which we sympathise and to which we respond

Create mood with the colour tools as well as Painter Xs Underpainting tool

Original photo

020-27_OPM13_Photos.indd 26 14/1/08 16:42:22


27

04 Save this picture To reduce the two layers to one, use the Drop All Layers command from Layers. Save this as a TIFF and call it Tim1. Close the le and reopen it the image now has only one layer.

06 Reduce the brown Next you will need to reduce the Opacity of the brown layer until you can see the face below. Now use the Eraser at 20 per cent to start removing the brown from over the face. Set the composite method to Multiply and the Opacity to 19 per cent.

07 Reduce brightness We just need to reduce the brightness of the picture a little this will give it a bit more atmosphere. First reduce the image to a single layer with the Drop All command. Then save it as a TIFF calling it Tim2. Close the le and reopen it. Reduce the brightness by a smidgen.

we duplicate its only layer using Select 05 Tint the image Having opened Tim1, All>Copy>Paste in Place. Double-check that Pick Up Underlying Color is checked. Use the Fill tool from the Tools palette to ll the new layer with a warm, dark brown (R:94, G:60; B:30).

include a little sharpening to add a little 08 Sharpening Nearly there. Well bite to the eyes in particular. You can also use a touch more contrast but be careful not to overdo it dont lighten the left side of the face too much. Save as Tim3.

020-27_OPM13_Photos.indd 27 14/1/08 16:42:56


28

h, crayons! Do you remember the days when you didnt worry about what you were drawing or painting? You

just grabbed your crayons and started colouring! Perhaps even writing on the walls as some young artists did; yes, the original grafiti medium! We all fell in love at one time in our lives with the waxy, paper-covered sticks in their multitude of colours, now long put away for more sophisticated tools.

Well, check out the Crayons in Corel Painter and be a kid again. There are more colours now than you could ever imagine,

and the paper never needs to be peeled back. We have a few digital varieties to choose from today, not only thick or thin but with all the texture and transparency you could ever dream of in a crayon.

In this months Primer, were going to wax lyrical (sorry!) about

the Crayon tools and reintroduce you to our coloured companions from

the past. Youll rediscover that they are effective tools for sketching out ideas, that theyll give you vibrant colours without endless tweaking, as well as yielding fantastic results with minimal effort. Youll only be regressing in your mind by revisiting crayons, youll be adding another skill to your artistic repertoire. So without further ado, switch on your computer, load up Painter, then go forth and rejoice in the artistic tools of your youth!

Colour-mixing with crayons is more transparent in Painter than the ones we used out of the box. You can achieve brilliant greens, oranges and violets simply by using the primary colours. But be careful, its so easy to make brown if you use too many colours, and quicker from brown to black than you can imagine.

Crayons

Mixing coloursChoose and use them wisely Treat the stylus as if it was a feather

Lightly does itLightly does it

When colouring in large areas, its best to use a large crayon and a low Opacity, perhaps 20 per cent, and press lightly. The colour builds fast and in order to achieve a light, washy look with the crayons, youve got to have a delicate touch. Work on multiple layers as you draw. This way, if you get carried away and get too dark, you can always toss a layer away and try again.

Primer Crayons

BRUSH CATEGORY

PRIMER

SOFT TONESUnlike the boxed version, these crayons are able to give you sweeping vistas of colour in just a few strokes. A large Waxy Crayon at a low opacity can create beautiful, soft tones

ERASERSUse the Erasers to create highlights and open up areas back to the white paper or ground. The size of the brush and opacity will determine a soft vignette or a sharp line

Get back to basics with your childhood friends crayons!

FINE OUTLINESUse the Pointed Crayon to create sharp, uid lines. This variant can add nice accents to any image as a strong outline or the tiniest of details

028-29_OPM_13_brushes.indd 28 14/1/08 13:55:20

29

Primer

Crayons

Erase and experimentNo white crayons?No white crayons?

By the way, there are no white crayons! An easy way to get white into your crayon art is with the Erasers. Something we couldnt do as kids! After your drawing is done, or even in the middle of it, use soft or sharp Erasers to add detail or soften clouds in the sky. You must erase directly onto the crayon layer, so make a copy if youre not sure of what the outcome may be. Experiment; these are fun crayons after all!

Simple but effectiveSketching Sketching

Crayons are a great sketching tool. When you would like to doodle or dont want the pressure of a big project, this medium can be the perfect choice. Just remember how much fun crayons were when we didnt worry so much about the end result.

