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today!
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Official Magazine Get-started pack on the CD

Watercolour
Issue fifteen

Essential guide
Understand
tonal range
Get to grips with tones
and improve your art
workshop Learn to control Watercolor brushes
Use opacity for realistic wash effects
Create stunning art from your photos
Create with
Palette Knives
Over

50
Manipulate these brushes
for thick and juicy paintings

pages of
tutorials

T
Traditional
art effects PC an
d Mac
Visit us online – www.paintermagazine.com

Tips for making digital art look just like FREE CD

the real thing! Feature and tutorial inside INSIDE
SKETCH PRACTICE IMAGES | TEXTURES | TUTORIAL FILES
ISSUE FIFTEEN
ISSN 1753-3155 £6.00
Chalk artwork Grid options Web gallery 15

Use photos to create a vibrant Achieve better drawings by Join us and showcase your art! 9 771753 315000
retro coffee-house illustration using the grid reference tools www.paintermagazine.com
www.paintermagazine.com
001_OPM_15 finalwindmill.indd 1 3/3/08 17:52:14
 Welcome
This is THE magazine for anyone wanting to further their
Corel Painter skills or learn how to become a better artist

We all know that Corel Painter

ISSUE FIFTEEN
is the ultimate digital art
Pg 64 tool, that looks and behaves
just like real media. But we
Brush Controls: wondered if it was possible
Spacing
Get your brush dabs to go beyond just using a
to behave exactly how Watercolor brush or canvas
you’d like with these
texture. Was it possible to create little touches
to make your creations look as ‘real’ as possible?
Turn to our feature on page 20 and see what
our artistic alchemist conjured up.
Pg 46 One effect that’s certainly possible to create in
Painter is that of thick paint, and the program’s
Paint like: Palette Knives give users great control over
Lautrec applying digital colour. Go to page 28 and see
Try your hand at creating
this beautiful image how one artist used them to create a colourful
rendition of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Our Paint Like this issue is Toulouse Lautrec.
We take a look at re-creating one of his images
Pg 66 on page 46, so grab yourself a glass of absinthe
and get into the swing of things!
Drawing 101: Being able to balance shadows, highlights and
Tones
Work with highlights, midtones is an important skill for any artist,
shadows and midtones and our Drawing 101 shows you just how to do
for better images
this. It all starts on page 66.
Enjoy your painting!
Visit our website!
If you find that the magazine isn’t 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 Jo Cole, Editor in Chief
jo.cole@imagine-publishing.co.uk

003_OPM_15_welcome.indd 5 5/3/08 16:29:29

 n ews eve n ts res our ces letters web site s

m u n i t y
Tutorial xxxx

Com NEWS EVENTS

RESOURCES
LETTERS WEBSITES
INFO FORUM

ORIGINAL PHOTO AF TER

Artist Steven Friedman
likes to use the term
‘Digital Natural Media’
to describe the process
he uses, a union of
camera, computer,
digital paintbrush,
paper and printer

Announcing the
Master Class Series
Corel Painter artist offers tutorials designed to produce traditional mediums digitally
or Corel Painter users looking for
TUTORIALS a range of tutorials that venture
beyond the basics, respected
artist Steven Friedman has
released a range of in-depth start-to-�inish
DVDs. Themed tutorials, including ‘Digital
Pastels,’ ‘Digital Oils and Acrylics’ and
‘Digital Line Art and Watercolor,’ focus
on creating the look of a speci�ic artistic
medium.
“Some of the tutorials I offer for users at
any level, but the Master Class Series DVD
Right set is really aimed at the intermediate to
Steven Friedman’s advanced user who is trying to capture
goal as a digital artist the look of traditional mediums using
is to not only capture
the same look, feel photos as their starting point,” explains
and style of natural Friedman. “I depart from what Jeremy
mediums, but to excel Sutton and Marilyn Sholin and John Derry
in its execution so that have produced, in that mine involve a
the work stands out in
whatever medium it synthesis of techniques, both documented
attempts to emulate and undocumented.”
Friedman explains that his DVDs are
designed to enable a beginner to take
a photograph and transform it into an
artwork that takes on the same attributes
as traditional mediums. “That’s why they
are each devoted to a particular medium
style. This is far beyond the one-button
�ilter effects approach, or retrace the
photo approach. The techniques here are
completely original and have evolved out
of many hours of experimentation.”
Friedman also spends time analysing
what traditional mediums really look like,
and how artists have used them.
The comprehensive training DVDs cost
$99 each. Available in high-res AVI or
QuickTime format, the movies should play
in your internet browser. For full ordering
details, free demos, essays, interviews and
a wide selection of digital paintings, visit
www.digitalartmasterworks.com.

10

010-011_OPM_15_news.indd 10 4/3/08 17:12:41

 ts
s info n ews eve n ts res our ces letters web site info n ews eve n

VIDEO TUTORIALS
Paint it black In short
Creative happenings from
Massive Black offers inspirational around the world

Corel Painter video tutorials

assiveDVD, www.dvd.massiveblack.
com, is a collaboration between the
famed Massive Black Inc. collection
of artists and the Conceptart.org community.
Their goal is to offer the best training videos
possible from some of the greatest artists
today. “We offer candid demonstrations by Dani draws, we watch
some of the industry’s most exciting digital DaniDraws offers in-depth creative
artists. There’s no better way to learn this type tutorials, tips and tricks from illustrator
of material,” explains Aaron Fagerstrom at Dani Jones, covering a wide range of
drawing skills. Up and running since
Massive Black. Among the artists showcased November 2006, there are plenty of
Massive
are Corel Painter maestros Jason Chan and Black offers interesting titbits to be found in the
Andrew Jones, with boxed DVDs to buy and affordable archives as well as some useful links.
QuickTime movies to download from just $14. video tutorials You can watch fun and informative
to download video podcasts, and use iTunes to
“I think it’s great to be able to leave a record of subscribe for free, so you never miss an
from some
how art is being made in this particular time leading Corel update. www.danidraws.com
and place in history,” enthuses Fagerstrom. Painter artists

Tips for artists

ADD-0NS EmptyEasel is a website for artists

Designed to help
and art lovers that offers a range of
Garden of delights tutorials and features designed to help
new and emerging artists reach a
wider audience. From drawing tips to
Corel Painter add-ons from Corel Painter tutorials galore from
Gardenhose…
RESOURCES business advice, well-written articles
Designer Today mix the practical with inspirational. You
can even submit your own artwork to
igArts Software, www. acked with news, information, tutorials be featured: www.emptyeasel.com
gardenhose.com, creates and resources, Designer Today,
visualisation tools and www.designertoday.com, has been
online since 1999. Aimed primarily at graphic
electronic paints for professional designers, the website is a useful resource for
artists. “We’ve been making products free tutorials, covering just about every popular
exclusively for Painter for 14 years,” creative application, including Corel Painter.
explains DigArts’ Dennis Berkla. A Neatly organised under software headings,
gallery section gives an indication of the Corel Painter section is extensive, covering
what DigArts add-ons can achieve. “We virtually every update of the natural media
tool back to version 6. Corel Painter tips, tricks
actually pioneered the development of and techniques, complete with screenshots,
this kind of paint media, at least for tools are provided largely by painter and illustrator
like Painter’s Image Hose and Pattern Jacquelin Vanderwood. The most recent tutorials
Pens. The original Gardenhose series cover Corel Painter X and include painting scenes
was, in the words of a Painter executive, of pets, beaches and tropical views, and several Chris Wahl tutorials
their ‘most successful add-on ever’.” As techniques to create an impressionistic painting Chris Wahl’s busy blog (www.
of an old English countryside scene. As a bonus,
well as professional tools, DigArts offers chriswahlart.blogspot.com)
you can download the original source files from includes some excellent tutorials
a range of free resources – including some tutorials in zip format, directly from the covering sketching, caricatures and
Corel Painter tutorials on its website. Designer Today website. digital painting. You can follow step-
by-step guides, showing the genesis
of commissioned work from the first
sketch to finished, published work.
You can comment on work and ask
Corel Painter questions which Chris will endeavour
tips, tricks and to answer.
techniques with
Designer Today
APRIL

24 Issue 16 of
OPM on sale!
Hammer down the door to your
newsagent as the latest issue is out
today! The creative goodies that await
include a tutorial on understanding
Gardenhose offers a range of free tutorials as a distance, how to paint like Renoir and
bonus, covering various upgrades of Corel Painter a scene inspired by Bob Ross!

11

010-011_OPM_15_news.indd 11 4/3/08 17:13:23

 eve n ts res our ces let ter s we bsi te info n ews eve n ts res our ces
n ews

Send your
letters to...
Official Corel Painter
Magazine, Imagine
Publishing, Richmond
House, 33 Richmond
Hill, Bournemouth,
Dorset BH2 6EZ, UK
If you’d prefer to contact
us via email, send your
message to opm@
imagine-publishing.
co.uk
ou r L e t t e r s
Welcome to the part of the magazine where you can com
and share your thoughts on anything you fancy!
Sketchbook simulator
I enjoyed your caricature tutorial [issue 13]
especially how the image was put onto a
sketchbook. How did you do this? I’ve tried
everything I can think of and can’t get the
same effect. Did you draw the image on a
real sketchbook?! I’ve sent you one of my
digital sketches and would love if you could
do the trick.
George Croft
e
Thanks for the comments, George. Getting
an image to look as though it’s been drawn
in a sketchbook is nice and easy, especially
if you paint onto a white background. Get
your photo of a sketchbook (either take one
yourself or use one from an image library)
and open in Painter. Now open up your
sketch, select all, and copy and paste into
the sketchbook document. A new layer will
appear. Now go to the Layers palette and set
the composite method to Multiply. Instant
sketch effect! We will be covering more
illustration in the magazine, as well. This issue
we have a coffee-inspired creation on page
36, and you can rest assured we’ll look at other
styles in the future.
Which version?
I picked up your magazine on a whim and
loaded up the Painter X trial. I thoroughly
enjoyed myself, but then the trial ended. I
want to do more! Would you recommend I
buy version ten, or should I go for Painter
Essentials? I’m confused.
Valerie Stephenson
It completely depends, Valerie. If you are a
confident artist and want a piece of software
that can complement whatever you want to
create, then go for Painter X. As we’ve seen
in numerous tutorials, there is a tremendous

George’s image looks fabulous when designed, as if it sits on a sketchbook. Try the
technique with your own images

Featured gallery Roses

Pike Place
Market
Our favourite reader’s gallery this month
Richard A Chaffe
www.paintermagazine.co.uk/ Self portrait
user/sanke60
user/sanke6
Richard comes from a photographic
background, which is evident in
the artwork he produces. He has
worked in photography for 38
years, and is currently working as an
Industrial Photographer. The lighting
and composition in the work he
produces is very reminiscent of fine
art photography, and results in some
beautiful images. We’ve picked out a
few pieces of his work, so make sure
you pay a visit to Richard’s site to see © Richard A Chaffe
© Richard A Chaffe
more of his work using Corel Painter.

12

012-013_OPM_015_letters.indd 12 5/3/08 12:56:18

 s we bsi te info n ews eve n ts res our ces let ter s we bsi te info
ces letter

Both flavours of Painter cater to different users.
Have a think about which one you need and
purchase accordingly
amount you can do with the features on offer,
and a mind-boggling amount of tweaks and
customisations for the features. If you are just
starting out and want a more honed piece
of software, Painter Essentials is perfect.
Obviously you haven’t got all the features
found in Painter X, but it has more than
enough tools and brushes for whatever you
want to do. The new interface of Essentials 4 is
really intuitive and perfect for beginners.
www.paintermagazine.com
It’s good, but…
Can you make your Paint Like tutorials to
be more about an artist’s style, and less
about re-creating a speci�ic piece? I don’t
always want to do the images you pick, but
I might be interested in the techniques the
artist used, and apply them to a scene of
my choice.
Piers Martin
Ahhh, the beauty of the Paint Like tutorials.
Sorry Piers, we will be keeping the system the
same, where you get to re-create a certain
artwork. Although you are copying something
that has been done, it’s still a good way of
trying out the digital techniques needed to
emulate the style. But you may be interested
to hear that we are going to be starting a new
series next issue, where we look at style of art
from around the world. Our first stop is Africa!
Come and join our
forum and website
Make yourself known!
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, then create your own gallery for
the world to see! You can explain the process or
inspiration behind each of your images, comment
on other members’ artwork, share your wisdom
and take part in regular challenges. There’s 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
about the magazine. You can ask Corel Painter
questions and pass the time with other digital
artists. So what are you waiting for? Visit www.
paintermagazine.com today!

I like Paint Like

Hello, I just wanted to drop a note to say
that I enjoy the Paint Like tutorials a lot. It’s
good to hear about an artist’s life and how
they worked, and I am also assembling a
collection of ‘fake’ masters!
Michael Neil
Thanks for the email, Michael. If you’ve missed
any of the Paint Like tutorials, we have included ENTER T
a bunch in the Digital Painting bookazine, so Pick up your copy of our bookazine. It costs £12.99 WEBSITHE
you might want to look at that. and is available from www.imagineshop.co.uk
CHALLE E
Don’t be NGE
shy
welcome – everyone’s
t
www.pa o enter! Go to
in
co.uk/co termagazine.
Swan
mpetitio
ns.php

© Richard A Chaffe © Richard A Chaffe

13

012-013_OPM_015_letters.indd 13 5/3/08 12:56:47

 Interview Nikolay Yeliseyev
WEBSITE www.yeliseyev.ru
JOB TITLE Freelancer
CLIENTS GFI Mobile and GD Team
An interview with…
Nikolay Yeliseyev With a growing online fan-base of admirers, Nikolay Yeliseyev has built an
impressive portfolio of digital art in recent years. Nick Spence meets him…
rom his base in Rostov-on-Don,
south-west Russia, Nikolay
Yeliseyev has attracted a
worldwide audience for his
acclaimed digital art, illustrations, and
concept designs. Regular visitors to
CGTalk, CGPortfolio and numerous online
communities and blogs will be familiar
with his work, which has expertly
harnessed the power of both Corel Painter
and Adobe Photoshop.
How would you best describe your style?
I try to not work in one style – I look
to �ind new opportunities and ways of
working to add something new to my
work. I also try to draw inspiration from
the people and the world around me. If I
were to put a name to my style, I’d call it
‘romantic cyberpunk’. At least that’s what
it seems to be to me. I very much love
digital art.
14
014-018_OPM_15_interview.indd 14
What role does Corel Painter play in
your work?
Painter sometimes plays a fundamental
role in my work, sometimes an auxiliary
role; it all depends on the task. Frequently,
Painter helps to develop and re�ine the
colour palette I use in my work, de�ining
the mood of a painting. It is also very
convenient to use. Most of all I use Painter
for creation of colour sketches when time
is of the essence, but it is still important to
make precise brush marks and images. It’s
a program that offers great control and
produces accurate and detailed results.
What tips and words of advice would you
give when using Corel Painter?
I �ind it dif�icult to give general advice, but
with Corel Painter I can always offer help
when someone has a speci�ic problem
or question. I think that with Painter
everyone will �ind a convenient way of
Nikolay Yeliseyev often
starts with a simple
sketch from which
to develop his digital
paintings, working in
Corel Painter to add
colour and build a
powerful final image
working, and suitable tools to get them
achieving the results they require.
You work with both Corel Painter
and Adobe Photoshop. How do they
complement each other?
Yes, sometimes I mix these two programs,
usually for some additional colour
correction after I’ve �inished a sketch in
Corel Painter, for example. In general, for
adding additional details, textures and
layers, I will use Photoshop.
Your work and website cover several
creative areas including artist, ceramist,
illustrator, matte painter and concept
designer. Is there any area you prefer
working in?
Now I work as an illustrator and concept
designer, so I spend most of my time
working in these areas. I certainly also
love ceramics, but now unfortunately
4/3/08 17:31:30
 ‘Toy’, an example of
Nikolay Yeliseyev’s
‘romantic cyberpunk’
style, placing real
characters in surreal
environments
All original artwork by Nikolay Yeliseyev

15

014-018_OPM_15_interview.indd 15 4/3/08 17:31:48

 Interview Nikolay Yeliseyev
I have little opportunity to produce
ceramics due to lack of employment and
paid commissions in this area.
You display your work on websites such
as the CGSociety forums. How does
this help you, your career and personal
development as a digital artist?
Websites like these help me, and artists
in general, substantially with our
professional growth. These are places
where people can exchange experiences
and look at and share artwork from many
gifted artists, all of which helps you to
develop professionally. Having a network
of such websites enables you to show
your work to others you admire, and
when necessary, to receive constructive
criticism, which allows you to grow
creatively and aspire to be a better artist.
When creating a new piece of artwork do
you have a typical workflow?
In part I do. I begin the majority of works
16
014-018_OPM_15_interview.indd 16
‘Strange wood’, by Nikolay Nikolay Yeliseyev’s website
Yeliseyev. “My small is divided into sections
personal art work. A including those covering
story about the character sketches, drawings,
making her way through a illustrations and characters
strange wood”
on paper, before moving to the computer
and adding colour, for instance. Working
in colour, I certainly try to �ind something
new to add to a picture. There are a
number of stages I regularly go through
to achieve the desired results, starting
with a pencil sketch, under-painting,
etc. The process will then develop and
change, depending on the tools and
brushes I may decide to use. Painter,
for example, offers a great choice of
brushes that can give you several ways of
achieving varied results.
Finally, what advice would you give to
any traditional artists and illustrators
thinking of trying Corel Painter?
Corel Painter offers suf�icient
opportunities for the traditional artist to
reproduce their art digitally, and it can
be a huge pleasure working with so many ‘Invisible’, another sci-fi and
tools to help achieve this. I think that fantasy-inspired creation, this
time for a book cover for Russian
Painter is the best program to acquaint novelist Aleksey Jivoy, published
yourself with when painting digitally. by Lenizdat Publishing
4/3/08 17:32:08
 ‘Caterpillar’, a striking concept design
by Nikolay Yeliseyev, one of the many
sci-fi and fantasy-inspired paintings that
has attracted many online admirers for
the Rostov-on-Don based artist

17

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 Interview Nikolay Yeliseyev

The evolution of an image

We asked Nikolay if he could share some
of his secrets for how he works. Here’s a
look at what was involved in creating this
02
striking character.
Then I do a little
“This is a typical example of how I work,
from building up a pencil sketch through 01 under-painting and
I use the Digital
to the painting process. For this image I
I start with a
used a few different brushes, listed here:
pencil sketch Watercolor: Broad
Digital Watercolor: Broad Water brush,
Round Water Blender Water brush
Oil: Round Camelhair
Chalk: Square Chalk
Blenders: Soft Blender Stump
Just and Water
Pens: Flat Colour
F-X: Glow
Airbrushes: Digital Airbrush

03 Now I work with the Oil

brushes’: Round Camelhair.
I involve two layers, one for
the background, one for the
second character.

05
The background can be
smoothed using Blenders:
Soft Blender Stump

04
Closer to completion I
start to use the Digital
Airbrush to paint

18

014-018_OPM_15_interview.indd 18 4/3/08 17:32:54

 Feature Traditional art effects

Techinques
covered

Dry m edia pg 22-23

Use traditional pastel methods
Blend colours
Enhance an object’s shape
Mimic the look of graphite
Re-create Conte effects

Wet m edia pg 24-25

Build up layers of wash
Perfect watercolour surface
Achieve believable edges
Get a wet-in-wet effect
Make Salt effects

Thick m edia pg 26-27

Create thick paint
Make tonal studies
Work with under-painting
Using Impasto brushes

20

020-27_OPM15_feature.indd 20 5/3/08 14:12:11

 Traditional
art effects eal art media is at the heart of
Corel Painter and we all know
that the brushes, papers and
from them, which is the whole point of this
feature. Over the next six pages, we are
going to look at how you can manipulate
Giving your digital options are set up to mimic
real materials. It is, quite simply, a digital
the tools available to you to get the best
results you’ve ever got. Divided into wet,
artwork the feel of art store nestled right on your hard drive.
And with features such as the RealBristle
dry and thick media, you will learn tricks
such as mimicking wet-in-wet techniques,
traditional media is a great brushes in Painter X, and Painter Essentials
4, the ability to fool a viewer into thinking
getting the look of thick oil paint, building
up a graphite sheen and working with
way of improving the final that a digital painting has been created
with traditional media is higher than ever.
pastels. You might be familiar with a few
of the techniques already, but we’re sure
product. Jeff Johnson But there can always be improvements.
Play around with the options and tools
there’ll be a couple of useful tips that will
give your painting the �inal touch you’ve
shares some top tips for a bit more and you can start to add little
touches that elevate your digital art
been looking for. As ever, we’d love to see
what you have created, so please send your
emulating traditional effects into a whole new arena. By calling upon
traditional techniques, you can use your
attempts to the team, or post them on our
gallery website: www.paintermagazine.
in Corel Painter tools in a new way and get the very best co.uk. Happy painting!

21

020-27_OPM15_feature.indd 21 5/3/08 14:12:52

 Feature Traditional art effects

Dry
media
Painter has a perfect set of brushes which can be used
to emulate pastels, so we will stay completely within
the Pastel Brush Library for this little foray, save for
a trip to the Blender Library to snag a Soft Blender
Stump. Natural media pastels are gloriously easy to
manipulate, and Painter’s pastels share this advantage.
When handled using traditional methods like the ones
employed here they look a great deal like the real thing,
with little or no adjustment.

Stump the band Just like real life

The basic approach
here is no different
than that you’d employ
with actual pastels on
paper. Basic forms are
blocked in using middle
tones, and smoothed to
taste with a stump. This
process is repeated
as you gradually work
from mid-tones to the
final lights and darks.

01 A quick start The border was drawn

with a Soft Pastel brush using the Straight
Line option. The cherries were sketched-in using a
Sharp Pastel pencil. Then the Soft Pastel brush was
used to begin blocking in values. It is best to pick
values that don’t extend too far past midtones in
either direction.
02 The darkening Once the basic values
are blocked in, switch over to the Round
X-Soft Pastel brush (always use the largest brush
possible in order to simplify rendering and make
modelling easier). Work towards the darkest
values with directional strokes that enhance the
sense of volume of the shapes.
03 Rounding things out The canvas is
set to Basic Paper. Grab the Soft Blender
Stump, which is found in the Blender palette. Size
it very large (about twice the size of your largest
pastel brush for each area). Blend the strokes and
values together, taking care not to over-blend and
lose the nice gestural strokes you have been using.

24

020-27_OPM15_feature.indd 22 5/3/08 14:13:28

 Getting graphite Conte brushes
to look right
One of the best ways to practise emulation is to try to re-create the style of artists whose technique you admire.
Here we decided to emulate the look of one of those beautiful anatomy studies by Peter Paul Rubens. The picture
was based on a photograph provided by professional model Ben Miller. Painter’s Conte brushes are excellent to
work with, and handle much like the real thing, so the actual rendering was pretty straightforward.

Rubens used toned paper, so start out with

a medium-grey as the canvas colour. The
Variable Spatter Airbrush loaded with the
paper colour and used on a Gel layer set to
40% Opacity was applied to the canvas.

Getting digitally created marks to look like graphite

involves, among other things, having a firm grasp of
the tonal range of the medium. Graphite is very slick
and shiny, and there is a subtle sheen that lightens
any marks, even those made by a very soft pencil.
There are a few ways to emulate this. One is to use
Painter’s pencils and dial down the opacity, or work To give the appearance of a graded wash,
on a separate layer with its opacity adjusted. Another open Apply Lighting via Effects>Surface
is to use a different tool altogether and select an Control. Using gradual lighting with the
settings shown, apply the effect and adjust it
appropriate range of greys. This drawing was done a bit via Fade in the Edit pull-down menu.
with a small Digital Airbrush using a slightly greenish
grey, which we found best emulated graphite.

G ettin g te x tu re
an d volu m e the ea s y wa y
Outside of eggs and a few other things, organic objects are never too
uniform. Pastel, when applied in certain ways, can create a lively,
varied surface without a lot of effort. One of the best ways to make your
pastel works as energetic and realistic as their natural media cousins
is to incorporate gestural strokes in every aspect of the rendering. The
X-Soft Pastel brush stands out as being easiest to wield in this manner,
delivering an experience startlingly similar to the highest quality pastels.

04 More, more, more Working with

the Round X-Soft Pastel brush, continue
rounding out the form with strokes of varying
thicknesses and direction. Start with short thick
strokes across the form to model rich darks. Then
you can switch to a smaller version of the same
brush, and break up the transition of values with
some cross-hatching.
05 Smooth over everything Now for
some final smoothing. Using the Soft
Blender Stump, made very large, gently nudge
things towards the kind of finish you desire. Some
folks like things much more gestural than others,
while others are oriented towards a smoother
surface. Watch what you’re doing and react to
what looks right to you.

23

020-27_OPM15_feature.indd 23 5/3/08 14:14:04

 Feature Traditional art effects

Wet
media
Watercolour is an art form unto itself with an overall
look that has a great deal of charm. To emulate good
watercolour technique, paint should be applied with a
large brush, and with an economy of strokes.
Many of the attributes of the medium are built into
Painter’s Watercolor brushes, and this is one instance
where simply sticking within this brush set will make
marks look satisfyingly like watercolour. The Digital
Watercolor brushes are easier to use, and more forgiving
than their real counterparts, so they’re a favourite.

Glazing The perfect technique for a landscape

Glazing with
watercolours works
just like it does with oil
paints. A very thin layer
of pigment is applied
over an area of dried
paint to modify that
area, either to change
the colour temperature
or darken the area. This
is a perfect technique
for a landscape, as
you simply start with
the background and
work towards the
foreground elements 02 Middle ground The middle ground
can be painted on a Darken layer, which
03 To the fore The foreground can also
be painted on a Darken layer. Darker
objects tend to come forth, so this whole process
with a series of glazes.
01 First things first After making a light
preliminary sketch to help set up the
composition and clarify some of the major details,
makes rendering a snap. One of the toughest
things to handle with watercolour is overlap,
as the additive nature of the medium makes
is one of moving from light to dark. The dark scrub
trees were painted on a Gel layer. Things like the
birch trees can be handled either by painting over
the background can be loosely painted in with a noticeable line, and the two colours once them and erasing with a wet Digital Watercolor
washes. The Digital Wash brush is perfect for the combined get darker, making basic rendering an eraser, or by painting up to them. Both methods
job and can be varied in size as needed. indirect and patience-testing effort! were used here.

26

020-27_OPM15_feature.indd 24 5/3/08 14:14:37

 Getting watercolour-like edges
Painted textures Edges are everything in watercolour, and to get something to look like the real
thing you have to study the edge-work of a variety of watercolourists’ styles.
Watercolour can be one of the most The beauty of the medium is also the bane of many a practitioner, as there is
effective mediums in evoking a little room for error. Digital emulation is a lot more forgiving, and you only
sense of the many facets of light need to use a few simple techniques, paired with a good choice of brushes, to
we associate with landscape work. get the wide variety of edges found in the genre’s most representative works.
Ways to achieve this can involve
interacting with paper texture, and
by various brushes and techniques
to vary surfaces and add life to
otherwise flat passages. Let’s look
at a couple of useful tools: Salt and
01 Using the
Lasso tool
a watercolourist wants
If

Airbrush, which are especially good a sharp edge, they have

at creating convincing effects. the choice of applying
a masking agent to one
side, or both in turn. Here
Sa lty the Lasso tool was used
Salt has a lovely effect on watercolour, to select the horizon line
and can add great variety to surfaces with and foreground. Once
just a few light strokes. Here it has been one side of the edge
used to diffuse the edges of the values is painted, invert the
in the sky during the initial stages of the selection and work on
painting. It was also used near the end to the other side.
add reflective facets to the water.

02 Wet-on-wet
Getting Digital
Watercolor brush strokes
to appear to mix lightly
with one another, and
to mimic the classic
wet-on-wet technique,
involves some blending.
The tree line was painted
From Atomizer to Airbrush Painters used to use Atomizers to flick the tips using a Soft Broad brush,
and softened with the
of their brushes, to apply specks of paint to their watercolours. Now many painters use
Airbrushes. In Painter, one of the best to work with is the Variable Spatter Airbrush, as its Soft Round blender. Use
effect gives a very nice emulation of the real deal, and can be scaled to fit. Here some nice the Wash brush for the
textures were added to the water by painting on a Gel layer. background foliage.

Pa p e r te x tu re
It is often easier to apply paper texture to a work after the
rendering is done. Here is an easy method for doing that, which
provides maximum control. Select your preferred texture as a
base paper. For this image, Italian Watercolor paper is a good
choice. Copy the image and Paste it onto itself. With the bottom
layer active, add the Watercolor paper texture via Effects>Surface
Control>Apply Surface Texture. Simply dial back the opacity of the
upper layer a bit to let as much of the paper texture show through
as you like.

04 Smaller and smaller Now the details can

be added. Stay within the Digital Watercolor
palette and choose brushes like the Pointed Simple Water,
and choose the Pointed Wet eraser to modify passages
and to add details. Keep those authentic-looking simple
strokes going, even as things get really small. Zoom in a bit
and increase the length of your stroke for better control
and smoothness.
05 Period of adjustment A watercolour is
rarely perfect after the first pass, and digital
emulation is no different, just easier to fix. ‘Digital
purist’ sounds like an oxymoron, but so as long as the
final product has an authentic look, the means are up
to the artist. In this case a little contrast was added
to the whole painting, and an Airbrush on a Gel layer
deepened the values of a few passages in the woods.

25

020-27_OPM15_feature.indd 25 5/3/08 14:15:16

 Feature Traditional art effects

Thick
media
Thick wet oil paint conjures up images of expressive,
directly painted work. Brushstrokes and paint
manipulation become partners in helping to express
motion, form and energy. Direct painting is perhaps
one of the hardest ways to use an otherwise forgiving
medium, and artists help themselves by solid planning.
Getting the colours and values right while trying to
manage brushwork is a tough balancing act. So here is a
technique that effectively separates those elements, and
makes each aspect of the process much easier to control.

Easy street
treet Express yourself through your brushes
Here is a way to make
expressive brushwork
with thick paint easy to
do. And fun! It involves
building up paint in
layers, and leaves you
a great deal of
flexibility at every
turn. Perhaps the most
important thing this
approach adds to the
effect is that it allows
you to build up the
image rather quickly,
with a great deal of
control throughout the 02 Paint by numbers Pick a palette
of several values and map them in
03 Layers of texture and hue Now
that the basic values are mapped in, it
is time for another go-around, this time bringing
entire process.
01 Value first A common way to separate
out the values and hues of a painting is to
complete a monochromatic value study. Try to get
appropriate spots, sort of like paint-by-numbers,
using the greyscale values of the drawing as a
guide. Here we have used a low contrast, greenish
the colours closer to the desired range. This next
foray will mix imperfectly with the under-painting,
creating nice variations in hue. Also, another
a strong, simple rendering that reflects the scope hue to act as an under-painting of sorts that will pass with the various Impasto brushes will add
and thrust of the piece you are planning. Don’t enhance the range of skin tones. Stay loose and dimensionality and surface detail that can’t be
worry about finer details at the moment. make sure your brush strokes enhance form. achieved any other way.

26

020-27_OPM15_feature.indd 26 5/3/08 14:16:06

 Oops, too thick (or too thin)…
Okay, so you got a little sloppy and glooped on a bit too much paint. Or maybe
Add molehills
you dug a deep hole that needs filling. The Impasto palette has the perfect
tool at your disposal to help you either take a bit of excess depth away, or even
fill in a divot. There is also a nifty way to easily raise the overall depth of the
to mountains
painted surface.
Okay, so everything seems to be
hanging together. But the longer you
look at the image the more it seems
just a few things could be done to

01 Too much
Things have
got a bit out of hand
really make it work better. Some of
those things you would like to deal
with are independent of the Surface
around that eye, with
Texture, so you need to get a bit
sloppy brushwork
starting to really get in
tricky. Here we have a couple
the way. Simply grab of easy solutions to common
the Depth Equalizer and painting problems.
run it gently over the
troubled areas. Vary the
pressure applied and the
opacity of the brush, for
maximum control.

02 Double
up All the
brushwork looks okay,
but might seem a bit flat.
An easy way to preserve
your brushstrokes
and enhance their
dimensionality is to copy
the image onto itself.
You will notice that the
depth is now doubled.
A bit too thick? Just dial
back the opacity of the
01 Simply darker If a detail
or passage is too light, a little
colour applied on a Gel layer will do the
02 Changing hues Sometimes
the values and details are fine,
but a few of the colours aren’t quite where
upper layer a bit, or do trick. As it’s on a separate layer, making they need to be. A Hue layer is an excellent
a little work with the corrections is easy. Here we have opened tool to use to adjust colours in a painting,
Depth Eraser. a Gel layer at 50% Opacity and added a leaving brushwork undisturbed. Here we
thin glaze of dark grey paint to the right experimented by adding red to the skin
side of his face and underneath his nose. around his eye, and some green for the eye.

Bottom s u p
One of the most interesting and counter-intuitive things you can
do to gain control over brushwork is to copy the canvas onto
itself, reduce the opacity of the upper layer to 80%, and make
your adjustments with Impasto brushes on the bottom layer. The
textures produced by the brushwork pop up through to the next
layer (imagine you got the image perfect and would like to improve
the brushwork in a passage, without disturbing the image with
hard to handle thick paint). Due to the reduced opacity of the upper
layer, the paint applied to the lower layer effectively mixes into the
upper layer, acting very much like a glaze or scumble.

04 Zoom in Go ahead and start working in

the delicious little details, but keep things
expressive. Simply use smaller versions of the brushes used
up to this point to ensure continuity of brushwork and
style. Note how varied the surface is close-up. Liberal use
was made of the Palette Knife as a blender and texturizer.
It is a tilt-sensitive brush that is easy to wield with minimal
practice, leaving very authentic-looking marks.
05 Pulling it all together The last
adjustments to the image don’t need the
Impasto brushes. The Tinting brushes work very well
for adjusting smaller areas, and many of them will
even pull a little canvas back. Here the Tinting Oily
Round 35, loaded with a slightly darker value than
the background is used around the hand, to give the
appearance of the canvas showing through.
Bottom s la yer Top la yer

27

020-27_OPM15_feature.indd 27 5/3/08 14:16:53

 Tutorial Palette Knives

Before photo

Create with Palette Knives

Get the knives out, load them up with paint and pile it on your canvas!
Tutorial info ave you ever painted with traditional palette knives?
Scooping up paint and smearing it on the canvas,
Artist
sculpting and building into a three-dimensional
Cheryl Blanchard
surface? This is when a painting becomes more than
Time needed a �lat plane; it becomes a form of sculpture. Palette knives, more
40 minutes formally known as painting knives, are springy, shaped spatulas
used for painting instead of a brush. They are also used for
Skill level mixing paints. The building of paint with a palette knife helps to
Beginner lend spontaneity and bold statement to a piece of artwork. With
a little experimenting you can create wonderful effects with the
On the CD Palette Knives in Painter.
Start photo In Painter we have many Palette Knives at our disposal. From
the Loaded Palette Knife to the Tiny Smeary Knife, we’ll see just
what is possible. The most important thing to discover is how the
knives move on the virtual canvas. The width of a knife will also
determine the height when it’s dragged in a horizontal direction,
in its broadest use. Diagonal directions provide the thinnest
strokes if the stylus tilt is in the same direction; the left to right
tilt of your pen will affect the width of the knife stroke. Think
of the tilting of your stylus as turning the knife on its edge and
scraping along the canvas. Also, turn your canvas often when
using the knives to make the most of them.
Let this tutorial be a stepping-stone for you, a mere
introduction. Once you’re comfortable using the knives, you’ll
�ind many ways to make this tool work in directions that only
you can discover with your own experimenting. So, have fun!

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028-32_OPM_15-palette.indd 28 4/3/08 17:35:22

 Create a bold painting Building
Turn an average image into a work of art!

Tutorial
colour
The beauty of painting
with the Palette
Knives is in the way
the paint builds. The
longer you spend
in an area applying

Palette Knives
02 Colour
bold
it
Since
we’re creating a bold
new paint or pushing
around the underlying
paint, the heavier
and thicker the look
painting, let’s take a few
becomes. Especially
moments to ramp up with a bit of Impasto
the colour, so the image added for effect. The
is as bold as the strokes pressure you apply
will be. Use Effects>Tonal to the stylus will
Control>Adjust Selected determine how far

01 Start with a dynamic image

Let’s take this rather average image
and change the contrast to add some interest.
Colors. Select the darkest
sky colour in the image.
Move Hue and Saturation
the original colour
will spread before
it blends with the
Load it from the disc. Use Effects>Tonal to the right, and Value underlying colours.
Control>Brightness/Contrast. Now you can to the left. This will add a Just as the surface of
adjust the Contrast slider to add strength to the more interesting colour a traditional canvas
builds with colour
photograph. range to the image.
the longer you work
at it, so too is the
experience here in
Painter. You can apply

04 A simple
cloning
technique Go to
paint in two ways;
keep the Resat at 0%
to push the underlying
File>Clone Source and paint around, or
pick your photo. Click increase the Resat to
sample colours and
Save As. Select all, copy
add fresh paint.
and then Paste In Place.
Reduce the Opacity on
this copied layer to 50%,
and click the eye icon on
the Canvas layer. Create
a new layer to begin
painting on, ensure Pick
Up Underlying Color
is selected and place it

03 Neutrals to bright Again, use Adjusting Selected Colors to

adjust the neutral tones in the image. Select the main colour of the
ground and adjust the Value to the left, to almost full strength. This will give
above the copied layer.
Painting in this way
enables you to see where
Impasto
All the Palette Knives
an overall brightness and saturation to the remaining colour in the photo. you’ve painted. can be adjusted to use
Impasto effects in the
Brush Creator. Under
Impasto, change the
default setting of
Color to either Depth,
or Color and Depth.
Depth will only add
the look of volume,
while Color and Depth
will allow you to build
with both. Open the
Brush Creator and add
Impasto to any of the
knives. Experiment
with the depth to see
what works best in
any particular image.
The more you work an
area, the thicker the

05 Paint the foundation with Artist’s Oils Now we’re ready to

paint! Select the Clone Color icon in the Colors palette. You can use
Palette Knives directly on the image you’re cloning if you wish, but this quick
06 A few painted details Even though we’re roughing in the
painting, we need to add some details as reference before using the
Palette Knife. On a second layer, paint some smaller shapes in. Here’s a handy
paint becomes as you
sculpt with the knives.
Change the depth of
painting helps to simplify and provides paint to move around. In Artist’s Oils, trick: move this new layer below the one just painted to clone directly from Impasto for a variety
use the Wet Oily brush with default settings at 80% Opacity. Paint roughly, to the original image again. When you’re finished, move it back to the top of the of effects as you work
block in basic colours and areas. layer stack. through a painting.