Understand the different variantsCrayons

Basic Crayons

Basic Crayons 100 % Opacity

Dull Crayon

Dull Crayon 100% Opacity

Grainy Hard Crayon

Grainy Hard Crayon 100% Opacity

Med Dull Crayon

Med Dull Crayon 100% Opacity

Pointed Crayon

Pointed Crayon 100% Opacity

Waxy Crayons

Waxy Crayons 100% Opacity

Corel Painter offers the choice of six different variants of Crayon brushes to choose from, each style yielding a different effect. For instance, the Pointed Crayon is good for thin, precise lines, whereas if you wanted to introduce some soft tones into your scene, then you would be best off using the Waxy Crayons. To supplement the Crayons, the Eraser can be used to introduce white areas or highlights.

Basic Crayons Med Dull Crayon

Basic Crayons 100 % Med Dull Crayon 100%

Dull Crayon Pointed CrayonDull Crayon Pointed Crayon

BOLD SHAPESThe Basic Crayons work nicely for all-round drawing. Let this be your steadfast companion in drawing fat, bold strokes. Adjusting the Grain will give you more textural variety in the edge of the stroke

Grainy Hard Crayon

Opacity

Grainy Hard Crayon 100%

Waxy Crayons

028-29_OPM_13_brushes.indd 29 14/1/08 13:57:56

Tutorial Pencil portraits

30

030-036_OPM_13.indd 30 14/1/08 12:44:33

ainter tools are extremely versatile and make creating a pencil drawing simple and fun. We will show you how to create a pencil portrait using primarily the Pencil and Conte tools. These mimic

the natural grain of graphite on paper, and once you have applied a paper surface texture to the whole thing, you can convey a sense of traditional pencil drawings. But we also have a few time-saving tricks up our sleeves

Artists have been divided over the question of to smudge or not to smudge for some time now. There are pencil artists out there who will swear by cross-hatching and would religiously refuse to smudge a single line; they create all their subtle tonal changes by tiny cross-hatchings with a sharp or a mechanical pencil. This achieves amazing accuracy but is time-consuming and takes lots of patience.

There are also others out there who smudge their lines to achieve smooth tonal shading, using tissue paper, blending stumps or cotton swabs.

There isnt a right or wrong way to create a pencil drawing, especially in an environment as versatile as in Painter. Blender tools are analogous to traditional blending tools, specially the Soft Blender Stump. The problem with this tool is that it causes loss of tonal values and loses pencil grain, thus making the area look lat and too digital. There are, however, some good effective alternatives.

This tutorial will lead you through all the things you need to do to create realistic pencil drawings, including building up tone through cross-hatching, smooth shading, creating highlights using the Eraser and a useful little short cut for those of you with perhaps not so much time on your hands.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to create a pencil drawing in Painter X that merges traditional techniques with digital tools

Pencil portraits

Artist

Time needed

Skill level

On the CD

Wen-Xi Chen

One to two hours

Intermediate

Start photo and final image

Tutorial info

In this tutorial, we will show you how to create a pencil drawing in Painter X that merges traditional techniques with digital tools

Pencil portraits

31

Roughly sketch out your subject, ready for transformationOutline your intentions

rough sketch of your subject. We used 01 Sketch The rst step is to start with a the grid and a sketching pencil to capture the basic proportions of our reference image onto the blank canvas of 2,835 by 3,543px at 300dpi (A4). You can trace the photo on the CD.

some more details; in the case of this portrait, the facial features. We 02 Details Once you are happy with the rough sketch, start to draw in did this part on a new layer so we could erase any reference lines on the layer below once we were happy with the placement of the features. Only a simple outline will sufce at this stage of the drawing, as tonal detailing will come at a later stage.

Tutorial

Outline your intentions

Pencil portraits

03 Choose your texture Clicking on the Paper Selector icon brings up a drop-down box full of paper textures. These textures show up when you start to draw and give the picture a really authentic feel. In Painter, brushes that react with paper texture have a grainy method. We used a basic paper texture.

030-036_OPM_13.indd 31 14/1/08 12:44:56

32

Use cross-hatching and smooth shading to get the right tonal values A shady character

horizontally to check for mistakes in proportion) and had erased 04 Drop layer Once we were satised with the sketch (ip the image the reference lines, we dropped the layer with the details so that all our line sketches were on one layer.