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028-32_OPM_15-palette.indd 29 4/3/08 17:35:43

 Tutorial Palette Knives

Impasto and Palette Knives

Use Impasto to bring added spark to your painting

07 Merging
layers
Before we begin to
use the Palette Knives,
merge layers to the
canvas by highlighting
all layers and selecting
Drop in the pull-down
menu at the bottom of
the Layers palette. This
08 A loaded knife With the Loaded Palette Knife we can dive
right in and push the paint around to shape it, adding interest and
volume. You’ll notice that the knife makes specific shapes depending on
will give you a single which direction and angle you drag it. Turn the canvas as you paint to make
foundation to use the the most of the directional attributes of these knives. The thinnest straight
knives on. lines are diagonal, and the broadest vertical and horizontal.

10 Add Impasto
With the Brush
Creator, add Impasto
effects to the Smeary
Palette Knife. For this
painting we’ll keep
the Impasto Depth at
10% in the large areas
of the sky and water.
You don’t need to

09 Sculpt and build As with traditional paint, the longer you work
in an area, the thicker the paint becomes. The Palette Knife is a good
choice for thick colour at this stage of the painting. Set the Resat at 0% to
cover everything with
Impasto; leave some
areas flat for contrast
move the paint around, and increase to add colour. and interest.

11 New colour Now open the original colour-corrected photo to use as

reference. Add colour sampled from the photo – choose directly from
the canvas or from your imagination. Darken the sky a bit to create a twilight
scene, adding some detail into the painting. Use the Smeary Palette Knife with
Impasto for this as well.

30

028-32_OPM_15-palette.indd 30 4/3/08 17:35:58

 Tutorial
12 Subtle
blending
the Subtle Blending
Use

Palette Knives
Knives to soften some
areas in the painting.
You can create depth
by varying hard and
soft techniques. The
softer areas will tend
to fade back from the
foreground, and give
the viewer’s eyes a
13 More Impasto Use the Tiny Smeary Knife to add some further
detail to the painting. With Impasto effects at 25% (Color and Depth)
the volume of these strokes will attract the viewer’s eye to this detail, and
place to rest. bring added spark and detail to the painting.

The right direction

Different directions for different effects

15 Texture
knives
with
Using
any of the knives with a
Feature above 0.5 will
create a drier knife. Set

14 Scrape in some lines Again, an

important property of the Palette Knives
is the directional quality that’s inherent in each.
the Feature to 1.5 with
the Palette Knife and
add some texture to the
For a fine scrape of paint, set the knife on its edge, foreground. By increasing
make a diagonal sweep from left to right, with the Feature even further,
Pen Tilt to right. Reverse for a thin line from the you can create some
opposite direction, with Pen Tilt to the left. To use great effects, such as a
this knife to its fullest extent, turn the canvas so look of raking dry paint
you can push the paint in any direction. across the canvas.

Blending with Knives

The Subtle Palette Knives are
wonderful blending tools. They can
be used with many of the mediums
found in Painter. With the right
touch and a light hand, this tool
can be used to create some very
soft and pleasing effects. By
varying the opacity and size of the
knife, the possibilities are endless.
Try them with Acrylics or Gouache,
even with the Pastels. The Tiny
Subtle Knife is very good for those

16 Final adjustments Drop all layers to the canvas and bring

the painting into Photoshop for the final adjustments. Use
Sharpen>Unsharp Mask to define the knife strokes more. Use Levels to add
tight areas that need fine blending.
If you keep the Resat at 0% while
blending, this will ensure that only
more contrast. Lastly, use Hue and Saturation to adjust colour, to warm and the underlying colour will be used
saturate the red just a little for the finishing touch. in the process.

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028-32_OPM_15-palette.indd 31 4/3/08 17:36:14

 Tutorial Palette Knives

Playing with knives Experiment and then create!

The most important thing to Palette Knife

do with the Palette Knives is to
experiment and play. There’s no
right or wrong way to use them,
and you’ll find your own expression if
you’re willing to forget about perfection
and careful edges. Each knife has a
multitude of possibilities that you will The Palette Knife is a
discover in your own hand. luscious, wet knife. It
streaks and pushes
paint in bold swatches
of colour. Similar to
the Loaded Palette
Knife, this one is heavy
and wet. Use it for the
flattest shaping of
colour with the Resat
at 0% to push and
mould paint across
your virtual canvas.

Smeary Palette Knife

Ah, the Smeary

Palette Knife. This
one is our favourite.
One of the smoothest
of the knives, it lays
down paint in flat,
even strokes. With
or without Impasto,
it is the workhorse
of the group, easily
moving from pushing
and pulling to adding
paint, from thin edges
to bold surfaces.

Loaded Palette Knife Tiny Smeary Knife

This little knife is very

versatile. Unlike the
The Loaded Palette larger knives, it has
Knife is a good broad a strong solid stroke
knife to move lots of at a petite size. The
paint when you begin tilt of your pen has
a knife painting. You’ll just as much impact
notice this has some on the stroke, as
subtle streaking to it, does the pressure
a bit of texture even at and direction. For
a low Resat. This knife the broadest stroke
also works very well in any direction, turn
with Impasto features, the canvas to paint
adding greater texture either in a vertical or
within each stroke. horizontal direction.

32

028-32_OPM_15-palette.indd 32 4/3/08 17:36:51

 Primer Distortion

BLEND WITH THE DIFFUSER

BRUSH CATEGORY
A Charcoal brush was used for this
image, but we wanted a really nice
smudgy sky. The Diffuser was used

Distortion
to smooth out any harsh lines

Feel like something a bit different? Have a

blast of the Distortion variants
ome of the brush categories in
Painter offer all sorts of weird
and wonderful effects, and
the Distortion category is one
example of this. The variants found in
the Distortion category apply effects CONFUSED UNDER-PAINTING
that alter an image and range from quite A quick base under-painting was
subtle right up to total annihilation! applied to sort out the tonal values,
The more subtle variants offer then the Confused brush was wiped
interesting painting tools. The Diffuser over it. This gave a nice textured base
can be used as a decent painting for the next application of pastel
brush, while the Smeary Bristles
is good for an oily effect. Other
variants are excellent for creating

PRIMER
interesting borders to your
images, especially the Marbling
Rake or the Confusion brush.
And for patterns, the Water
Bubbles or Turbulence variants
are perfect.
SMEAR IT ABOUT
We’re going to be looking in more
The Smeary Bristles was used in
depth at what these brushes can achieve this dark area to smudge out the
over these pages, paying particular sharper pastel strokes and also
attention to the ones that are most useful give a general soft feel
most often. You’ll �ind we’ve created a
guide to all of them so you can see what
they all do, and then you can have a go at
using them yourself.
It’s doubtful you’ll use them each time
you load up Painter, but they still deserve
to be explored.

Diffuse the situation The confuser

Paint or blend
The Diffuser basically smears and, well, diffuses
pixels, and can be used in a couple of ways. The
first is as a painting tool. Set it up as your brush
and keep the Strength to around 30%. Now use
it to brush over your image, and the pixels will
blend into each other to give a painterly effect.
It works directly on whatever surface is on the
canvas, so you haven’t got to worry about setting
up any clone sources. The other option is to use it
to blend between colours. It disperses the colour,
which is excellent as it really gives the impression
of smudging with your fingers.
Getting all muddled up
The Confusion variant is a versatile brush that
lends itself to cloning and blending. As a cloner,
it works well as an under-painting device. Brush
it over your photo, all over the surface, then use
another brush to paint in more detail. Again,
you haven’t got to set it up as a cloner brush;
just brush it over any area for it to work with the
pixels. The speckled edge it gives works well when
left peaking out over more worked-up strokes. As
a blender of colours, it gives smooth results with
the edges splaying out. You can alter the intensity
of this by adjusting the Strength slider.

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034-35_OPM_15_brushes.indd 30 4/3/08 17:40:33

 Distortion brushes

Primer
If the need is there, these brushes will deliver…

Distortion
Normal Grainy Mover

GET DISTORTED Bulge Hurricane

At first glance, the Distortion
variants seem a difficult bunch to
get control of, but once you try a
few, there are some real gems

Coarse Brush Mover Marble Rake

Coarse Distorto Pinch

Confusion Smeary Bristles

Diffuser Thin Distorto

Maximum distortion
Twist and turn
The Distorto variant takes a few different Distorto Turbulence
guises in the category. The first, Coarse
Distorto, drags pixels around in the direction
the mouse moves, giving quite a textured
edge. The Distorto brush does exactly the
same, except the edges are much softer.
Grainy Distorto is particularly good at
blending colours, while the Thin Distorto
seems to suck the pixels up into the brush. It’s
difficult to use these in lifelike paintings, but
Grainy Distorto Water Bubbles
they are good for creating patterns and a lot
of people use them to create borders.

35

034-35_OPM_15_brushes.indd 31 4/3/08 17:42:22

 READERIA’SL
TUTOR

Café-style illustrations
Tutorial info Learn how to create a delicious looking scene with photos, text and chalks
Artist
Lisa Peruchini oday’s mad love affair with
coffee, desserts and cafés
Time needed is a theme that is in high
2 hours demand, and very popular
commercially. Just recently I �inished
Skill level 13 of such images for a calendar coming
Intermediate out in 2009. The chalks and grainy look
On the CD
created with Painter is not at all hard
Source photos to do, and it caters to the sophisticated,
upscale �lavour that works well with
this theme. You will use mainly three
brushes throughout, and with the shift in
grain percentages, it varies the coverage
and gives a lovely overall variety. We
will stick with a fairly limited palette of
warm colours, and a couple of blues to
complement them. Repeated use of saved
selections will keep your edges tight, and
layers mean you can experiment with
joyful abandon. It is really exciting to
see the paper magically appear in your
strokes, and even more exciting to have it
all come together with the surface texture
added in the end. The antique wallpaper
design ties in beautifully with the old-
style coffee grinder, and it’s a great way
to accentuate it. Texture treatment and a
thoughtful choice of an old period-style
font is a cool way of bringing text into the
design to bring it all together. And the
best thing of all – there’s no chalk dust to
deal with! So follow these steps to create
your own delicious scene…

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036-041_OPM_15-cafe.indd 36 5/3/08 14:08:50

 Sort your palettes
Prep your work for better results

Tutorial
02 Create
canvas
the
Start
with a square canvas, 11

Café-style illustrations
x 11 inches. Choose the
Simulated Woodgrain
paper, scale to 122%
and move Contrast to
163%. Add a gradient
for an initial background
colour – any light
colour will do. Open
the grinder, coffee cup
and cheesecake photos

01 Create a custom palette Start by creating a custom palette

of brushes and commands. The brushes used were Square Chalk
(default settings), Square Chalk 35 (default settings), Tapered Artist Chalk 10
from the CD, and Cut
and Paste each one into
your canvas. Arrange
(default settings), Grainy Blender (default settings), Tiny Spattery Airbrush the composition, leaving
(default settings), Cover Pencil (size 3), and Grain (7%). We also added Sandy a space at the top for the
Pastel Paper and Simulated Woodgrain from the Papers library. text to go.

Work on
the right
layer with
selections
By default, every time
you convert a shape
to a selection it will
go immediately to the
Canvas layer. Always
click on the layer
you want to work on
before painting.

03 Drawing the grinder in chalk Reduce the grinder photo Layer

Opacity to about 50%, and create a new layer for your art above the
04 Make a selection After you create the shape go to
Shapes>Convert to Selection. Now you can start painting away in
your selection, initially with the Square Chalk 35 set at default, but change the
grinder photo. Use the Shape tool (Pen) to create basic shapes as you paint. Grain to 21% for more coverage.

05 Make the shape Follow the plane with your strokes. Vary your
colour slightly for interest. Lower the Grain to draw with more of the
texture. Use Oval Selection Marquee for the knob, and Invert Selection for the
shadows. Create another layer beneath that one to work on for darks. Use a
Square Chalk for smaller strokes.
06 Add definition Group your layers, and collapse them when the
wood part is done. You can now define the edges with the Tapered
Chalk in a dark brown.

37

036-041_OPM_15-cafe.indd 37 5/3/08 14:09:14

 Tutorial Café-style illustrations

Transform your photos

Give everyday objects a touch of café class

08 Work the image You can now use the Eyedropper to sample
colours and re-paint them over your photo in chalks. I used mainly

07 Cut corners This is an incredible time saver for detailed parts

of a photo! I consider the top portion of this antique grinder to be
detailed enough to use this shortcut method. Work on the photo layer and
Lasso that area from the top. Now Cut and Paste it into a new layer. Reduce
the colours and go to Tonal Control>Posterize>levels >8>OK.
Tapered Artist Chalk, but others can be used as well. Use your Blender to
smudge areas that still look too much like a photograph, especially in the
coffee beans (reduce the brush size if needed). Group and Collapse the layers
to one layer. Rename it as ‘grinder’. Do not delete the grinder photo, we will
be needing it again.

09 Have your cake Now it’s time
to start working on the yummy
cheesecake and plate. I worked with a short, fat
slice that I felt would be better a bit longer, so I
manipulated the photo before painting over it. On
the cheesecake photo, Lasso the edge of the cake
and Edit>Copy, Edit>Paste in Place. Move slightly
to the left and then Group layers>Collapse.
10 More selection Create an oval shape using the Oval Shape tool
for the edge of the plate, using the photo for reference. Make sure
your shape command has Stroke selected, and not Fill, so you can see the
photo beneath it. Create a duplicate shape layer of that one (Layer >Duplicate
Layer), then use handles on the edges to bring it in shape visually, matching
the plate’s decorative band. Repeat, and drag again inward, using handles for
the inner band.
11 Layers Follow the instructions in the
‘Start the Plate’ side tip. Now you can
free-hand the edges and bands a bit with the
Tapered Artist Chalk, and use an Oval Selection for
shadow forms near the centre of the plate. For the
underside create a new layer, place beneath the
plate layer, create another oval, add sloped sides
with the Lasso, and paint the same colours used
on the plate with the Eyedropper tool.

Vary your
initial
13 Cheesecake
layer Block in
your colours with Chalk
colour with set at 22% Grain. Switch
to the Sandy Pastel Paper
the slider (Scale to 226%, Contrast
Throughout the colour 207%) and lower your
process, double-click Grain. Paint with a darker
on your Main Color colour to start seeing
square to bring up the chalk effects. For the
the Color Dialog box. drips, Lasso the shapes
Bring up the slider on and use the Eyedropper
the right to increase tool to pick up colours
the Luminosity, or
of the syrup in the plate.
decrease it to darken
it. It’s good to have
both the lighter and
darker variations
12 Build up the effect Check back to
the photo for reference on highlights and
shadows. Freehand some strokes of chocolate
Use a good coverage
and low-texture paper
for the whipped cream.
of the colour you’re colours for the syrup, using Lasso selections for Lasso selections for the
working with open at harder edges of shadows and highlights. Use stronger shadows and
the same time. Pencil for sharper highlights and crisp edges. blend with the Blender.

38

036-041_OPM_15-cafe.indd 38 5/3/08 14:09:35

 Start the

Tutorial
plate
Here’s how to go
about preparing your
plate for painting. On
Original Shape Layer
go to Selection>Create
a New Layer. Begin

Café-style illustrations
blocking off white
and beige colours in
large chalk strokes.
Pick a dark brown,
click on the Tapered
Artist Chalk (set to
about 5 pt), then

14 The background Create a horizontal line for the table that will
separate it from the wall using your Shape tool (Digitizing Pen) and
fill with a golden colour. Now Reselect>Invert and Save as ‘wall selection’. Fill
15 The coffee cup You will now use the same methods for the coffee
cup. Trace the cup’s body with the Shape tool. Click on the nodes
and drag handles to curve and refine it to fit closer to the cup’s body. Save
go to Select>Stroke
Selection. For the
band area, select both
this with an orange colour and drop this layer down to canvas. selection as ‘cup body’. oval shape layers,
Group them, then
Collapse. Use a blue
colour and the Paint
Bucket tool to click on
the bands and turn
them blue. Use the
Magic Wand, select
the area within the
lines, and paint using
strokes of various
blues following the
form. Group with the
plate and Collapse.

16 The opening Use the Oval Shape tool to draw the cup opening,
adjusting it with the Selection Adjusting tool. I had to rotate it a tad to
get the right angle. To do this while in the Selection Adjusting tool, hold down
Ctrl while on a corner square and it turns to a rotation arrow. Convert shape to
Selection. Save selection as ‘cup opening’.
17 Get a handle on things Now for the handle. Trace, as with the
cup body, using the Shape tool, Convert to Selection and save as ‘cup
handle’. Time to paint! While the handle is selected, Load ‘cup body’, with Add
To Selection checked. Make sure you paint on a layer created for the cup, and
colour with various shades of blue, following the form. Have both light and
dark blues open, and alternate when painting chalk strokes.

Still selecting
Create accurate paint strokes with selections

18 Final touches Accentuate the cup handle; paint along the edges
and add highlights. When finished, select Stroke Selection while in
Tapered Artist Chalk (Size 5, Opacity 100%, Grain 3%). Select>Transform
Selection>Stroke Selection. To make handle shadows, Invert, and paint darker
blues by following the reference photo. Stroke the cup body edge by loading
19 The coffee step This is tricky but gives the liquid a perfect edge
that follows your cup edge. Load the ‘cup opening’ and use the
Selection Adjuster tool to drag the selection down, to create an edge for the
‘cup body’ and ‘cup handle’ with Subtract From Selection checked. Load the liquid. Select>Invert >Load Selection >Cup Opening, with Intersect With
‘cup opening’ and paint varying colours of cream, used for the plate. Selection checked. Repeat to get the coffee area.

39

036-041_OPM_15-cafe.indd 39 5/3/08 17:13:27

 Tutorial Café-style illustrations

Bring together the elements

Make the composition sing

20 Cup bandFor the band

around the coffee cup,
load ‘cup opening’ again.
Convert to Shape. Drag
that shape down and
duplicate the layer to
drag the second shape
down. Make into one
layer: Shape>Make
Compound Layer. Load
‘cup body’ and check
Intersect With Selection.
Use the Lasso tool with
Subtract From Selection
checked to get rid of the
top part of the band.
21 Bean there Open the grinder photo layer and Lasso various groups
of beans. Copy and Paste them into place (which will be a new layer).
Do the same for another group of beans in the photo and move them to
Make sure when you where you want them. On a new layer, paint beans using a Sharp Chalk to
paint this that it’s on the block in mid-tones, add shadows with Tapered Chalk, then sharpen edges
active cup layer. and create grooves with Pencil.

22 Add shadows and highlights to the table On the canvas,

use various shades of golden yellow in large chalk strokes (Square
Chalk 35) to give the table interest and dimension. I created a vector repeat
based on an antique wallpaper pattern in CorelDRAW. Then I exported it as
a Photoshop file. I opened the .psd file in Painter, Select >Auto Select >Image
Luminance>Cut Edit >Cut. You could use one of Painter’s patterns –see tip.
23 Wallpaper Select your café image>Edit >Paste. Use the Layer
Adjuster tool to position it to where you want it. Load the wall
selection, Invert, and hit the backspace key to delete. You will end up with
just the pattern on the wall. While in that layer, Select >Auto Select> Image
Luminance again, and open the Gradient Dialog box. Using the 2-point
Gradient pick a colour that is slightly lighter than the wall, and Fill. Change the
Opacity to 55% on that layer.

Wallpaper
choice
You can use any
25 Finishing
touches
The table needs some
pattern you like for
your wallpaper. If you
warmer and lighter
don’t feel like creating colours in some areas,
one of your own,
why not create a new
canvas slightly larger
24 Airbrush time To give the wall more
texture and interest, load the ‘wall
selection’, and use the Tiny Spattery Airbrush tool
and a dark edge
with some blurring
(using the Blending
than the one your randomly around the area with various colours tool). Load the ‘wall
artwork is on, and picked up with the Eyedropper tool. Now you can selection’ again and
use one of Painter’s Group all your elements except the canvas (wall Invert. Colour lightly
patterns as a fill? and table), and Collapse to one layer. with chalks.

40

036-041_OPM_15-cafe.indd 40 5/3/08 14:10:27

 Text additions Take source
Put the stamp of authority

Tutorial
photos
The photos for this
type of illustration
are remarkably easy
to take, so don’t
worry if you’re not
a photographer. If

Café-style illustrations
you’re creating it
for someone else,
personalise it to their
needs. Pick out their
favourite cake or
drink, and make the
text relevant to them.

26 Define edges Put some finishing touches on the elements layer as

well. Splash a little reflecting table colour on the coffee cup; highlight
some areas, freehand some edges still needed for contrast using Tapered
Chalk, and the darkest colour sampled from the image. Using Straight Line
mode is especially helpful in defining edges of the grinder.
27 Creating the text I create all my text in CorelDRAW, but any
vector program can be used. Export the text file as a psd., 250 ppi,
and check Transparent Background. Open that file in Painter>Select >All In
The Layer With The Text>Cut and Paste into the Painter image. Position it to
where you want it over your image. Obviously you can use the Text tool in
Painter, and pick a font you like.

28 Text colouration Select the text and fill with a gradient using the
blues sampled from the coffee cup. Hide the original text layer to
view this more accurately. While still selected, use the Tiny Spattery Airbrush to
put in some of the wall colour for a distressed look, as well as other colours to
give it more interest. Delete the original text layer.
29 Create steam Use the Lasso tool to freehand a swirl, your Large
Sharp Chalk 35 in white, and a light hand with your stylus. Vary your
pressure along the edges of the selection and hide the Marquee to check your
results. Toggle the Marquee on again and use the Layer Adjuster to drag it
to the right slightly for a repeat, but try to leave a gap on the left side. When
finished, drop all layers and save as ‘grinder final’.

30
border
Create
a frame
I like to
create a frame around
the edge, which
will be a bleed if the
publisher needs to
trim it. Select All and
Cut. Now Paste in
Place. Activate the
empty canvas layer
and add to the edges.
Canvas>Canvas
Size>Add 50 Pixels
to the top, bottom
and sides. Select All
31 More detail To give more interest,
create a rough chalky edge. Create a new
layer above the art, and start colouring it in with
on the canvas, and short, freehand strokes. Work all the way around
fill with colour. I used using sampled colours picked with the Eyedropper
a gradient of brown from Gradient. A Grain of 20% works well with
to blue. the Sharp Chalk set at size 14.

41

036-041_OPM_15-cafe.indd 41 5/3/08 14:10:49

 Feature focus Grids and Guides

Grids and
Guides
Grids and Guides can help you draw more
accurately. Tim Shelbourne shows how…
ou may have seen mention of Grids
and Guides in Painter X and not
taken much notice of them, but
here we’re going to show that you GUIDES FOR
may well be missing out on the bene�its of COMPOSITION Use the
these tools. Establishing a good composition supplied guides in Painter
can often be quite a challenge for novice and to work out compositions
experienced artists alike, but Painter has two for your art. Alternatively,
tools: Layout Grid and Divine Proportion, use the guides to act as
which can make �inding the perfect reference grids for when
composition a whole lot easier. you are creating a sketch
from a photo.
The key to creating a scene which the eye
can travel through easily is based on the
Rule of Thirds theory, and the Layout Grid
can give you a visual guide to this. A more
complicated compositional scheme, but still
similar to the Rule of Thirds, is the Golden
Section, and here the Divine Proportion
Grid comes into its own.
Painter also features Rulers and ADD AS NECESSARY
Guides, so you can be certain of the One useful aspect to the

FEATURE
accurate size and position of image composition tools is that
elements, and have handy guides you can see what additions
wherever you want them to ensure will work well. In this

FOCUS
perfectly plumb verticals in your example, we added some
paintings. You can also overlay a foliage to frame the sketch.
simple customisable grid over your
reference and your canvas, which can
make producing an accurate drawing
much easier.
If you struggle with perspective then use
the Perspective Grid, which allows you to
accurately set up guidelines. So, if you feel in
need of a little guidance, read on!

The Grid Rulers

Copy a photograph accurately
Traditionally, if an artist wanted to accurately copy and
enlarge a drawing or cartoon, he or she would square up
the original, and apply this grid of squares to the empty
canvas. This enabled them to accurately copy the original
drawing or photograph by replicating where, on the
edges of each square, a line or image element appeared.
The modern Grid function does exactly what it says by
overlaying this helpful grid on both your original and copy.
You can activate the Grid via Canvas>Grid>Show Grid. You
can set up measurement units, line and background colour,
and Grid Type via Canvas>Grid>Grid Options. You can see
exactly how the Grid works in the walkthrough on page 44.
Get a handle on your image measurements!
Rulers along both the height and width of your painting
can be very useful, and you can activate them via
Canvas>Rulers. To set the measurement units you want the
rulers to use, go to Canvas>Ruler Options. With the rulers
in place, you can drag guides from them (see the Guides
boxout). There’s also a useful feature where you can set up
Snapping for the rulers, where guides, or even elements
on layers, will ‘snap’ in line with the measurement tick on
the rulers, so you can be sure of pixel precise positioning.
To set up the Snapping go to Canvas>Rulers>Snap To Ruler
Ticks. Rulers can be useful when you’re using the Crop tool
as they allow you to crop an image to an exact size.

42

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 Using Perspective Grids

DIVINE PRACTICE We placed the
Divine Proportion tool over the original
photo and used that to determine what
stayed and what was deleted from the
sketch. You haven’t got to follow these
to the letter, but it helps with
complicated scenes like cityscapes.
Feature focus
Make your drawings more accurate…
Creating convincing perspective in your drawings can be difficult, but
the Perspective Grid takes all the hard work out of it. Using this grid,
you can easily set up a foolproof guide for the perspective lines in your
painting, making the accurate drawing of buildings etc much easier.
Follow the mini-walkthrough below to find out how…
01 Horizon line
Canvas>Perspective
Grids>Show Grid and choose
Go to

Working with Grids and Guides

the Perspective Grid tool from
the toolbar. Position your
pointer over the lower edge
of the ground plane and drag
it down a little. This’ll make it
easier to set up the vanishing
point. Position your pointer
over the horizon line and drag
it into position.

02 Planes of
perspective The
vanishing point is the point on
the horizon where all the lines
of perspective converge, so
position your pointer over the
vanishing point dash. When
the pointer changes to a cross
you can drag the vanishing
point wherever you want.
Now grab the edge of the
vertical plane and position it.

03 Shifting planes
Now drawing
with perspective is easy! If
you need either planes in
a different place for other
elements, simply move them
by dragging the edges. Leave
the horizon line and vanishing
point in the same place once
TRY FOR YOURSELF If you want to you start drawing – just move
practice the grid sketching technique, load the horizontal and vertical
up the disc and use the source photo. Don’t planes as needed.
forget to send us what you come up with
– we’d love to see how it differs to ours!

Composition aids Guides

Grids can be golden!
When it comes to help with the sometimes seemingly
arcane and dark art of composition, Painter has all
you need! First, you can access the Layout Grid via
Canvas>Compositions>Show Layout Grid. Here you can
overlay your image with a grid that reflects the age-old
Rule of Thirds composition aid, and you can resize and
move this grid around at will. If you’re serious about
composition, then go for the Divine Proportion grid,
accessed via Window>Show Divine Proportion. This is a
rather more complicated compositional tool, involving
a theory known as The Golden Section, and again you
can move, rotate and resize the grid.
The best guide for any painter
Guides are simple horizontal or vertical non-printing
lines that you can add over your image, and move
to whatever position you require. You can add as
many guides as you like, simply by dragging them
from the horizontal and vertical ruler bars. Once the
guides have been placed, you can easily move them
into a new position by dragging the position of the
Guides marker within the ruler itself. To remove a
guide, simply drag it off the ruler. Before you can use
Guides, you need to make sure they are displayed via
Canvas>Guides>Show Guides. You can hide them in
the same way. Again, you can set layer elements.

43

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 Feature focus Grids and Guides

FEATURE
Using the grids
FOCUS
How to use grids in your drawings and paintings…
So, now you know
exactly how all
these grids and
guides work,
let’s take a look
at how they can
give you a helping
hand in creating
accurate drawings.
We’ll start with
�inding the best
composition in the
reference image,
and then show you
practical ways that
01 Divine Proportion Grid Open the
reference image and go to Window> 02 Position and crop Now you can
choose the Divine Proportion tool from
03 Set up a grid Go to Canvas>Grid>
Show Grid. To adjust the grid, go
to Canvas>Grid>Grid Options. Choose your
grids and guides
Show Divine Proportion. In the Divine Proportion the toolbar and move the spiral into position, measurement units (here we’ve used inches),
can help you as you
palette check the Enable Divine Proportion box. adjusting the size of the grid to make the best and choose the spacing between the grid lines.
develop a drawing. Here we’ve chosen the Landscape Top Right composition over the other image elements. It’s important that these values are the same for
orientation button so that the top of the tower can Choose the Crop tool and crop around the outer both horizontal and vertical to create squares. You
be the centre of focus. Reduce the size of the grid rectangle. You can now uncheck the Enable Divine can also choose the colour for the grid lines, and
to suit, using the Size slider. Proportion box. the thickness.

Choosing
Grid tools
The tools for
controlling and
adjusting the Layout
Grid, Perspective
Grid and the Divine
Proportion Grid are
nested together in the
toolbar, so only one
is displayed at a time.
To change from one
tool to another simply
click and hold on the
tool that is displayed,
and choose whichever
04 Apply the grid to your canvas Once your grid is set up,
go to File>Quick Clone. As we’re drawing freehand here, go to
Canvas>Tracing Paper to uncheck it. Go again to Canvas>Show Grid. You’ll
05 Easier copying Go to Canvas>Rulers>Show Rulers, as we’ll be
using a few guides later. Now you need to restore down the images
so you can work from the reference image as you draw. You can begin to
tool you want from the now have the same grid on your blank canvas, which will help you to draw copy from the reference, square by square. Take note of where lines of objects
fly-out menu. from the reference image more accurately. intersect the grid lines, and you’ll find drawing accurately much easier.

Divine proportions Layout Grid options

Divinity in drawing
The Divine Proportion Grid has many options, and these
are contained in its own palette, displayed via Canvas>
Compositions>Show Divine Proportion. For both portrait and
landscape compositions you have a choice of four orientation
schemes, where the grid is rotated in 90 degree increments. The
Size slider adjusts the overall dimensions of the grid. You can
rotate the grid in finer increments with the Rotation slider. Simply
click the colour swatches to change the colours of the individual
grid components. The Opacity slider controls how visible the grid is
over your image, and Levels increases or decreases its complexity.
To move the grid around you need to choose the Divine Proportion
tool from the toolbar.
Customise your Layout Grid
To display the Layout Grid options go to Window>Show
Layout Grid. You can choose a preset grid from the Type box,
including the Rule of Thirds grid, which will probably be the
one you’ll use most often. If you want to create a custom
grid, simply change the number and size of the horizontal
and vertical divisions by moving the sliders. You’ll also see a
slider for increasing or reducing the opacity of the grid over
your painting, and you can even change the grid line colour.
To save a custom grid, simply hit the + button to add it to the
list of presets for future use. To move the grid around your
canvas, choose the Layout Grid tool from the toolbar and drag
within the grid.

44

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 Beautiful

Feature focus
maths!
The science and
maths behind the
Divine Proportion and
Golden Section is very
complicated indeed,
and way beyond the
scope of this short
article. The history
of this geometric
calculation dates back

Working with Grids and Guides

centuries, and you can
find a lot of information
about it on the web.
If you want to learn
more, try these links:

06 Section by section Concentrate for the moment on just

establishing the main outlines of the image elements, again
concentrating on one square at a time. If you’re not too good at drawing, this
07 Guides for guidance! Being an architectural subject, the
verticals are very important in this image, and to make sure they are
correct you can add a guide alongside the edge you’re drawing so that you
www.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Golden_
ratio and www.
is a sure-fire way to make it a lot easier because you’re drawing just a small can be sure they are plumb. Simply click in the horizontal ruler at the top of the keplersdiscovery.
section at a time. image and drag downwards to add a guide. com/DivineProportion

Line it up
Call upon other tools for perfect results

08 Adjusting
guides
Drag this guide along
to where you are
working by dragging
the arrow in the ruler.
When you’re done
with the guide, you
can remove it from the
image by grabbing its
mark in the ruler and
dragging it completely
off the ruler. You can
always add horizontal
guides too, by clicking
09 Checking perspective Towards the end of your drawing
process, it’s a good idea to display the Perspective Grid via
Canvas>Perspective Grid>Show Grid. Refer to the panel on page 43 to adjust
and dragging out from the grid as necessary, and use the grid to draw alongside to correct the
the vertical ruler. perspective on the buildings.

Cropping The origin of rulers

Finding a good composition…
Although the maths behind Divine Proportion and the
Golden Section is hugely complicated, in reality Divine
Proportion is quite easy to use. You can easily find a
good composition in your reference image with this
tool, and crop your image to suit. Go to Window>Show
Divine Proportion. In the Divine Proportion palette,
check the Enable option. The idea here is to position
the end of the spiral over your desired focal point in the image. You can move
the grid by choosing the Divine Proportion tool from the toolbar and dragging
the grid. Resize the grid with the sliders so the spiral sits over the focal point,
and encloses the other main elements. Now use the Crop tool in order to crop
around the outer rectangle.
Deciding where your rulers measure from
The origin, appearing as a small square in the top left
of your document window at the intersection of the
horizontal and vertical rulers, can be very useful for
making pinpoint accurate measurements. You can
drag this origin to wherever you wish, and both rulers
will measure from that point. For instance, to find the
exact dimensions of your painting, simply grab the
origin and drag it to the bottom right-hand corner
of your painting. You can then read your painting
dimensions from the rulers themselves. To reset the
origin, simply double-click on it in the top left of the
document window.

45

042-45_OPM_15_featurefocus.indd 45 4/3/08 17:48:54

 Tutorial Paint like Toulouse Lautrec
Paint like: Toulouse Lautrec
The soul of Montmartre, or child of Moulin Rouge? We capture the spirit of this seminal artist…
he artist with the longest name
Tutorial info you may have ever heard, Henri
Artist Marie Raymond de Toulouse-
Anne Pogoda Lautrec Monfa, was born in
1864 in Albi, which is located in the
Time needed
Midi-Pyrénées Region of France. He was
4 hours the �irst-born child of Comte Alphonse
Skill level and Comtesse Adèle de Toulouse-Lautrec,
Intermediate who were �irst cousins. This made him
supposedly suffer from a number of
On the CD health problems, that were possibly
Sketch and final caused by this tradition of inbreeding.
image Henri fractured both his thigh bones
at the ages of 13 and 14 which ceased his
legs growing, and so he was just 1.54 m
tall. This made it physically impossible
for him to follow most hobbies that
used to be typical for men of his age by
that time, which supposedly made him
focus on art. So he became an important
post-Impressionist painter, art nouveau
illustrator and lithographer.
Known as ‘The Soul of Montmartre’,
he used to portray life at the Moulin
Rouge were he lived among the woman
for long periods. He witnessed their most
intimate moments, which inspired him to
paint many lesbian scenes.
“Known as ‘ The Soul of Montmartre’, he used to
portray life at the Moulin Rouge where he lived
among the women…”
46
046-051_OPM_15-Laturec.indd 46
During his lifetime, Lautrec sadly
discovered another love, and became
an alcoholic. He died in 1901, because
of health issues caused by syphilis and
complications due to alcoholism.
Even though Lautrec only lived to 36,
he was extremely productive during his
lifetime. Unlike Vermeer (featured last
issue), who supposedly only produced
around 30 paintings throughout his whole
life, Lautrec (according to Wikipedia)
produced the outstanding amount of
‘737 canvases, 275 watercolours, 363
prints and posters, 5,084 drawings, 300
pornographic works, some ceramic and
stained glass work, and an unknown
number of lost works’.
For recreating his work I picked The
Toilette. This was because it shows a
woman in a private moment of her life.
And since I know that Lautrec found
intimate moments of the women from
Moulin Rouge very inspiring, I decided
to go for it and try to capture the spirit
of his creativity. On this painting we
see a woman from behind, who sits half
dressed on the �loor. Unlike in most
paintings where subjects hold eye contact
This is a basic colour
palette, which I grabbed
from the painting
for a better overall
understanding of the
colour scheme
Here we have the sketch
that I created from the
original painting. As
always, you can find it
on the disc to base your
own practices on
to the viewer by being shown from the
front, we can’t get a direct connection to
her and so have to take a closer look at
what is surrounding her to have a chance
of understanding the painting.
Her head, with �ire-red hair, is clearly
put as the focus and is located near a
bucket, which is supposedly �illed with
water. So she possibly just washed herself,
but whether she just got out of bed, or if it
happened after a show, is something we
don’t clearly know.
The colour palette is held in bright
tones for all that is important, like the
woman in the foreground, or the foliage
and bucket which stands in contrast
to the very dark tones of the chair and
the ground that she sits on. The colour
palette, which is visible at once, contains
black and white, which is supported by
several yellowish tones, blues and an eye
catching red. The overall appearance
of the brush strokes seem loose, but
clearly de�ined enough to understand the
painting as a whole without problem. This
should be an interesting subject to work
on, and hopefully not too hard for you to
re-create at home!
5/3/08 16:09:34
 Tutorial
Paint like Toulouse Lautrec

47

046-051_OPM_15-Laturec.indd 47 5/3/08 16:10:33

 Tutorial Paint like Toulouse Lautrec

Prepare to paint
Trace to get an exact copy

02 Nailing
proportions
Because we want to
create an exact copy,
it’s essential to get all
proportions sorted. So
there is no real problem
in being ‘lazy’ and

01 Painting preparation Start by creating four layers. The first

one (the Canvas) will include the original painting, the second one
is white, and the third one is the painting again, but set to 40px and 60%
tracing everything that
is important. For tracing
use the Pastel>Artist
Opacity. Layer four, which is blank, will be used to trace the outlines and get Pastel Chalk (size 10px,
the proportions nailed correctly. Opacity 100%).