A shady character

layer to work on for the following steps. 05 New layer We then created a new Once you use a 2B pencil on this layer, change the Layer composite method to Default and not Gel, which is the setting Painter automatically sets a layers composite method to if you paint on it with a brush that uses the Buildup method.

06 Dening dark areas The Conte tool was used to dene the darker shadowed areas in the picture. In Painter, using Conte creates a lovely grain, especially on rough paper textures, and helps to really dene shadows. Use sweepingly along dark edges to create a loose yet dramatic look.

07 Basic cross-hatching Cross-hatching is commonly used in pen art as well as pencil drawings. Tonal effects are created by layers of lines (hatching) at an angle to each other. We used a small (size 3.6) 2B Pencil for this. For the face, careful cross-hatching will allow you to create a realistic and accurate skin surface if you have the patience.

08 Eyes Eyes are the windows to the soul, and a favourite of many pencil-portrait artists to draw. For the eyes, we started cross-hatching using a small 2B Pencil. It is important to get the shape of the eyeball and surrounding muscle and skin correct in order to retain realism.

09 Eyes highlights Next we picked out the highlights with the Eraser tool, just as you would with traditional media. The Pencil mainly denes the details of the iris, but more detail can be created using the Eraser. It was also used for the eyelashes and moisture effects.


cross-hatching. Your traditional pencil artist, if the kind inclined to 10 Smooth blending You may go on to do the whole picture with smudge, would use a blending stump, tissue paper or cotton swabs, etc, to create smooth shading. This sounds sacrilegious, but the same effect can be achieved when using the 2B Pencil like an airbrush; set the size of your pencil at a high value and press lightly on the tablet. It avoids looking digital by maintaining a grain and looks like smooth shading on paper.

030-036_OPM_13.indd 32 14/1/08 12:45:35

33

TutorialPencil portraits

Let your wrist flow with the brushstrokesHair we go again

13 The choice is yours We used a combination of smooth shading and cross-hatching to achieve the tonal values on the face. Smooth shading can be used as a base upon which cross-hatching can then be used to dene more detail.

14 Hair basics Normally in traditional pencil art, unless youre a whizz with an eraser, you wouldnt draw hair in layers from dark to light as you might in paint. We used the Dull Conte at 50px to mark out the vague shape of the hair, and then at 11px to mark out more detailed sections.

Hair we go again

hard-edged Eraser tool is used to create 11 Highlights Same as the eyes, a highlights for the lips to give them a glossy, lifelike feel. We highlighted the top of the lips and the left edge where the light hits it. Also, highlighting the bottom lip at the centre gives it some plumpness.

12 More about shading skin Since skin is such a big part of drawing portraits and pencils are such small tools, it may be tempting for some to just leave it blank. To help get the subtleties of skin, we desaturated our reference photo and turned down the brightness of it so the tonal values showed up clearly.

15 Long hair is subject to gravity As is short hair sometimes. In this case, the ow of your strokes should follow the ow of the hair. Start from the root to the tip and let your wrist movement guide you.

Shading techniquesBasic shading techniques in use today are linear-hatching, cross-hatching, scumbling and soft shading. Scumbling involves the build-up of tonal value using small scribbles. This method tends to give a different texture to an image than the more conventional drawing techniques.

Shading

natural paper colour as you simply leave that area empty. This is 16 Hair highlights One method is exclusion; the highlight is the commonly used in traditional pencil drawing where achieving highlights is quite difcult every other way.

17 Think of the hair in sections If you want to draw it strand by strand, you will be there forever. Using the Dull Conte at 30px, we drew in several strokes that followed the curve of hair and fans out from the ends of the sections of hair, but fades out at the middle of the sections.

Contour-hatchingContour-hatching is similar to linear-hatching but the lines follow the contour of the object you are depicting rather than being straight. It is sometimes easier to show a 3D structure using contour shading than with the other techniques.

BackgroundsWhen drawing portraits in pencils (traditionally or digitally), it is a good idea to keep the background simple; a complex background is a big investment of time and weve lost track of all the drawings we have lying around with half-finished backgrounds. It can also make the picture look cluttered, as it draws attention away from the main subject. Leaving the background white, or with a faint wash of shading, is often much more effective and focuses the attention of the viewer.

Backgrounds

030-036_OPM_13.indd 33 14/1/08 12:45:57

34

Use the Apply Surface Texture command to give the impression of paperTextures and textilesTextures and textiles

pick out highlighted strands of yaway 19 Flyaway hair Traditional pencil artists hair using a hard-edged eraser or by scratching away at the paper. We used the Eraser at a very small size of about one to two pixels. Loose hair at the sides of the head was drawn with the Tapered Conte as the size of the tip is pressure sensitive.

20 Zoom out, ip horizontally Hopefully by now, youve done this a few times and since the end is nigh, this is about the last time to check and overview the drawing.

used the Dull Conte to block in some black, and again the Dull Conte, 21 Clothing We wanted to keep the clothes simple and sketchy so we this time in white, to mark out the highlights in the folds of cloth.

very low opacity, drew some dots over the lighter areas of the skin to 22 Skin textures We zoomed right in and with a white Conte set to add texture and a dewy look.

the drawing that have been drawn on 23 Paper texture So far, the parts of should already show a paper texture, but the white, untouched areas do not. To apply a Surface Texture, go to Effects>Surface Control>Apply Surface Texture. You can view the texture in a preview window. We turned down the Amount slider to 20 per cent.

24 And last of all Since pencil drawings are normally more grey-looking that what we have got here, go to Effects>Tonal Control>Brightness and Contrast, then move the contrast slider to the left. There, now it looks just like a real pencil drawing!


Desaturate the reference photographCreating a greyscale pencil drawing from a full technicolour reference photo can be daunting and difficult. One easy way around this is to simply turn your photo into greyscale as well! Simply go to Effects>Tonal Control>Adjust Colors and move the Saturation slider all the way to the left.

appropriate for this part) at a much smaller size of two pixels and did 18 Detail We then used the Dull Conte (although many tools are the same as in the previous step.

Get your reference just rightIf you are taking your own reference photo to draw a pencil portrait from, look for interesting lighting such as from the sides or top and bottom. A straight frontal light can seem like a quick and easy option, but more tonal values, shadows and highlights should be achieved from the start, often making it more fun to draw.

030-036_OPM_13.indd 34 14/1/08 12:46:23

35

TutorialPencil portraits

A bit about the tools available to youAchieving the pencil effectWhile you might obviosuly plump for the Pencil brush category when it comes to getting a pencil effect, there are other tools and techniques that you need to consider. Using a pencil brush alone wont deliver good results! Incorporate blenders and Conte brushes and always use traditional mark-making for ultimate authenticity.

The 2B Pencil can be used small for cross-hatching or sketching and used big for an airbrush-like effect. The Sketching Pencil is perfect for creating the initial line sketch. Any sort of Conte tool, such as Dull Conte or Tapered Conte, is great for really dramatic dark shadows at the beginning stages of the drawing, and also for hair.

The Pencils belong to the Dry Media Brushes family alongside others including Chalk, Pastels and Crayons. These work by depositing pigment on the surface of whatever it is you are drawing on, so its important to select the right surface texture. The Grain slider controls how much colour penetrates into the paper texture. Lower settings show more of the grain. If you are using the 2B pencil primarily, grain is not very important but for the surface texture to show through with Charcoal or Conte, set the Grain value to about 10-20 per cent. at the beginning stages of the drawing, and also for hair.

CROSS-HATCHINGCross-hatching is the fail-safe mark within mark-making it covers all evils, flaws and errors. You can count on it when you arent quite sure what mark to use. It can be very effective for furry or fluffy objects.

DIRECTIONAL MARKSDirectional shading is a very expressive type of mark-making, a representation of the way and length you feel the mark should be made. It is great for fur and vegetation, such as grassy tufts and tussocks.

TONAL RENDERINGTonal rendering is the epic means of creating subtle tones and shadows on flat or smooth surfaces. Use the pencil as above, but apply pressure for added depth and take the pressure off to lighten it. Always shade at the same speed.

2B pen cil Con te BasicPaper

Artists,

Rough Paper

Cha rcoa lPaper

Thick hand-made Paper

030-036_OPM_13.indd 35 14/1/08 18:38:38

36

Painters Charcoal tools create a great alternative image Cloning method

photograph black and white. Go to Effects>Tonal Control>Adjust 01 Desaturate photo At this stage, we want to make the Color and turn Saturation down as far as it will go. The reference photo is now desaturated and ready for cloning!