Online
museum
03 The finished sketch And here we
have the finished sketch of the tracing,
which you can find on the disc to base your own

This time, side tips

will mainly deal with
practices on. When you are unsure what to trace
for your own work, you can switch off the white
layer, which will make the painting visible at 100%
04 Colouring the background Create
a new layer, which is located below the
charcoal sketch, to base your first work on. Pick
05 Get started with the colours To
find correct colours while working, you
can pick the desired colour by pressing Alt while
cool places on the web Opacity, offering you a better chance to see all the Black and Oily Bristle from the Artists Oils. The size working with the Brush tool. Releasing Alt will
for your old master
detail. When you resume tracing just switch the should be Large, so everything around 200px at transform the Picker back into the Brush tool,
researches, so that
you’ll know more
white layer back on to see the black outlines. 100% Opacity is just fine! which guarantees comfortable working.
websites besides
Wikipedia which bear
great opportunities
to find old masters
online. The best
example for this
is probably www.
artrenewal.org.
The website offers
a virtual museum
containing every dead
and living master you
could think of, and
also announces high
priced competitions
and fantastic
workshops every
year. Besides this, the
attached search bar
makes it easy to find
old masters quick.
So as you can see,
the ARC is a must for
06 What to begin with I set the brush to around 60px in size and
80% Opacity and decided to get started with the body and hair first
to get a base for the painting defined. It doesn’t matter if you paint over the 07 Something to sit on To get better navigation through the
painting set the brush to around 70px in size, keep 80% Opacity, and
every art friend! outlines since the painting will be further defined later anyway. pick the blueish tone from the blanket she sits on.

48

046-051_OPM_15-Laturec.indd 48 5/3/08 16:10:55

 Define everything All about
Use different brush sizes to define the sketch

Tutorial
old master
copies
Another interesting
address is www.1st-
art-gallery.com. The
website basically

Paint like Toulouse Lautrec

deals with the
reproduction of old
master copies, but
done with real paints
on canvas. They also
offer a service to
transform customer’s
photos into wonderful
traditional oil
painting. Take a look
around and you’ll
08 More definition Setting the brush
to around 28px in size, I continued to
define the shape around the figure. Don’t worry 09 A whole basic definition Continue
to work on your basic colour palette 10 More definition for the base
the background more defined it works
To get
find interesting
information about
old master copies,
if the colours you start with look like basic blue, by picking more colours from your reference and best to add some lighter tones to the basic tones, including a wonderful
green and yellow, since this will be overworked adding them to your basic painting. You can set which you have applied. While doing this you can copy of the Girl With a
later anyway. the brush back to around 80px in size now. stick with the Oily Bristle from the Artists Oils. Pearl Earring from our
workshop last issue.
Scrolling down the
frontpage also reveals
a must-see, which is
an interesting video
that shows how an old
master copy is created
by hand.

11 Under the
outlines
Just continue adding
highlights and some
other tones which you
feel are important for the
overall understanding
12 Over the outlines Now it’s time to
start working over the outlines. Create
a new layer and start to carefully work out some
of the painting until you areas – you can keep your current brush settings
think that it is defined for this. On this screenshot you can see how I
enough to start working started to overwork the foliage on the left chair,
over the outlines. and the chair itself.

13 More painted structure Continue to

paint over the outlines carefully to achieve
a more painted look for the background. You can
14 Painting over continued Here you can see how I continued
to paint over everything until I had the feeling that it was all defined
enough to disable the Outlines Layer. Please note that I also added darker
15 Refinement without outlines
disable the Outlines Layer and choose
Now

the Airbrush>Soft Airbrush 40, set to 20px in size

size it down to around 30px for the smaller blueish tones to the painting at this point to have a good base for the refinements and 25% Opacity to work on specific detail, like
lines if you want to. which I had planned to apply later on. strands of the hair or chair structure.

49

046-051_OPM_15-Laturec.indd 49 5/3/08 16:11:21

 Tutorial Paint like Toulouse Lautrec

Finishing touches
Use little strokes to refine the details of your painting

Find stock
photos to
improve
Besides the very
chaotic stock
photos category of
DeviantART, you will
find a great and well-
sorted collection of
stock photos at www.
sxc.hu. As soon as
you have signed up an
account most, if not
all, photos on this site
seem to be available
for free in good
resolution. As soon as
you click on a desired
stock photo you can
16 Sexy back The same refinement technique as step 15 was used for
the back and the foliage she sits on to make all colours blend together,
which makes it possible to work on the rough painted look in step 17.
17 In detail To get your hands on the rough painted look you can
choose a RealBristle Brush>Real Blender Round. Set it to 10px at
100% Opacity to paint some lines for the ground structure.
see the terms of usage
on its right side, which
can be set up for each
image individually by
the image owner.

Find great
anatomy
books online 18 Little strokes As you can see on the original painting, there are
many little strokes. Because painting every stroke by hand would take
forever, it is a wise decision to go for the Real Blender Flat from the RealBristle 19 More strokes Here you can see how I continued applying the
strokes to the painting. If you feel that the strokes stick out too much
If you are looking for Brushes, and set it to around 60px in size with 100% Opacity. you can carefully reduce them with a Soft Edged eraser.
great anatomy books
you might often figure
that there aren’t
many good ones on
the market. But who
needs to buy books
when you can find
some of the best at
www.fineart.sk.
The website offers
a free collection of
all Andrew Loomis
anatomy book, since
the original books are
too old to be found on

21 More
book markets. They for the
were scanned and
put on www.fineart.
floor
sk together with Here we are in the left
some other literature corner of the floor again,
regarding anatomy, but this time with a Real
and extremely self-
explanatory anatomy,
for artists’ photos.
20 Back to the back Go on painting the
strokes on her back now. If you figure
that they are standing out too much you can
Tapered Round set to
5px in size and 100%
Opacity, to give the lines
gently push them back with a Soft Eraser. more fuzziness.

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046-051_OPM_15-Laturec.indd 50 5/3/08 16:11:45

 Learn online

Tutorial
from other
painters
The best forum thread
I have ever seen to
learn and see great
examples of speed

Paint like Toulouse Lautrec

paintings is possibly
Sijun’s speed painting
thread. The almost
a 1000 page-long
thread is located at
www.forums.sijun.
com and offers a
chance to see great
talents like Craig
Mullins at work every
once in a while! But
the other work that
is posted there every

22 The floor again The same procedure as on step 21 should be

continued with all floor areas now to achieve the same loose look, as
23 Strokes for the table structure To be honest I’m not sure
what this structure is – it could be some sort of yellow table or a big
hourglass. But whatever it is, it surely looks much better now some smaller
day is worth a look,
and will help you
to learn a lot about
seen on the original reference. strokes have been applied! painting – especially
when it comes to
colour palettes
and composition.

25 Frefinement
inal
Now it’s time for some
final detail! For that you
can pick the RealBlender
Flat. Set it to 50px size
and 100% Opacity.

24 Hairstyling Keep the RealTapered

Round and get yourself an orange tone
from the reference painting to apply more strokes
Add tiny brush strokes
wherever you see fit,
and where you have the
for the hair. When you’re done you can repeat the feeling that something
same procedure with a dark red. could be missing.

26 Some last more detail Here you can see how I applied some
final tiny strokes to her back and the foliage. I switched between
white and blue to do this. It really isn’t necessary to try to have every brush
stroke at exactly the same position as on the reference painting, since nobody
will notice this anyway. As soon as the overall feeling of the painting is
27 Nitpicking I wanted to have some
more tiny strokes on her overall body,
and so worked over the leg once again until I was
28 And here we are The leg was the
last thing that bothered me, along with
some other little strokes applied here and there.
captured, it’s perfect! satisfied with the result. The master copy is successfully finished now!

51

046-051_OPM_15-Laturec.indd 51 5/3/08 17:14:28

 Art study How to paint meadows and fields

How to paint…
Meadows an d fields
Bring the outside in, with Cat Bounds’ guide to painting rolling hilly vistas and soft
meadows filled with summer flowers

ADD SOME VERTICALS

To counterbalance the
horizontal shapes, I made sure
I worked in some verticals in
the form of tree trunks, blades
of grass, flower stems and
paint strokes

BANDS OF COLOUR
It seems meadows are usually
about horizontal bands of
colour, and I exaggerated that
point when I splashed on the AND A FOCAL POINT
foreground, middle ground We’ll discuss this more later
and trees in the background on, but for my focal point I
decided to make mine really
big, and sort of in your face, in
the form of these very large,
colourful Coneflowers

A SPRINKLING OF FLOWERS
Any self-respecting meadow needs
at least a few wildflowers. Some of
these can be simply a sprinkling of
flower colours, while others need to
be more realistically described

In this Art Study, we will get to explore some exciting colour
palettes. After all, the sky isn’t always a cerulean blue, the grass
isn’t always an emerald green, and sometimes it’s just more
satisfying to play around with the colours and step outside of
your comfort zone. In addition to colour, we will be looking at
two fabulous subjects to paint. Fields often have no dominate
focal point but can still make amazing artwork. We will show
you the tricks of the trade, but will first see how meadows
give artists a host of things to consider, but an even greater
amount of creative possibilities.

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 Meadows
Colours of meadows and skies
As you paint, imagine walking across a meadow with your sketchbook,
and dipping your stylus into the colours you find there. There is an
immediacy to nature that we each try to capture. Success depends on
our original intent; I enjoy colour palettes that relate to the scene but
inspire just an instant of surprise, and then recognition.
Skies
Mea dows
052-55_OPM_15_meadows.indd 53
Growing wild
Art study
I can’t think of many things more enjoyable
than painting a mass of wildflowers, because
just about anything works. They can be seriously
photo-realistic or abstracted to within an inch of
their lives, and still, they’re all beautiful!
How to paint meadows and fields
01 Wildflower source image This source image
from Stock Xchng (http://www.sxc.hu/browse.
phtml?f=view&id=750288) is almost a painting already. The
photographer has a good eye for composition, and I didn’t see
any need to crop anything or make any serious colour changes.
02 Wildflowers in waiting I began by softly painting
the background using soft bristle brushes and the Just
Add Water blender. I pasted in a few more flowers to fill empty
places in the foreground composition, and painted them in a
splashy fashion. At this stage I’m feeling my way into the painting.
03 Growing wild Now for some colour decisions as I
bring in my own colours, like the golds that work better
than the red-oranges, and a more vibrant green for the grass. I’m
happy with the overall effect of softness and splashes of colour.
53
4/3/08 17:54:45
 Art study How to paint meadows and fields

Fields Fields of colour

What works and what doesn’t
Fields rarely have focal points, so it’s up to you as an artist, to add
these. Look at the examples below. The unsuccessful image pretty
much copies the photo and results in a lot of nothing. The successful
image has a tighter crop and flowers have been added for interest.
In Issue 11 we discussed painting seasonal landscapes, so we’re
not going to go into seasonal colours here, but of course
that’s a large part of the colour palette selection process
– and in any of the seasons the colours can run the gamut
from earth tones to vibrant tones.

Successful

Unsuccessfu
l
x
54

052-55_OPM_15_meadows.indd 54 4/3/08 17:55:38


Directional flow
How the viewer’s gaze enters and
travels through a painting can make
or break it. Movement denotes
life, and even in a painting of static
elements, we can still create the
essence of directional flow. I wanted
this painting to be about the tall
grass in the foreground, but also
about the angles in the fields and
the sky.
Step-by-step
01 Step into my painting This deep,
dark area on the lower right is possibly
the most obvious place to enter this painting.
And then of course we’ll be led upward,
towards the tree and towards the light.
03 Following the angles From the
left side of the painting where the
tree resides, our gaze continues to rise, this
time swinging back toward the right and still
following the angles of the fields.
052-55_OPM_15_meadows.indd 55
Art study
How to paint meadows and fields
Adding livestock
02 Flowing grasses As soon as
we enter the painting, our gaze
is drawn upward by the grass, towards the
upper fields, and finally to the sky. I used
several pen brushes and acrylic brush variants
to describe the grass, remembering to include
highlights and shadow areas.
One more way to add life to our field
painting is to add some livestock. Sheep
are for me the easiest to paint because
they’re basically puffs of off-white wool
with black faces, standing on small black
legs. Paint animals on an empty layer above
your field painting so as not to disturb the
background, and so you can play with its size
and positioning. Begin with some rough brush
04 Into the clouds Finally, we are
swept back up towards the left of the strokes and then refine the shape.
painting, as we follow the clouds, and then back
the way we came. This is a slightly exaggerated
example, but it illustrates how every painting
So, that’s our Field and Meadow art study.
We hope it’s inspired you to try your own!
benefits from a visual path to lead us into it and
through it.
55
4/3/08 17:56:49
 Tutorial Watercolour workshop

Watercolour
workshop
Scared of using the Watercolor
brushes? Let a fellow reader show
you how to get started…
Tutorial info
Artist
Cynthia Berridge
Time needed
50 minutes
Skill level
Beginner

atercolours are a much loved
art style, and with good reason.
The delicate effects of the
medium lend itself beautifully
to landscapes, portraits, still life, and pretty
’S
READERRIAL
much anything! And just as its real-life
counterpart, painting with watercolour using
to get used to, but they are worth persevering
with. In fact, this image was originally created
in an attempt to get used to how they worked.
So there aren’t any dif�icult methods here – it’s
some tips for the easy way to start creating
digital watercolour paintings. The methods are
so simple that you can even use the brushes

TUTO
the Quick Clone in Painter gives a rich colour
and a beautiful effect. Now when I say using the
Quick Clone, I am still using the digital brush as
I would a real one, so it’s important to keep the
lines and contours of the source photograph.
The Watercolor brushes do take a bit of time
with a mouse. The biggest thing to remember is
to use only one brush stroke for large areas and
keep the Opacity really low. The original photo
isn’t on the disc, but the methods can be applied
to any image you are working on. The settings
may alter but the principles remain!

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 Prep the photo
Make the cloning easier

Tutorial
Watercolour workshop
01 The image Our
source photo was
an old image purchased
from eBay. It’s a great place
to pick up vintage scenes
that lend themselves to
Quick Cloning. We weren’t
able to include this on the
CD, but the techniques
02 Effect, tonal control then equalize Watercolours are a
transparent medium and detail is built up using a series of washes.
The paint dries much lighter, so a good starting point when you Quick Clone is
work with any photo. to lighten the photo. To achieve this, go to Effect>Tonal Control>Equalize.

Large areas
of colours
To paint large areas
of colour make your
image magnification
small. This will help
to make one stroke
right across the
image. Traditional
watercolours would
bleed on a page, so
you want backgrounds
to be as smooth as is
humanly possible.

03 Adjusting the photograph Each photograph you are using

will be different, so you will have to adjust accordingly. We need to
lighten and adjust the Brightness, so pull the White point left. I have mine set 04 Super soften Watercolour images are also typically soft in their
finish. To help emulate this style in a Quick Clone, go to Effects>
on White point 10.0%, the Black point 98.4% and the Brightness 42.6%. Focus>Super Soften and set to 3 pixels. Press OK to select.

Study and
absorb
One of the best ways
of learning about
the Watercolor
brushes is to study
how traditional
watercolours work.
The ideal method of

06 Watercolour brushes Since the point of this exercise is to learn

how the Watercolor brushes work, we are going to bypass the
doing this would be to
use traditional paints,

05 Quick clone Now that you’ve prepped your photo for cloning,
it’s time to go to File>Quick Clone. Your photo will appear in a new
window with some tracing paper over it.
Watercolor cloners and go straight for the full fat Watercolor brushes. Let’s
start with the Fine Bristle. Set your brush size to 52.2%, Opacity to 6% and
Feature to 2.00. Obviously you can change to fit to your image and tastes.
but just reading some
watercolour technique
art books will help.

59

058-061_OPM_15-windmill.indd 59 5/3/08 13:57:19

 Tutorial Watercolour workshop

Painting your image

Put the brushes to work

Build up
colour
As we’ve said before,
the best way of
working with the
Watercolor brushes
is to keep the Opacity
very low. How low
depends on the
variant you are
using, as some create
stronger effects than
others. If you want to
build up dark areas,
we’d suggest that
you paint over the
07 Now ready to paint The easiest way to go wrong when using
the Watercolor brushes is to overwork areas. Real brushes create
smooth washes of colour – if you keep going over the same area, you will end
same section to get
the colour you want,
rather than adjust the
up with lots of overlapping lines. The trick is to only paint your strokes once,
and try to do it lightly. Make sure the Clone Color icon is pressed. The sky is
always the most difficult area to paint, so try to do it in one stroke. You can
08 Clone Even though we are using Quick Clone, it is still important
for you to follow the lines and contours of the source photo, as you
would if you were painting from scratch. If you scribble the cursor over the
Opacity. Traditional always blend later. page, you will only blur the details.
watercolour artists
would work in this
way, but the benefit
of digital watercolour
is you don’t have
the drying time in
between coats!

10 Tracing
paper
working with Quick
When

Clone, you can either

have the tracing paper
turned on or off.
Personally, I like to turn
it off when working
with watercolour.
It allows you to see
the brush strokes far

09 Reduce brush size As you progress to more detailed areas, it’s

important to reduce the brush size. The Fine Bristle brush picks up
lots of colour, so take your time and use only small brush strokes.
better, and gauge if
you have applied too
much colour.

Subject
matter
The beauty of
watercolour is that
it can be adapted to
all sorts of subjects,
but it really blossoms
when used in
landscapes. Go out
and take some photos
of a natural scene.
Try the techniques
11 Painting the grass Okay, the painting is really coming along. It’s
now the turn of the grass area. Whenever you are painting sections
such as this, try and paint in the direction that the grass is growing. However, 12 Almost finished The image is nearly there. All of the colours are
laid down, so there’s a basic sense of the final image. There still needs
covered here and also introduce some strokes that go across, especially in dark areas. By doing to be some blending, but it’s pretty much there. At this stage I would save as a
show us the results! this, you can add some nice contrast to your work and make the area look Riff file – there have been so many times where I have carried on, only to spoil
more realistic. my artwork when I have made a mistake with the blending.

60

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 Blending pixels
Soften any harsh edges

Tutorial
Watercolour workshop
15 Blender
brush
have used the Soft
I

Blender stump 30, Size

61.4, Opacity 46%,
Grain 23%, Resat

13 Your saved file Open up your saved

file, go to the Layers option arrow
and choose Drop All. We need to flatten the
14 Duplicate your image Select>Select
All>Edit>Copy>Edit> Paste in Place. This
has duplicated the image, which means that if
0%, Bleed 56% and
Jitter at 0. Use this to
blend any harsh lines
watercolour layer so we can use the Blender you go wrong with the Blender brushes, you can and get that iconic,
brushes next. return to the original. watercolour feel.

The windmill in watercolour What techniques were used where

Now that we’ve run through the methods used to create our windmill, here’s a summary of what was used where. Study
the image to see the sorts of effects that can be achieved and then use the brushes on one of your own photos. ONE-STROKE
WONDER
Large areas of colour
need to be completed
in one stroke. If this is
BLEND IT IN impossible, do as few
strokes as possible
Traditional watercolours
and use a Blender to
are primarily soft-edged, so
merge the edges
incorporate the Blender Stump
to smooth out harsh lines

WHEN SHARP IS RIGHT

Having told you to blend any sharp
edges, there’s no harm in keeping the
odd sharp area to really define a shape.
Here we have kept the pointy roof quite
defined to help lead the eye upward, into
the windmill

PAINTERLY DIRECTION KEEP THINGS LIGHT

When painting areas such as It’s vital to keep a low Opacity on your
grass, it helps to move the brush Watercolor brush; otherwise your
in the direction the grass is delicate paintings will just be black
growing. Really work in the dark holes! For dark areas, just move the
areas to add contrast and texture brush over the same area until you get
to the image the shade you need

61

058-061_OPM_15-windmill.indd 61 5/3/08 13:59:02

 Primer Brush controls: Spacing

BRUSH CONTROLS A LEAFY BRUSH

We began this painting by using

Spacing
the brush without any spacing
adjustments and played around
with the size, opacity and colour.
The multiple leaves made short
work of creating an interesting
background and foreground
made entirely of autumn leaves,
in various shades of gold, brown
Not sure what the sliders do beneath the and tan

Spacing tab? Take a look with Cat Bounds…

his is the third of our segments
in which we explore those
slightly intimidating Brush
Control palette tabs. Spacing
contains fewer sliders than the previous
tabs, but the part that they play in
adjusting brush variants make them
indispensable. Corel Painter creates
dab-based dab type strokes with a series
of dabs, as you would expect. And by
adjusting the spacing between these
dabs we can control the continuity of the
brush’s strokes.
In order to illustrate how to apply
spacing, we created a new brush variant.
The source image for this is on the CD,
Media along with the walkthrough for how
pooling it’s done. In fact you can �ind all the
We can allow brush text on the disc, as some wouldn’t �it in
media to ‘pool’ here! Much of our painting is done using
– that is to build up by Painter’s awesome default brushes, but
moving a brush slowly
A SMOOTH STROKE BRUSH
across the canvas.
sometimes it’s fun to create new brushes By sliding the Spacing and Minimum
This pooling can that are our own for speci�ic strokes or Spacing sliders all the way to the left, the
create quite realistic techniques we have in mind, and since we leaf brush becomes a smooth stroke brush
strokes, particularly wanted to paint this panel of birch trees, to paint the long, slender tree trunks. We
in the airbrushes. we began with a leaf brush and had lots like the way this brush makes these strokes,
To enhance pooling of fun laying in random layers of leaves in and among the white trunks we began to
using the Spacing add some interesting colour strokes
tab, check the Enable the trees and on the ground.
the Continuous Time If you’re a tactile learner, open Painter,
Deposition box, and click on the Brush controls: Spacing tab,
pooling will occur with and explore. If you come up with a variant,
even the slightest an effect or a painting that you’d like to
brush movements.
share with us, or if you have questions
This lends greater
believability, and about what we’ve discussed, please
more options for feel free to send them to us at the usual
painterly effects. magazine address.

Spacing Minimum Spacing

Play around with the Spacing slider
Painter brushes consist of pixel-based dab types and
render-based dab types. The Spacing slider controls the
pixel-based spacing as a percentage between the brush
dabs, and makes these brushes highly customisable for
the job at hand. If a brush is behaving sluggishly, the
Spacing values are probably too low. Open a new file
and begin playing with the Spacing slider. For this one
we used the Gouache Broad Cover brush 40. Notice how
pushing the slider to the right makes a string of dabs,
while pushing it to the left makes a continuous line. And
you can have anything from a background brush to a
drawing pen by changing the size and spacing.
The other half of the story
Now this is the other half of the Spacing slider’s story
– the Minimum Spacing slider, which sets the minimum
number of pixels between the stroked dabs. For this
example we used the Round X-soft Pastel 20 brush. At
default setting this brush makes a continuous stroke,
but push the Minimum Spacing slider gradually toward
the right, and the stroke begins looking like a string of
overlapping bubbles. Another fun tweak to combine
with this effect is to go to the Color Expression tab and
change the Controller to Direction, so it lays down both
colours (foreground and background) showing in the
Color palette, depending on the direction of your stroke.

64

064-065_OPM_15_brushes.indd 64 5/3/08 13:53:25

 A TEXTURE BRUSH

PRIMER
We chose to make the leaf brush
from a Pastel brush (we love the
texture of the brushes in that library),
so the same texture remains in the
leaf brush. And by making lighter
Spacing settings

Primer
strokes with the stylus, you can How to control the gaps between dabs
control how the grain is expressed

01

Brush controls: Spacing

A PEN BRUSH
With Spacing and Minimum Spacing 02
set to their lowest settings, we
reduced the size of the brush to
make a pen stroke, raised the Cubic 03
Interpolation a bit to smooth the
curved strokes, and then randomly
painted the small branches high up 04
in the trees

05

01:Spacing are using a mouse or haven’t got

A SOFT MIXTURE BRUSH
By moving the Spacing slider back to
about 15%, the leaf brush effect is
softened and works fine for breaking up
the hard leaf patterns in the forest floor
and among the branches. You could add
Impasto Depth to this brush variant for
another interesting effect
This slider lets you set the gap
between the dabs in a brush
stroke. The higher the setting
here, the more spaced the dabs
will be.
02:Min Spacing
As its name suggests, this
lets you control the minimum
gap between brush strokes. A
low value will give a smooth,
continuous stroke, while a higher
setting can be used for dotted or
dashed lines.
03:Damping
Sometimes a rendered dab
type will result in jagged brush
strokes. To counteract this, the
Damping slider will smooth the
jagged areas, getting smoother
the higher you put the slider.
But be careful you don’t ruin the
brush stroke. Try a setting of 50%
for the best compromise, but you
might want to go higher if you
smooth use of your arm.
04:Continuous Time
Deposition
A bit of a strange one, this. This
setting decides whether you
have to move a brush before
colour is applied. A lot of airbrush
artists use this setting to help
get the look of paint pooling. If
the setting is disabled, you need
to move the brush before any
medium flows.
05:Cubic Interpolation
This is another way of smoothing
jagged brush strokes. It works
by adding points to the dab path,
which gives the impression of
smoothness. This type of setting
works best on dab-based dab
types. To add more points, simply
move the slider to the right. If
you find that you’ve gone too
far, simply reduce the number of
points by sliding to the left.

Two powerful controls Cubic Interpolation

Damping and Continuous Time Deposit
The Damping slider controls the interpolation of
our brush strokes, and the higher the setting, the
smoother the brush strokes. But you can always
temporarily increase the percentage in order
to draw a difficult curve. It is well worth some
experimentation if you’re drawing lines that won’t
render the clean line you’re wanting. We’ve used the
Pen’s Smooth Round 3 brush to draw the tendrils in
the floral arrangement. Continuous Time Deposition
determines whether we must move a brush before the
medium is applied, or whether medium flows with the
first touch of a brush to the canvas.
Smooth those jagged strokes
And the last of our Brush controls: Spacing tab
sliders, is Cubic Interpolation – which smooths
jagged brush strokes by inserting additional points
into the dab path. You may notice the poker chip
effect more when you’re drawing fast, circular strokes
with certain drawing brushes, and this would be a
good time to add Cubic Interpolation. Begin with a
minimum value of 1 and then increase this gradually.
The example that we used for applying this slider
is an abstract sketch done with the Pen tool’s Smooth
Round 3 brush, to which we also added the leaf
effect brush.

65

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 Drawing 101 Understand shadows and highlights
Understand……
Shadows, highlights
and midtones
Shadows and highlights are an artist’s greatest allies. Forget rulers and
erasers, understanding shadows helps you troubleshoot drawing problems…
ere is your �irst challenge, which
is designed to help you look for
and distinguish those helpful,
but annoyingly elusive, tonal
variations. Look steadily at whatever
happens to be in front of you. Any sort of
lighting (as long as it isn’t pitch black) will
do. Now if you can, allow your eyes to go
out of focus, and you will notice the tones
much more readily as the real objects
lose their sharpness. If you can’t make
your eyes unfocused, half close them so
you can almost see your eyelashes. This
is easier for some people, but can be a
bit uncomfortable for a long time. Notice
66
066-071_OPM_15_drawing.indd 66
how that pile of books on the table casts
graduated tones on the wall behind it,
for example? Shadows that you may not
have fully been aware of before can really
help with proportions and shapes, and
outline problems that you may have with
drawing or painting.
We are going to investigate the hues
of different tones too in this tutorial. As
the French Impressionist painter Monet
knew only too well – there is rarely an
occasion that �inds a truly black shadow.
His paintings demonstrate shadows
and tones in blues and pinks rather
than simple greys, as seen in his snowy
landscape La Pie (The Magpie). This
observation was made in conjunction
with the connections made at the
time regarding colour theory and the
implications this knowledge of primary,
secondary and complementary colours
had on tints and shades. For this exercise
it helps to know that there is more to
shadows than various depths of grey!
Our �irst task involves breaking a photo
down into its midtones, shadows and
highlights. You will see how each layer
combines to create the �inal colours. Then
we will move on to creating a sepia tonal
study on pages 70-71.
5/3/08 13:46:05
 Paint the scene

Drawing 101
This photo is an excellent example of a wide tonal range. It exhibits dark
shadows, bright highlights and has many midtones in-between. We’re going to
eventually deal with the image as a whole, but for now, we’ve concentrated on
speci�ic parts of it and shown how it can be broken down into the highlights,
midtones and shadows. Have a look at our interpretation along with the
original photo and you will begin to see how it works.
This photo was taken from MorgueFile (www.morgue�ile.com) and is
copyright of Andrea Fantoni and MorgueFile. The image ID is 185489.
ORIGINAL PHOTO

Understand shadows, highlights and midtones

SHADOWY PEAKS
The peaks are shadowed by billowing cloud, creating clear and defined shapes. The
lighter shadows have a purple tint, and the darkest are very deep and may include black.
Begin with the lightest first; the creamy, sunlit stone. Then add a layer of middle-grey,
and intensify specific areas by adding one or two deeper greys on top. Follow this format
of light to dark with the whole picture.
PURPLE PEAKS
This swatch illustrates the colours needed to represent the aerial perspective at work
on the distant peaks. It subtly changes the colour of the shadows on these mountains.
Compare them with the sharpness of the browner foreground peaks for the right touch
of purple and paleness. The distance diminishes their contrast and sharpness.

DISTANT SHORES
The shoreline of the lake is just visible at the top – note the reflection of the mountain
and the hills adding a dark green tone on top of the blue-grey. Your greatest challenge
is to get a sense of distance. Use your marks, shadows and colours with careful
consideration. The light blue should be covered with a layer of graduated ripples that
merge at the shoreline.

FOREGROUND RIPPLES
A light base once again brings out the reflected stonework. Now carefully pencil in the
general shapes of the dark tones or the highlights (whichever you can distinguish with the
greatest ease). Then gradually build up the blue tones with an accurately scaled range of
marks; smaller at the back and bigger at the front.

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 Drawing 101 Understand shadows, highlights and midtones

STONY TREE LINE
This is the part of the mountain where the gradient and temperature is too
severe for trees to grow. Grass foothills recede to reveal the mountain. The
sun hits it, bleaching the stone, and grass clings on to it in patches. Tones
are limited and the contrast reduced, so pay great attention to the depth of
shadows to create an authentic, yet subtle difference.
Split an image
Simplify the daunting task of evaluating and depicting tones by having a
systematic approach. It’s best to work from light to dark, so begin by accessing the
image and picking out the highlights. Lay these down �irst. Then establish your
midtone values. If you’re using watercolour as we are here, you can usually apply
another layer of wash. Finally it’s time to bring in the shadows. These really liven
up a painting and make it something special.

“…pay great attention to the

depth of shadows to create an
authentic, yet subtle difference” TRACE THE IMAGE
Download the photo we have used for this tutorial and use a grid system (explained on page 42) to
sketch it

GRASSY FOOTHILLS
This area presents a challenge to the subtlety and effectiveness of
overlaying greens. Consider carefully how you are going to angle your
brush, and what size it should be to sweep over the rolling foothills.
Accentuate the subtle curves or build up a shadowy, energetic bushiness.
This expressiveness contrasts nicely with the structure and control
needed to negotiate the house.

PALE WASHES
Imagine you are wearing x-ray glasses, or looking at the photo through a microscope, and choose
the lightest colour for each section. Ignore heavy shadows and detail, and select and mix the colour
with care. In this example, the mountains have a creamy, pinkish tone, which is picked up less
obviously elsewhere: the shoreline, the brick work and in the water, which seems logical since the
mountains and the house are reflected in it. Use a Large brush to achieve the least and smoothest
brushstrokes. Mix a yellowy-green and a very watery blue for the sky, grassland and the water.

68

066-071_OPM_15_drawing.indd 68 5/3/08 13:47:42

 Use Painter to select tones

Drawing 101
Let the software do the work…
Some scenes lend themselves beautifully to working with
tones, leaving the viewer in no doubt as to where the
shadows, highlights and midtones lie. But for every easy
scene, there are thousands of trickier outlooks that need a
lot of concentration and a bit of invention. All of which is �ine
if you are well practised in mentally dividing a scene into
tonal values, but what if you’ve just started out? A trip to the

Understand shadows, highlights and midtones

Posterize command in Painter is a good start. This feature
will strip away colour information, simplifying the scene so
you can get a better idea of where the midtones, shadows and
highlights lie, before attempting your painting. It’s very easy
to use the command. Simply open your photo>Edit>Tonal
Controls>Posterize and enter a number of levels. The less
levels you have, the more simpli�ied the colours.

MIDTONES 01 Information overload

This is a very complex scene.
There are lots of greens, and the
Half-close, or adjust the focus of your eyes to simplify the complex, detailed shadows that fall
on the mountain. Ensure that your drawing is visible beneath your watery highlights, use an H
sunlight has distributed the highlights
pencil to prevent smudging and allow removal of gridlines used to plot it out. A brief line drawing all over the image. You could spend
should guide your Flat-Tipped Medium sized brush to represent the shadows on the mountains in ages gazing at the image to try and
a greyish, blueish purple. Then enhance the blueness and flatness of the sky with a middle shade gauge where the important areas are,
of blue. Pay attention to the general shadows on the water, use a big brush if necessary, and but there is a far easier way. And that
consider the direction your brush is going: would down or sideways be best? way is the Posterizer!

02 Stripping it back Here

we’ve opened the Posterizer
command and entered ‘2’ in the Levels
field. Notice how the shadows have
become a lot more pronounced, and
the highlights leap off the screen. The
rest is the midtones.

SHADOW
03 More detail You don’t
have to go to extremes
– here we have entered ‘5’ as the
As the shadows get darker they become more detailed and shapely, so choose a smaller brush to number of levels. A lot of detail has
sharpen the focus and contrast. Intensify the amount of colour and reduce the water you mix to been retained, but the various levels
add greater depth. This should create the desired illusion of depth or realistic three-dimensions. have been given a helping hand. A
This stage really will test you. Keep looking at the photo, tweak and adjust your marks and mixing setting like 5 is good if you still want to
where necessary. Remember that the foreground is always darker and sharper than the fuzzy play about with the midtones.
lightness of the background. Be prepared to water down dark shadows, and layer-up to darken
weak ones. The shape and direction of your marks is pivotal here too achieve a polished finish.

69

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 Drawing 101 Understand shadows and highlights

Tonal study
Tonal studies allow an artist to get to grips with a scene and
understand how the colours are distributed. Although you can
use different colours in a tonal study, limiting yourself to just
one will allow you to concentrate on the scene in front of you.
The greatest test is to allow tones to build the image for you.
Pencil should be a guide only, do not rely on outlines to create
three dimensions, use tones. Look at the bright white columns,
the outlines on them are invisible and the edges are created
by the shadows that lie behind and beside them. Try this for
yourself by going to www.morgue�ile.com and downloading
image reference 137840.
ORIGINA L PH OTO

01 02

LIGHTEST OF WASHES
There are three things to do here.
Mix up a generous, very watery
amount of watercolour, just a couple
of brush-fulls of dark brown to tint
the water. Brush this over your
DETAILED LINE DRAWING OR TRACING drawing everywhere except the
areas of white – namely the left sides
Use an H pencil to draw the shapes accurately, in line. Do not shade or use a of the foreground columns. Use a
ruler to measure out the exact relationships between features. Crucially, draw large brush, as the coverage is more
significant details like the latticework, the weatherboards and the wooden important at this point than control.
rails at the front. Check your angles to achieve an accurate perspective. Now
you have created a solid, reliable foundation to build tones on.

03 04

A SECOND LAYER
Once this wash has dried, rub out
any pencil lines around the white
areas. Try to keep the sharpness
with watercolour shading only. Use
a large brush to give a second layer
of the lightest wash on any area
of general big shadow. You should
MIX UP A DARKER WASH TO WORK ON SHADOWS
Now you have a base coat of clear, subtle tones you can start to build up
be aiming to reveal the diagonal interest focus and detail. Use a smaller, flat-ended brush that can create a
shadow across the back wall, door, thick and a thin mark, a little like calligraphy. Mix a darker wash and test it
window and the latticework. out on the top of the veranda, just to check that it isn’t too overwhelming at
this stage.

70

066-071_OPM_15_drawing.indd 70 5/3/08 17:16:02

 05 06

Drawing 101
A LAYER OF
MIDTONE
Take your time,
work carefully and
systematically. I am
working from top to

Understand shadows and highlights

bottom so that my hand
doesn’t smudge or hide
my last brush mark. Once
again, look carefully at the THE SHADOW OF THE LATTICEWORK
curved cornice at the top This detailed area deserves special attention. Look
of the veranda, the door, carefully at the photograph and notice how the shadows
the window and the dark fall. Use your smallest brush to paint in the shadow that
shadows that are cast on fills the diamond shapes, and the shadow on the right side
the wall. of the latticed wood.

07 08 09

ESTABLISH TONAL RANGE

Now do a third wash. You may need a fourth or fifth as
well, to define the variations realistically. Use a medium
sized flat-ended brush to layer and define shadows. This
image demonstrates the full range of tones from white
to dark. The window and the column demonstrate the
greatest tonal contrast, and this is an important limit to
establish and work within.
DARKEST SHADOWS IN THE
BACKGROUND AND FOREGROUND
Once the range is established to your satisfaction, work
over the whole image – taking care to keep detail sharp by
allowing layers to dry before you work over them. Keep
looking at your photo to check the tone and detail.
OVERALL TONAL RELATIONSHIPS
Allow your work to dry and take a break from it for an hour or
two. Some people look at their work with a mirror, and that
can pick up things that your brain has ignored previously.
At this stage the tone of the ceiling was bothering me, so I
mixed up my lightest tone once again and swept another
layer on top, using a flat large brush.