Cloning method

02 Quick Clone Now follow the path File>Quick Clone. A new window will open, at which point you should select the Pencil Sketch Cloner as your Cloner tool of choice.

03 Draw along the edges Outline the main features of the photo. This gives the nal picture a more authentic pencil-drawn look, as well as giving the image denition early on.

05 Hair Whatever tool you use on the hair, do it in large chunks as to not give the game away! We used the Charcoal cloner again. This eliminates the ne detail contained in the original photo and is extremely quick. Follow the natural ow of hair or else the picture just doesnt look convincing.


Although a lot of what has come so far is to do with making marks and shading, you might feel as though it is above your sketching abilities. In which case, bring on the cloners!In this small walkthrough here, we show how the pencil and charcoal cloners can achieve a decent pencil effect, only you are free from the burden of having to be able to draw. Desaturate your photo and then build up the detail bit-by-bit. The biggest trap you can fall into is trying to get all the detail in the irst sweep of the brush. Keep your movements light and dont be afraid of having areas of white. Keep toggling with the Tracing Paper to see how its coming along if the photo is always visible, your marks will look weaker than they are.

over the darker areas lightly with a 04 Charcoal For the face, we went large Charcoal cloner; as long as you dont press hard on your tablet, this tool picks up the tonal values from the photo while maintaining a convincing texture.

030-036_OPM_13.indd 36 14/1/08 12:49:35

38

ainter comes with such a varied palette of default brushes that just about anyone could paint happily ever after with them, using

only the General Brush Controls to tweak them as needed. But weve also been given a wonderful tool for creating an ininite array of new and specialised brush variants. Creating your own variants can push your art to a new level, and because theres an element of randomness about it, you also have some happy surprises in store for you, which may in turn inspire you to try new painting styles and techniques. Would you like a watercolour brush that paints drier edges, a softer background brush for oils, a crayon that looks greasier? Theyre all in there, just waiting for you to discover them, give them a name and begin painting.

The irst time we open up the Brush Creator, it might be slightly intimidating

with its sliders and rows of tabs and controls. We may click on a few of them, decide to wait until later, and back quietly away, but its an intuitive tool once you learn a few basics. So go ahead, open Painter and follow along with this walkthrough. We wont end

up with the same brush variants, but well end up with some new variants

worth saving, and we also reckon that afterwards, you will have the conidence

to pop it open at any time and create a new batch of variants to enhance your current painting style. What more could you ask from your favourite magazine!

If youve been shying away from this powerful Corel Painter tool, get ready for some creative fun!

To transpose can mean to change to the opposite position, but it also means to change into a different form or state. The Transposer does just that by taking two of your brush variants and combining them to create a new variant consisting of both their

characteristics. We explore the Randomizer on these pages, but your results will be less random if you use the Transposer, and the more you use it, the better you will become at choosing variants to blend into new ones. Go to Window>Show Brush Creator or choose Ctrl/Cmd+B to open the Brush Creator and select the middle tab. You may choose variants that are closely related or vastly different as you begin exploring the possibilities.

If youve been shying away from this powerful Corel Painter tool, get ready for some creative fun!

A great place to beginThe Transposer tabThe Transposer tab

This is where the fun beginsLets transposeLets transpose

So weve chosen a couple of brushes that we want to experiment with by combining their properties. For this one, were using two similar brushes, an Acrylic brush and a Gouache brush. Click on Transpose Current Selection (the gear icon) and select from the list of variants displayed

between those two brushes and begin to make strokes in the preview window. With the most promising brush from those selected, continue to click on the gear icon and new lists will appear, and so the process goes as you hone in on the characteristics you want in this variant. If you would like to back up to a previous variant then its no problem, you can find it in your Brush Tracker.

Feature focus Brush Creator

SWEEPING STOKESA mixture of the Sargent brush and F-X Hairspray gave us the ideal shape for these bold and sweeping elements. The Hairspray variant is a good one to use when you want something that is softer at the edges.

that looks greasier? Theyre all in there, just waiting for you to discover them, give them a name and begin painting.