11
10

FINAL DEPTHS
This image shows the
completed painting with
coloured pencil detail, a mid-
brown and dark brown pencil
GAIN ACCURATE SHADOWS crayon, the brush marks
You can leave your image at step nine, all your tonal of three different brushes,
work is complete and you can feel satisfied that you along with a huge amount
have produced a realistic, high quality, sophisticated of patience! Test your tonal
painting. However, you may feel inclined to create observation with a range of
shadows with more formality, depth and polish than a subjects. Start simply with one
brush can achieve. I felt thus inclined and reached for object, you never know where
my colouring pencils and ruler. you’ll end up…

71

066-071_OPM_15_drawing.indd 71 5/3/08 13:49:36

 Your
On this issue’s panel…
Hannah Gal
Hannah goes in search
of Painter treasure this
issue, bringing advice
for how using patterns,
using the airbrushes and
how to get more from
the RealBristle brushes.
Jo Cole
Jo tackles problems of
the colour persuasion this
issue, including what the
difference between warm
and cool colours and how
to boost the hues
in photographs.
What you’ll find in this section
Software Don’t get bogged
down in a Corel Painter black hole –
write to us and we’ll help you
work harmoniously
Fine art When it comes
to creating art, you often find
little niggles that ruin your
masterpiece. We sort them out
Illustration Make sure
your illustrations are in top form
by following our advice
Send in your queries to…
Official Painter Magazine Q&A, Imagine
Publishing Ltd, Richmond House, 33 Richmond
Hill, Bournemouth, Dorset, BH2 6EZ
Alternatively you can email us at
opm@imagine-publishing.co.uk
SHARE
YOUR
PROBLEMS!
Send in your questions
for our experts to answer
at opm@imagine-
publishing.co.uk
72
072-075_OPM_15_artclass.indd 72
questions answered
Easy tree texture
I want to have a go at painting a
tree, but have no idea how to go
about it. Can you help?
S������ M�������
If you don’t fancy following the
technique shown below, there is an
even easier way. ‘Tree Trunk’ is one of
the patterns included in Painter’s own library.
These patterns are ready-to-use designs made
of tiles that are repeated over and over again,
and they are extremely useful.
You can fill an area with a certain pattern,
or paint freely with it. As with other Painter
tools, you have control over the pattern’s Size,
Opacity, and other qualities.
Start by choosing a painting tool from the
Brush Selector. Go to Brush Creator>Stroke
Designer>General. Here, choose Pattern Paints
with no mask. Go to Window>Library>Show
palettes and choose Tree Trunk.
It’s a good idea to experiment with this brush For greater realism, set a large brush size for The texture on this tree is
before adjusting the settings to appreciate the the main trunk, open a new layer, and apply a very realistic, so no further
real-life texture it provides. All that is left now is thinner brush for the branches. Open a third treatment is required. The
to set the Thickness and Opacity according to layer and apply another branch. Use Patterns trunk can be as thin as
you like and have as many
your needs. to add a few leaves!
branches as needed.
Foggy mind
I’m having dif�iculties in achieving
the effect of fog. Is there an easy
way to get the effect that I may not
have tried?
P���� A������
We create this effect by applying a
‘foggy’ layer on top of our photo, and
we feel this is the easiest method. The
effect layer is created with the help of Patterns.
Start by going to the Patterns palette menu
and choosing Make Fractal Pattern. In the
dialog box that opens, check the Size ratio 256,
and set Channel to Height as Luminance.
Make sure Define Pattern is checked in the
Pattern palette, and ‘Select All’. Stay in the
Patterns palette to choose Capture Pattern and
name your new pattern accordingly.
In your main image, create a new layer and
fill it with the newly created pattern. Go to
Effects>Orientation and scale it up by at least
Set its Feather to 20-30, and copy the fog
from the previously applied layer to this one.
The foggy, cloudy look is
achieved through patterns
100%. But if it doesn’t look hazy enough, use Change its Composite to Overlay to make it and selections. The
pattern is created, saved
Effects>Focus to soften. look more convincing. Repeat this process for
Copy a selection of the scaled-up fog to a the last layer, and set the horizontal rectangular
and applied to the image.
Two highly feathered
new layer. Create a new layer and a horizontal selection to cover the top-third of the main rectangular selections
rectangular selection (which will help to create image for the sky. Copy and Paste the fog here. help create the horizon
the horizon) two-thirds up the main image. We hope this solves your problem. and sky line illusion
5/3/08 13:42:14
 01 02

Q&A
Warm or hot? of perspective will be lost.
What’s the difference between a Although you can make generalisations

cool colour and a warm colour?
And why are some cool colours
referred to as warm?
E���� C������
There are various different ways of
describing colour, and one of those
ways is in temperature. As with light,
colours are measured in terms of warm and
cool. Typical warm colours are red, yellow and
orange. Examples of cool colours would be
blue, green and violet. It helps to understand
how warm or cool a colour is for a number
of reasons. First of all, a colour’s temperature
will affect how a viewer reacts. Generally
speaking, warm colours are exciting and get
the heart pounding. Cool colours are calming,
although they can be cold and impersonal.
A colour’s temperature also affects how
it behaves in a painting. Warm colours leap
forward, while cool colours recede to the
background. Think about aerial perspective
– objects in the distance have blue or cool
colouration. Try painting some distant hills in a
warm colour. It will leap forward and any sense
Art class
about cool and warm colours, there are certain
hues that exhibit both qualities. Alizarin
Crimson is a cool red because it has blue
qualities. Cerulean blue is a warm blue because
it has a yellow feel. But place Alizarin crimson
against a cool blue and it will look warm.
Open your Color Sets in Painter and choose
to view by name. Pick out a few blues and
reds to see how they alter when used with
other colours of the same temperature, and Alizarin crimson (left) is clearly cooler than the yellowy Cadmium red
against colours of the opposite temperature.
By understanding their relationship you can
control the mood of your paintings, as well as
how the objects sit within it.
Here we have Ultramarine on the left and Cerulean blue on the Here we have Alizarin crimson against Ultramarine blue. Despite being a
right. Notice how the Cerulean is much warmer cool red, next to a true cool colour, it appears toasty warm

Painting trees
How can I get the impression
of tree bark without spending
hours and hours on it?
F���� L��

You should start by drawing the

shape of a tree trunk using a thin
pencil. Once the shape is drawn,
loosely fill it in using a Large Feathered
Airbrush. This is where you should decide
the direction that the light is coming from,
and apply media accordingly.
The lighter and darker shades in this
base layer are made of varying tones and
colours. This is followed by a multitude of
strokes using a thin, fine brush. The key at
this stage is not to methodically fill areas
with a single colour, but to apply a variety
of tones and shades.
The dark area can include browns,
oranges and even purples, while the lighter
02 Finer detail Choose a thin 03 Refinement Add detail
for greater realism; very dark
shades can have white, yellow, orange and
light brown.
01 Outlines Open a new file
and select the Pencil tool.
Draw the outline of a tree trunk. Select
brush of the Pastels, Chalks
or Airbrush, and apply medium length
stokes downwards all over the trunk.
tones on dark areas, and light tones on
the lighter areas. Add shades where
branches meet the main trunk, as well
The outline is cleaned of any paint, and Airbrush and use a big bold brush at As with the previous step, choose a as dents in the surface. Leaves here
details like leaves and dents in the surface low Opacity to mark the dark and light multitude of colours and shades for were added using ready-made leaves
are added for greater realism. areas in the drawing. light and dark sides. from Nozzles under Image Hose.

73

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 Q&A Art class

Simple watercolour Getting real

I’d really like to get started with using
watercolours, but I’m �inding it dif�icult to take
my �irst steps. Any advice?
O���� G��
The quick watercolour look here is achieved by applying
a watercolour layer on top of a photo or painting.
Start by creating a layer that is treated to look like
a watercolour painting. This ‘generic’ layer is later mixed with
the original photo. You can create the watercolour layer by
scanning a textured art paper that was covered in thick strokes of
watercolour paint. Alternatively, create this layer in Painter.
I really enjoy the RealBristle
brushes, and wondered how to go
about creating my own?
D����� S�����
RealBristle is an example of Painter
at its artistic best. It takes real-life
simulation to a higher level, bringing
greater realism to the creative experience.
The Brush Creator is where you control
brushes through adjustment of ‘traditional’
settings, to the very finest detail. This includes
Brush tip, Roundness, Bristle length, Rigidity,
Fanning, Height and more.
With practice you can create a set of ‘real’
brushes to suit every nuance of your creative
needs. Start by choosing Window>Brush
Controls>Show Real Bristle. Or you can open
the Brush Creator and go to RealBristle.
Brushes with dab type Camel Hair, Flat,
Palette Knife, or Bristle Spray are now ready
to be moulded into a RealBristle brush. Try
the following for a Watercolor or Gouache
brush. These are ‘starting point’ settings, so
feel free to mould them to suit your own style.
Try Roundness of 80%, Profile length of 80%,
Bristle length of 3, Bristle Rigidity of 10% and
Fanning of 10–15%, Friction of 20–30 and
Height of 20%.

01 Watercolour
layer
a neutral tone and
Choose

select the Soft Bristle 20

brush. Use a large brush
to apply long strokes.
Cover the paper, leaving
some areas around the
edges untouched. Also
leave occasional small
gaps between strokes to
imitate a real life process.

02 Posterize
Go
to Effects>
Orientation>Rotate,
set 90 degrees to
display the newly
created strokes
horizontally. Choose
French Watercolor
Paper from the Papers
palette and go to RealBristle brushes bring greater realism
Apply Surface Texture to the creative experience. Control over
to apply. ‘traditional’ brush aspects means you can
design the perfect brush for any creative
use. This is an example of what the
RealBristle brushes can do, from issue 2

03 Blend Place this

layer at the top of
Layers palette, reduce
its Opacity slightly, and
change the Composite
method to Overlay.
Place your photo layer
underneath and select
it. Go to Effects>Tonal
Control>Posterize and
choose a level of 20.
Experiment with Opacity
and Posterize levels.

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 Boosting colours
I have quite a few photos with
disappointing colours. Is there an easy
way of boosting them? Painter has
been my main program for years and I don’t
want to have to learn other software to do it.
R�� �����
You have various tools within Painter
and most live within the Effects>Tonal
Control menu. From here you can boost
01 Equal footing To get started,
a visit to the Effects>Tonal
Control>Equalize command is in order. This
will instantly adjust the photo. If you want
to make further edits, move the Brightness
slider to the right to darken it.
03 Colour tweaks Click OK when happy. We wanted to boost the blue and pink
more, so went to Adjust Selected Colors. Use the Eyedropper to select the colour
and then move the Saturation slider to the right to increase that hue. You can also use the Hue
slider to change the colour altogether!
072-075_OPM_15_artclass.indd 75
colours, adjust the brightness and contrast, or
target specific hues for editing. Before you start
Q&A
to edit, have a think about what it is you need to
do. If it’s just a case of a colour that’s lagging, Use
the Adjust Selected Color command and increase
the Saturation. If it’s everything, apply one of the
Art class
general edits. In our example here there’s a lack of
contrast, which has made the photo tonally flat. The
colours are also a touch on the weak side, but that
can be rectified.
02 White and black You can also adjust the
darkest and lightest parts of the photo using the
white and black arrows under the histogram. Click on the
arrow and drag to adjust. Moving the sliders inwards will
increase the strength.
75
5/3/08 13:45:13
 Reviews P-Active LCD XPC-1700B Graphics Tablet Display
P-Active LCD XPC-1700B
Graphics Tablet Display
£695.99 | Interactive LCD display adds hands-on appeal to digital drawing
and painting with Corel
f you’re a regular reader of this magazine
you’ll know that we are big fans of graphics
tablets, particularly those produced by
Wacom. However, the P-Active LCD XPC-
1700B is something of a novelty, manufactured
not by the industry leaders but by the Japanese
and Taiwanese based company, Yutron. Although
there are a few companies �ighting it out at the
budget end of the graphic tablets market, it’s a
rare �ind to discover viable competition at the
premium end. The P-Active boasts an impressive
17” LCD display that doubles as both monitor and
graphics tablet. If you’ve ever wanted to draw or
paint directly on your monitor’s screen then this
handy hybrid could be for you. With 1024 levels
of pen pressure sensitivity and plenty of real
estate to ogle, the P-Active can certainly spark
creativity. A big and bulky beast, the LCD graphics
tablet weighs in at a backbreaking 11.5lbs, and
with surround is large enough to �ill most desktop
workspaces. A 12V adaptor power supply, VGA,
DVI and USB are included and, once drivers are
installed and settings tweaked, you should be up
and running in less than half an hour. A built in
Adjusting-lever allows you to con�igure optimum
tilt position from upright to almost �lat, so you can
“With 1024 levels of pen pressure sensitivity…
the P-Active can certainly spark creativity”
Pen button
The cordless pen comes
with a slider type button
that can be user defined,
or defaulted back to
factory settings. You can
adjust the double-click
time from slow to fast, or
simply leave well alone,
relying on your keyboard
for common tasks
80
080-81_OPM_15_PActive .indd 82
adjust the display for comfort. As all your desktop
icons are displayed on the P-Active, it could be
used as your main monitor for everyday tasks like
reading email and sur�ing the net.
Despite a solid build, the provided digital pen
is a disappointment. While it shouldn’t affect
your handy work, the cheap feel (resembling
those free pens stuffed in charity envelopes)
won’t win any design awards and is hardly
streamline. Unlike Wacom pens, this relies on an
AAA battery to keep your digital ink and paint
�lowing, so the barrel is a little bulky. According Hot edges
The P-Active allows you to define all
to the manufacturer you will enjoy at least 5,000 corners of your monitor. You’ll need
hours of continuous use before needing to replace to spend some time discovering
the rather �iddly spring-loaded battery. The hidden features like this, as the
accompanying manual is minimal
free bundled software, PenSuite for writing and
annotating documents and Pixia for drawing and
painting, are unlikely to send pulses racing and
are PC only. Mac users will need to download
drivers direct from the manufacturer; Jaguar,
Panther and Tiger operating systems are all
compatible, although the latest big cat, Leopard,
isn’t. This, promise distributor Xernon, will be
recti�ied later this year, and the fact that the
P-Active is now available to the majority of Mac
users is a real bonus.
Most importantly, the graphics tablet display
works with the vast majority of creative
applications for both PC and Mac. Of those Pressure control
You can test and adjust the pen’s
applications we tested we were impressed, the pressure sensitivity by delving into
P-Active offering a level of control, precision and the tablet’s software settings
Adjustable legs
Connections
Round the back
The P-Active is a solid unit,
with good build quality
5/3/08 12:57:35
 specs
P-Active LCD XPC-1700B
Graphics Tablet Display
Price Pressure Levels
£695.99 (plus 1024 levels (pen)
£25.99 UK delivery) Brightness
Website - 260cd/m2
www.p-active.eu/uk Contrast Ratio
System requirements 450:1
PC – Windows 8/ Viewing Angle
ME/2000/XP/Vista -70° ~ 70° (H), -70° ~
Mac – OSX10.2.6 60° (V) (Typical)
to 10.4.X (no 10.5 Power consumption
Leopard support yet) Standby Mode 5mA;
Size Operation Mode
17”(active area 30mA
337.92x270.34mm) Weight
Resolution 5.2kg/ 11.5lbs
1280 (H) x 1024 (V)
pixels

Build design
Get carried away with brush strokes without fear of
running out of space with the large, solid build

“…the second best selling display in the Far East, we for one
welcome some competition to Wacom’s worldwide dominance”
subtlety, missing with a mouse or trackpad.
Painting in Corel Painter becomes very much a
hands-on experience. A sturdy, solid build means
you can safely get carried away with sweeping
brush strokes, without fear of running out of
space or ripping your canvas. The slightly thick
translucent service does take a little time getting
used to, but shouldn’t distract from the real joy of
drawing and painting digitally. You will also need
to adjust the settings, including pen pressure
sensitivity, to suit your individual needs, and
possibly rearrange some application tools and
menus on the tablet’s screen. But once set you
will rarely need to change them again. For those
digital doubters, the fact that you can look
directly at the screen while drawing on it should Choosing your settings
For setting options such as the button controls, use the menus
help anyone who has ever struggled trying to
draw on a traditional tablet while also looking up
at a monitor.
What we like What we don’t like

we say
The P-Active Graphics Tablet is marketed
as a serious and affordable alternative to the Impressive 17”display Heavy and bulky
premium Wacom Cintiq range of interactive Precision drawing Poor pen build
graphics tablet displays. Lacking the design �lair
and painting Minimal user’s
and added functionality, including ExpressKeys Solid build manual
and Touch Strips of the Wacom range, the
P-Active’s best selling point is its price. £695.99
is still a substantial investment, but in the While still Features
verdict

admittedly small world of interactive displays, a serious 6.0

it’s a bargain. Reportedly the second best selling investment, this
display in the Far East, we for one welcome some Ease of use
competition to Wacom’s worldwide dominance,
is a competitively 7.0
priced graphics
especially in the UK where the P-Active is now tablet for those Quality of results
more widely available. Size is also important, thinking big 8.0
and the P-Active’s 17” LCD display gives ample Value for money
room to freely express those creative urges 7.0
without breaking the bank. Some grumbles

7.0
aside, primarily the poor design of the pen, the
Mac compatible
The manufacturer, Yutron, has recently introduced beta Mac drivers
P-Active is certainly worth your consideration, Overall
available to download from its website, opening the P-Active to
most Apple Mac users. Compatible with OSX 10.2 to 10.4, Leopard
drivers should follow later this year
particularly if you’re a serious enthusiast or
semi-pro user looking for a tablet big enough to
match your artistic ambitions.
score

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080-81_OPM_15_PActive .indd 83 5/3/08 12:58:01

 Reviews Portrait Magic!

Portrait Magic!
$75.00 | Look and learn with Susi Lawson’s instructional DVD
usi Lawson is a respected digital and striking artwork. Lawson has a unique way

specs
artist, both in the creative industry of applying colour and giving an almost hyper- Portrait Magic!
and on our website. She is the proud real effect to images, all of which is explained
owner of various awards, including in the tutorials. Company Operating Systems
Susi Lawson PC and Mac
one from the NAPP, and her distinctive style The quality of the discs is pretty good, with Price Minimum requirements
is an inspiration to many. In this DVD, she sets clear vision and sound. Lawson’s friendly $75.00 (Windows) QuickTime Player
about explaining some of her techniques for attitude comes across in the commentary, with $80.00 (Mac) (Mac users)
creating dazzling portraits through a series of her clearly explaining what’s going on and why Website
video tutorials. she uses the tools she does. On occasion the http://susilawson
You get two DVDs in this package, both screen image seemed a little pixelated, but this photography.biz
of which include a good variety of images didn’t occur all the time.
and techniques. Lawson uses Photoshop The tutorials weigh in at over three hours
and Corel Painter in her work, meaning she and 40 minutes, and in that time you’ll learn
covers photo editing and digital painting. The skills such as altering the background of a
Photoshop tutorials mainly deal with colour portrait, adjusting colour for instant perfection,
correction, although she does delve into using compositing separate photos for one piece
the program’s brushes for paint effects. The of artwork and creating charcoal sketches.
Painter tutorials are sublime, revealing how What’s really inspiring is that the techniques
the brushes can be used to turn photos into soft used aren’t that dif�icult. Lawson has a special
ability to take everyday tools and use them in Creative brush Paint touches

“You get two DVDs in this interesting ways.

All the original photos are included on a
Learn how some of the
more unusual brushes
Lawson reveals how she
adds the special touches

package, both of which include a

good variety of techniques.”
in Painter can be used in in her images that make
separate CD, so you get to practise along with creative ways them stand out
the video, and there are also extra backgrounds
and special Photoshop actions. The tutorials
will be most bene�icial to someone who is
familiar with Painter, but if you’re
a beginner you can still give them
a go. The relaxed way Lawson
works will inspire and excite you
about the creative possibilities
offered by Painter. Go your own way Follow along
Take courage from how easy All of the tutorial source
Lawson makes painting from files are provided on the
scratch seem disc for you to follow

What we like What we don’t like

we say

Inspiring tutorials Occasional

Friendly tone pixelation
Source images Not all Painter
included tutorials!