The irst time we open up the Brush Creator, it might be slightly intimidating

with its sliders and rows of tabs and

up with the same brush variants, but well end up with some new variants

worth saving, and we also reckon that afterwards, you will have the conidence

to pop it open at any time and create a new batch of variants to enhance your current

FEATUREFOCUS

Brush Creator

038-41_OPM_13_featurefocus.indd 38 14/1/08 11:02:56

39

Feature focusBrush Creator

Each selection makes it more personally yoursNarrowing it downNarrowing it down

As you paint strokes in the preview window, zoom in or out with the slider at the bottom or change the size of your brush with the top slider, and when your window is full of strokes, just click the Clear button and youve got a new, white canvas. Move your Color Wheel over beside the Brush Creator because some brushes automatically paint as cloners, and for these, you will want to click off the Cloner option and choose a bright colour that will show the properties of your variants. The entire Brush Creator can be enlarged by pulling down with your cursor on the lower-right corner. This will allow for a longer variants list with each click of the gear icon.

BACKGROUND BRUSHThe Leaky Pen variant isnt normally one applied in great sweeps, but in this case we have utilised the Brush Creator to make the perfect tool for depth and texture. The Stroke Designer helped with this.

BEST OF BOTH WORLDSUsing the Brush Creator to merge the properties of two different brushes can give interesting effects. Do you like the thickness of oil but want the transparency of watercolour? You can get just that in the Brush Creator!

MAGNOLIA PETALSThe Sumi-e category has lots to offer oral painters and in this case we took the Thick Blossom variant as our starting point. A blast in the Randomizer and Stroke Designer created petal perfection.

How to save your new variantA star is born!A star is born!

Youre bound to discover new brush variants you would like to save, and thats easy, too. Select Save Variant or Ctrl/Cmd+S, and a new window will open up where you will type in a name for this new brush. If the OK button

greys out, you will have to shorten the brush name. Click OK and it will be saved in the first Brush Library, the one thats at the top of the Brush Creator. Look in that library to see your brush. It will be at the bottom. To put it in alphabetical order, choose Window>Workspace>Customize Workspace>Brushes and click Done when you are finished. And now youre all set either to begin painting or to spend some more time creating brushes.


Let your magnolias blossom with the Brush CreatorPut Brush Creator to work

01 Magnolia painting For our rst variant, we began with an unlikely choice, the Leaky Pen brush. Even if you use it a lot, you may have never thought of using it as a background brush. In Randomizer, we chose a variant we liked, then moved to Stroke Designer and added greater opacity and some depth.

Here is a fun exercise: create a painting and include some of the brush variants you have created in Brush Creator. Lay aside preconceived notions about which brush categories work and which ones wont. Be adventurous and try some of those brush variants you rarely open. Chances are, youll expand your thinking as well as your Brush Library.

02 Sweeping strokes For this one, we began in Randomizer with the Artists>Sargent Brush and randomised until it morphed into something less graphic and lent itself to sweeping strokes. We then took it into the Transposer and added F-X>Hair Spray to soften the edges, then added depth in the Stroke Designer.

03 Magnolia petals To create a petal brush variant, we began with the Thick Blossom Sumi-e brush in Randomizer and took our best mutation to Stroke Designer and added depth, reducing the Plow to about half and increasing Smoothing to 25 per cent. The new brush variants worked well to paint these abstract magnolias.


40

Depending upon your own workflow, you may begin this brush creation process in the Randomizer and go on to the Transposer, or do this in reverse order or utilise only one of those tabs. Whatever you feel comfortable with, you may want to do some further fine-tuning of your new variant, and for this, the Stroke Designer is the logical next stop. You may already be familiar with most of the controls because theyre in your General Brush Control palette where you tweak your brush variants on the fly, but the Stroke Designer gives us a room apart from our painting in which to work with new variants, so use the Preview window to really explore the results of your tweaking.

Where it all comes togetherStroke DesignerStroke Designer

Discovering more optionsWhats behind tab #3?Whats behind tab #3?

One helpful element to take note of here is that whatever brush variant you place in the top spot under the tabs, that same brush will appear as you move back and forth among the tabs, making it easy to create, refine and then finalise each of those sparkling new variants you create. A large brushstroke and the shape of a single touch of the brush are always displayed at the bottom of the Stroke Designer screen to help us envision how changes will affect the chosen variant, and will be displayed in either the current colour or the colour you saved with your variant. Options in the brush controls that are not available for your particular variant will be greyed out.

Feature focus Brush Creator

01 Lets get started Select Ctrl/Cmd+B or go to Window>Show Brush Creator and when it opens, choose the Randomizer tab. As the name suggests, you are presented with random mutations of your chosen brush variant. You may be like a kid in a sweet shop and end up with dozens of exciting new variants. Keeping things orderly is a key to enjoying Painter, so take time to grasp the process of creating and saving your variants.