An attractive Features
verdict

collection of 8.0
tutorials that Ease of use
will inspire and 10.0
instruct keen
Painter artists Quality of results
7.0
Value for money
8.0

Overall
score 8.5
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 Corel Painter
Magazine eMag
£19.99 | Want to know more about our interactive DVD?
Read on to get the whole story…
ithout doubt, the question we get
asked most often is whether it’s
possible to get hold of sold out
back issues. Unfortunately it’s
prohibitively expensive to reprint magazines,
but we have come up with a solution that’s
much more useful!
The Of�icial Corel Painter Magazine eMag is
an interactive DVD that holds the �irst 12 issues
in their entirety – which equates to over 900
pages! All the ad pages have been removed, so
you are left with pure Painter goodness.
The content takes the PDF format, so you will
need Acrobat Reader to look at the �iles. You
have three ways of accessing the content on the
disc. The �irst is to browse issue by issue. This
allows you to work through optimised PDF
�iles. Because the �iles have been optimised,
you haven’t got to wait for �iles to render,
which is especially good for anyone with
an older computer. A panel appears on the
083_OPM15_emag reviews.indd 83
The Official Corel Painter
specs
Magazine eMag
Company Minimum requirements
Imagine Publishing
Mac: Mac OS X 10.3.9
Price 400MHz Power PC G3
£19.99 128 MB RAM
Website
www.imagineshop. PC: 800MHz
co.uk
Operating Systems
128MB RAM
PC and Mac
left-side of the interface, which allows you to
browse through page by page, or go straight to
something speci�ic.
The other option is to access the high
resolution �iles. These obviously take a bit
longer to load up, but are perfect for printing
out and referring to in your own time. Why not
print out all of the brush primers, or maybe all
of the Drawing 101s?
Possibly the most useful way to browse the
content, though, is to use the Advanced Search
function. This allows you to input a search term
to bring up a list of instances where that term
appears. Maybe you have just bought Painter
The welcome screen
This screen will greet you when you load up the eMag, and you can
X and you want to get some information on the access the content using the tabs at the top
RealBristle brushes. Enter it in the search �ield
to see a results panel appear with your search
term highlighted. Click on a result and you’ll be
taken to the page it appears on.
In addition to the actual magazine content,
you also have an exclusive template of one of
our covers. Try adding some of your
artwork and send it to us. Who knows,
maybe your image will make you a
cover star!
The eMag can be purchased for
£19.99 and you can order your copy by
visiting www.imagineshop.co.uk.
www.imagineshop.co.uk It’s
a great way of getting hold of content
you may have missed, or just to have a
digital backup of all the content.
Advanced searching
For the ultimate searching tool, check out the Advanced Search
feature. This lets you go direct to the content you want
Tutorial files
All of the tutorial files are included on the eMag, so you can follow
the workshops as you would if you were reading the magazine!
83
5/3/08 15:46:27
 Reviews Books

Complete Anatomy
And Figure Drawing
£18.99 | Get the figure to die for with this great drawing guide
rawing the human form is a
hard task. You’d assume that
our constant contact with
other humans would mean
that drawing our own species would be a
doddle. But it seems when it gets down to
it, all those little details suddenly become
as complex as constructing the Eiffel
Tower out of matchsticks.
That’s where this fabulous book comes
in. It deconstructs the human form into
manageable sections, which promises not
to set your pencil a quiver.
Like any good book should, this one
starts at the very beginning – with the
bare bones of the skeleton. It’s at this
stage that you really get to grips with
human proportion, as each bone is drawn
perfectly to scale.
The beautiful pencil sketches progress
through every major body part until it’s
time to add some muscle. It’s at this point
in the book that it really becomes clear
how much muscle tone contributes to the
look of a body. If you want to paint shapely
legs and toned torsos, then this lesson in
muscle de�inition is certainly going to help
Light and shade your artwork considerably.
Discover how to deal with tricky lighting situations in The back section of the book adds �lesh
this chapter. Here the challenge is the slatted blinds to bones and deals with human poses.
The stunning artwork �lits from pencil Author
sketches to deep charcoal drawings, John Raynes
Price
and �inishes up with some outstanding £18.99
painted artwork. It’s this strong, Publisher
visual appeal married with the simple Batsford
explanations that really make this book ISBN
an unmissable hit. 978-0-7134-9036-7
In many instances, the �igure drawing
is explained by breaking the subject
down into simple series of shapes. Such
deconstruction is immensely helpful, and
is explained both visually in annotations
and verbally within the text.
From shapes and structure, light and
shade, to character and clothing – you’re
sure to learn something new. Whether
you want to apply these traditional
methods to the screen in Painter, or are
looking to go back to basics with the
humble pencil, this book is a must.

Funny bones Show us your muscles

The opening section deals with
the bare bones of anatomy – the
skeleton. The detailed chapter
offers both male and female models
to examine
Muscle tone plays a really important
part in the make-up of the human
body, so this section reveals where
all the necessary lumps and bumps
should be

Stick your neck out Add flesh to bone

Understanding how muscles The book follows on with a weighty
interact under the skin really helps section about life drawing. Every
when painting all those facial details pose and stance is explained and
and expressions illustrated in beautiful detail

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 The Instant Artist
£12.99 | No time to faff around? Then grab this book
and learn to paint – fast
Author f you’re after straightforward Get kitted out
Ian Sidaway artistic advice, then this is the book The first section runs
Price for you. Loaded with 40 painting and through all the equipment
£12.99 drawing projects, The Instant Artist
essentials you need to paint
Publisher in each medium. Lucky
Collins & Brown knows what it’s got to do, and gets on for you, they’re all at your
ISBN with it right from the start. fingertips in Painter. And
It begins with an equipment section, they’re free!
978-1843-400-639
detailing all the kit must-haves for each
artistic medium. Once you’re kitted out
with the tools, the book promptly guides
you to the basic techniques of painting
and drawing disciplines.
The pacing is fantastic, carrying you
through quickly enough for you not to
lose interest, but steadily enough for you
to absorb the information.
Covering almost every discipline, this
book is aimed at those who have a broad
artistic interest and are willing to try One step at a time
True colours
their hand at every medium going. At We love the steady pace of this book, which kicks off with The step-by-step format of the chapters really help you
£12.99 it’s incredibly reasonable, and we the basics of colour. It’s full of achievable projects, which tackle the subjects with ease. The clear and magnified
promise you’ll get your money’s worth. you could easily transfer to the digital medium artwork acts as a perfect visual aid

Pattern Motifs: A Sourcebook

£16.99 | Give your blank surfaces some love and attention with over 1,000 pattern designs
Edited by ource books are not generally
Graham Leslie the most exciting things you’re
McCallum ever likely to experience, but
Price
£16.99 that’s not to say they’re not
Publisher incredibly useful. Crammed with over Prehistoric
Batsford 1,000 patterns, this collection is ideal for rocks
ISBN those who are obsessed with creating Start your journey
from the beginning of
978-0713-490-237 wallpapers, textures and intricate time with this range
detailing within their images. of primitive Stone Age
Following a brief introduction, you’re pattern examples
immediately launched into a catalogue of
pattern motifs, set out in historical order.
It starts with patterns of the Stone Age,
and travels through artistic history to the
Art Deco period.
Every pattern featured within these
pages is copyright free, which means
they can be scanned into your Painter
document for immediate use. Granted,
not all of the patterns will be to your
taste, but with such a vast selection this
shouldn’t be a problem.
This book will not bene�it everyone, but It’s all Greek to me Art Deco revival
The Grecians knew how to assemble a good pattern, and Art Deco has seen a return to popularity of late. The in
if you have a penchant for patterns then this meaty chapter of Greek design proves it. A great vogue era has a large chapter dedicated to its designs,
you could spend £16.99 on worse things. section for decorative frames and borders many of which make great wallpapers

85

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 Output Stretch a canvas print
Stretch a canvas print
Learn the tricks of stretching a gallery-wrapped canvas from a master – Jason Pryor
Tutorial info ome of you will remember those
days back in art school, when
Artist you had to stretch your own
Cheryl canvas; there was no getting out
Blanchard
of it. Raw canvas bought and stretched,
Time needed gesso applied, or rabbit-skin glue for
20 minutes some, before you could even think about
painting. It was part of the process. Later
Skill level on, many of us decided there was no glory
Intermediate in the stretching, and switched to pre-
stretched canvases – a great product in
our opinion. But times have changed, and
once again the canvas must be stretched.
However, now we do this after the
painting is complete.
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086-088_OPM_15.indd 86
If you’ve never stretched a canvas
before, it’s no surprise that you might be
intimidated by the idea. Fear not. With
the help of Jason Pryor, Master Printer
and owner of Millhouse Graphics (www.
millhousegraphics.com), we hope to
explain the process clearly and simply.
Last issue you learned how to set up
your �iles in templates for the gallery-
wrapped canvas. This issue you can put
all that preparation to work. Gallery-
wrapped canvases are worthwhile, even
if you might frame them later on. It’s also
a good way to present a piece of artwork
to a client.
Before we begin, you’ll need to do one
more thing to your �inished �ile before
printing – add one inch of white canvas to
each side of the gallery-wrap image with
a thin black line on the outer edge of the
white border. This way, your printed �ile
will have an extra inch of blank canvas all
around it, providing space for staples, and
canvas to grab onto with the pliers.
When trimming the excess canvas prior
to stretching, cut to the inside of the black
line so that the line doesn’t end up on
the back of your canvas. You’ll want the
back of your painting to look smart and
professional too!
4/3/08 18:00:05
 Set up canvas templates
Eliminate the stress and hard work later by making a simple template now

Supplies
First of all, you’ll
need stretcher bars,
sometimes called
stretcher strips; ¾
inch standard bars
are what we’re using
with the gallery-
wrapped templates.
You’ll only need a
few tools: a straight
edge and blade for
trimming the canvas,
a ruler, a staple gun,
¼ inch staples, pliers,
watercolour pencils

02 Centre
print
the
Trim
off the excess canvas so
and canvas spray.
A small pair of wire
cutters to remove
you only have one extra any staples can be
inch of blank canvas. very handy as well.
If you have access to If you have an art
a light table, lay the supply shop nearby
print face down, the it’s good to pick out
your own stretcher
stretcher frame on top,
bars. There can be a
01 Putting the frame together Put the corners of the stretchers
together, making sure they fit flush and tight. Don’t let the tabs
extend past the edges of the stretcher frame. With light sandpaper, remove
and visually centre the
frame. If you’re working
on a table you’ll need
slight variation in the
length of them, which
will put your canvas
any rough wood burrs at the corners. After you have the stretchers together, to measure carefully all slightly out of square,
make sure the frame is square. Rock it back and forth on a hard surface to shift around from the edge so check the length
and adjust the angles slightly. Use a T-square, or judge with your eyes for a of the print to the frame and straightness of
final assessment. for centring. each piece.
There are many
places online to order
all the necessary
supplies. Dick Blick
Art Materials (www.
dickblick.com) and
Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff
(www.cheapjoes.
com) are two
favourites, both with
good pricing
and international
shipping available.

04 Stretching in a pattern Continue stretching both long sides

of the canvas, placing two or three staples to the left and right
sides of the centre, mirroring the same amount on the other side. Pull, staple,
pull, staple, alternate sides; get a rhythm going. Now staple the short ends

03 Beginning the stretching Start on the long side (with an 18 x

24” canvas, 24” is the ‘long’ side) of the canvas and fold the canvas
over the wood, placing three or four staples in the centre of the stretcher.
Insert the staples at a slight angle to the weave of the canvas. This will help to
avoid tearing the canvas as the staple enters. On the opposite side, using the
canvas pliers, pull the canvas taut and put in three or four staples to mirror the
first ones.
in the same fashion. Start in the centre with a few staples, then go to the
opposite end and do the same, pulling tightly with each staple to create a
smooth surface. Continue in this alternating pattern until you complete the
frame, making sure to leave enough canvas free at the corners for the folding.
Now take a good look at the surface of the canvas before proceeding to the
corners. If there are any waves or ripples, you’ll need to pull out a few staples
and restretch those areas.

87

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 Output Stretch a canvas print

A B
05 Turning the corners Turning
the corners will take a little
practice to perfect. Each corner is folded
into two layers. The first fold will be tucked
under the second fold. There are four steps
to a good corner: crease, fold in toward
the centre, crease, fold over the first fold
toward the centre. These photographs
will explain the folding process better than
words. The folds are least apparent when
the sides are flat, and the folds are visible on
the top and bottom.

C D E

F G

H Finishing the canvas

After you’ve finished stretching
the canvas, check the surface
for any chips or marks that
may have occurred. Derwent
watercolour pencils are perfect
for touching up any tiny white
spots. Wet the pencil, dot in
some colour, and add another
colour to mix and blend for
a perfect match. Spray the
touched-up areas lightly
with Premier Print Shield to
waterproof. And voila! Your
canvas is ready for hanging.
Jason Pryor, we thank you.

88

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 Readers’ gallery issue fifteen
This issue, we catch up with reader and freelance illustrator
Dale Simpson, and discover how she incorporates the Pastel
brushes into her colourful illustrations for greeting cards,
editorial and children’s artwork
Gallery
ale Simpson is a relative
newcomer to the magazine
site, but has already made
a big impression with her
illustrations. Based in Scotland, Dale is
a freelance illustrator who specialises
in greeting cards, editorial and
children’s artwork. Find out more about
her by visiting her gallery at www.
paintermagazine.co.uk/user/Dale
Simpson. You can also see more of her
work by visiting her home page at www.
dalesimpson.co.uk.
When did you start using Painter?
With my �irst Apple Mac (a G3) I purchased
an Intuos Wacom tablet, which came
supplied with a copy of Painter Classic.
I played around with it on and off, but it
wasn’t until I made the upgrade to Painter
7 that I worked exclusively in Painter.
“I love colour, so that is a strong influence in my work and
probably why I love doing Christmas designs.”
What’s your favourite Painter tool?
I love Pastels, which is evident in my work
really. I love the way they pick up the paper
textures and look like real media. I’ve
never liked a ‘digital’ look to my work, so
this tool suits my style.
How would you describe your style?
I’m not actually sure how I would describe
my style. As a freelance Illustrator I have
experimented over the years with different
92
092-095_OPM_15_gallery.indd 92
01
Title: Fish
I did this book-spread in pastel variants,
media, and do work in other styles if a and worked with different paper
client requests something speci�ic. But my textures and colour overlays.
style in Painter has developed over the
years as I’ve become more comfortable
with the palettes, and what you see here
is quite typical of my output style-wise What’s the best bit of Painter advice you
– although I’m sure it will evolve further. have been given?
To make interactive saves throughout the
Who or what inspires you? day when working on a precious image, as
I am inspired by everything around me. �ile corruption meltdown does happen. I’ve
I have to be aware of trends to a certain actually learned that the hard way!
extent for my card work, so I look around
the shops and online to get inspiration. What is your favourite Painter image you
I love colour, so that is a strong in�luence have created?
in my work and probably why I love doing I have to say I am happiest with my Red
Christmas designs. The colours you can Riding Hood, because of the mood I’ve
use are rich and deep, and I don’t have to managed to evoke.
Share your art with
other readers
These pages of the
magazine are given over
spend time mixing them with paint, or get to you, as a place for you
messy with pastels! to share your creations
with readers all around
Is there any art style or technique you the world and also to
would like to try? publicise your gallery
on our website. If
No – I think I have �inally got comfortable
you have a gallery
with Painter and won’t budge much that you’re proud
from the dry media tools, but I am of, send an email
experimenting more with textures and to opm@imagine-
paper effects so I’ll probably spend more publishing.co.u
publishing.co.uk.
time re�ining those techniques.
5/3/08 12:59:43
 02
Title: Arabian tales
This was for a portfolio book-cover illustration.
Because of my love of rich colour this seemed like
a good choice of subject matter. It’s quite simple,
and I haven’t used a lot of techniques as the main
concentration of the view should be on the face
of the girl. I don’t work from photos; every image
is drawn up from scratch so it’s done in an
illustrative manner, not a realistic style.

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 Readers’ gallery issue fifteen
Gallery

03
Title: Purple Kings
This is a Christmas card design done for my
agent (the Pure Design Group) portfolio. I used
rich jewel-like colours to replicate the kings, and
added texture over select areas.

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 04
Title: Viking
My son has a great love of history and
had been studying Vikings a while ago
at school, so I was inspired to create an
image that captured the Viking look.
I’ve textured and used colour overlays to
create the old painted map look.

05
Title: Snowdrops
This was created for my greeting card
portfolio. I wanted to stick to a limited
colour palette of soft greens and creams,
and give a modern twist on a traditional
subject matter with the blocky use of
colours and texture.

06
Title: Angels
This is a Christmas card design done for my agent portfolio. I
worked from a tonal colour palette, and again used blocks of
colour and texture to create a decorative design.

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 Website challenge issue fifteen

Website Challenge
The latest crop of entries to the online challenge
creative bevvy of images greeted us in
response to challenge number seven,
and you can see the top three here. It
seems that the king�isher was a big hit,
with a lot of you interpreting the glorious colours
and using it as a platform to create stunning
paintings. Meg Frank was one such person and
becomes the winner this issue. We thought the
brush strokes on the feathers provided good
texture, and the use of colours worked really well.
And talking of colours, Maria Jose Lopez’s night
treatment of the original day photo impressed
us. We loved the sense of mystery this has
introduced. Finally there’s Marcelo Chiarella’s
Impressionist entry. Inspired by Cat Bounds’s
tutorial in issue nine, Marcelo has done a �ine
job of reinventing this photo. Head over to the
website to download the new challenge images!

Maria Jose Lopez Meg Frank

WINNER!
WIN!
A
YEAR’S
SUBSCRIPTION
TO THE OFFICIAL
COREL PAINTER
MAGAZINE

Marcelo Chiarella

How to
enter the
challenge…
Visit www.
paintermagazine.
com/competitions.php,
download the images and
send us an email. You can
also download the images
from the CD and email
your entries to opm@
imagine-publishing.co.uk.
If they are over 2MB, you
can send them on a CD to:
Website Challenge,
Official Corel Painter
Magazine, Imagine
Publishing, Richmond
House, 33 Richmond Hill,
Bournemouth, Dorset
BH2 6EZ, UK
We can’t return any CDs. Remember! You can email your entries to opm@imagine-publishing.co.uk

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 Create your own gallery online
Sign up now at www.paintermagazine.com!
hen it comes to sharing
your work with other
people, the easiest way
is to get the paintings
online. For sharing your Corel Painter
artwork, the website for this fair
magazine is just the ticket. Thousands
of people visit the site every week to
browse through the images posted.
There are no limitations for visiting
the site to look at pictures but if you
want to upload your own, you need to
register and become a member. This is
completely free to do and means you
can then expose your work to a global
audience, leave comments and ratings
on other members’ work and also invite
comments on your own art.
It only takes a few minutes to sign
up at the site and then it’s just a case of
simply uploading your own images. To
see exactly what’s involved in adding
your artwork, we’ve supplied you with
the walkthrough below.

Register at the site to upload artwork

A few minutes is all that’s needed to get started

01 Register Pop along to www.

paintermagazine.com. You’ll be taken
to the home page of the website. Go up to the
Sign-up link and click on it. Fill in the form and
make sure you enter the correct email address.
Once completed, click Create User and wait for an
email. Click the link and you’re now a member!
02 Your profile There’s a default avatar,
but you might prefer to add your own
image. This is easily done. Make sure you are
logged in and then click on Edit Profile. Go down
03 Set the file Navigate to where the
image is you want to use and select it.
For ease of use, make sure it is relatively small, but
to the avatar bit and click Remove This Image. the image will be automatically shrunk to fit the
Now click Choose File. space. Make sure it is a square format to start with.

Waiting
for approval
When you have
uploaded an image,
there will be a short
delay for the image to
be approved. We have
to do this to make
sure no offensive or
legally questionable
05 Words
wisdom
of
Once uploaded,
images are uploaded. other members
We approve images can rate and leave
throughout the day, comments on your
but take into account
the time differences
if you are in another
country. We are based
04 Uploading Make any other changes
to your profile and click Update. Now
let’s add some images! Go to Gallery Images and
image. When you
look at your gallery
(or anyone else’s),
in the UK, so are click Add New Image. Make a note of the file you can see which
tucked up in bed while format rules and click Choose File to select your images have a rating
some of you are just picture. Use the Description area to give some or comments and
starting your day! information and then click Submit Image. how many.

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 Pa ge 20 Pa ge 46

Pa ge 42 Pa ge 66

Official Magazine

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