02 Choose a variant to randomise Underneath the Randomizer tab, select a brush variant that you want to explore. Below the row of brushstroke grid cells is a slider where you can control the strength and range of the random variations. Set it between eight and ten; you can lower it once you begin liking the direction your mutations are going in.

The Randomizer tab is a favourite for many digital artistsExploring the RandomizerExploring the Randomizer

The Randomizer delivers ever-evolving brush variants in such a serendipitous manner, very well-suited to those of us who rely upon the muse to inspire and guide us. The only problem here might be deciding how many variants to save.

Get in the habit of namingWeve said it here a couple of times, but it can never be said too much. Whenever you save your newly-created brush, always give it a recognisable and descriptive name. We find it best to pick something that explains the qualities of the brush, such as soft oils, watery pastels anything that will jog your memory as to what the brush looks like when you stumble upon them months after youve created them!

04 Fine-tuning Here is another Randomization using the same Broad Water Brush, but its evolving closer to the transparent, backwash effect that we want, so we have changed the random variation strength to eight to narrow down the choices.

FEATUREFOCUS

03 Begin the process For this example, we chose the Digital Watercolor Broad Water Brush. Our aim was to nd a variant that was soft and owing but with opacity and colour variations, and we slid the random variation strength control all the way to ten to see just how far we could go with this brush.


41


Who says we cant mix oil with water? Greater versatilityGreater versatility

Just one more step Time to saveTime to save

In the Thin Wet Oil Wash variant, we were happy with the consistency of the paint it laid down, but we decided to play some more with the Color Expression set to Direction, and we increased the Color Variability in order to have a mingling of wet-looking colours with each stroke, changing with its direction. At this point, its looking more like

a Digital Watercolor brush than an Oil brush, but thats part of the beauty of Corel Painters brush variants. In traditional pigments, we could never combine oil and water media or substitute one for the other. In fact, youll notice in the screenshot that both the Digital Watercolor and Impasto controls are available.

clicking on the Randomize Current Selection button (the cog icon). 05 Taking control We continued to choose variants to try by Notice that your choice from each list of variants determines the direction of the next set of variants. In this way, you are controlling the mutations.

options, you can use the Save Variant command to keep it for 07 Name that variant After playing about and exploring your future use. This works in the same way as in the Transposer walkthrough. As always, descriptive names are best, otherwise you may be left later wondering what you had in mind when you created it. If youre really pleased with your creation, why not send it to us you never know, artists around the world could be using your brush in the future!

Short cutsIf youre using a mouse with a wheel, you can use this to zoom in and out of the preview window or use a keyboard short cut, Ctrl+0 (zero), to enlarge to screen size. Keep in mind that your most-used short cuts will simplify your painting workflow and leave you free to create. To find out more about Painter short cuts and learn how to customise them, look under the Help menu.

in your Brush Library, you will want to restore the brush you began 08 Restoring default After the new variant is saved and appears with to its original state as its properties have been altered. To do this, choose Restore Default Variant.

We DO want to give you that!Is that your final answer?

with the direction the randomisations have taken, go to the Tracker 06 A backup plan If at some point you decide youre not pleased and scroll back a few steps. Click on one and the randomisation can begin again, taking a new direction.

Now that our variant is refined just the way we want it, all thats left is either to save the enhanced version as a new variant or decide to overwrite and declare this as the default variant by going to Set Default Variant. In doing so, you will lose its earlier variant that you saved. When you close the Brush Creator, all your workspace palettes will go back into their assigned places. Now youre familiar with the awesome controls in Painters Brush Creator, personalise your brushes for your own use and even share them with your Painter friends; the more you use it, the more proficient youll become at creating brush variants. Go create something amazing!

Brush Creator in greater detailIf youre not a member of one of the larger digital art forums like Painter Talk or Paint Outside the Frame, you might not know that John Derry posts his own segment where he explains all the features of Corel Painter in detail and answers questions from forum members. Be sure to look out for his informative and interesting forum threads.


Tutorial Paint like Klimt

42

ustav Klimt (18621918) was an Austrian Symbolist painter, and a founding member and president of the Vienna

Secession movement. While working mainly in the style of Art Nouveau himself, the group he headed welcomed

Documents

Corel Painter - 13 - Magazine, Art, Digital Painting, Drawing, Draw, 2d