In this tutorial, I'll show you my process of painting in Corel Painter 6.0. It may be very similar to other tutorials that you've seen. Oh well, I just began learning this program so bare with me. You may or may not agree w/ some of the steps but hopefully we can both figure this program out eventually!
We'll start with a quick sketch of the subject. In the Drawing Jam activity, the moderater chose this picture for the week. So, that's the picture we'll have as a reference today. Sorry if it's a bit too nude for you. We'll live, don't worry.
Here is the sketch that I created. I then scanned into Photoshop and imported into Painter. In Painter, I sketched in the rest of the body and some background to fill the page. I kinda made it "caricature-like". Experiment with your sketches. It doesn't always have to be a dead on portrait. Have fun.
The first thing I do after I am done w/ the sketch is lay down a cool color or neutral tone which is the blue shown here. This will make it easier to "lift" the flesh tones from the background. Since the figure consists of primarily warm tones, this is gonna be a good choice.
Ok, so how do you do this in Painter? Select the Watercolor brush with the "simple water" selection and set the opacity to about 30ish and the grain to about 30 as well. Make the size of the brush pretty big (100) so you can cover the large area quicker.
Since we're using Watercolor, we're in "wet" mode right now. We'll continue to use watercolor because it can create a good foundation for skin tones and everything else. Overall, it's really easy to work with but, just don't turn off Wet mode until you are completely done with the Underpainting. Set resat to about 25-30 along w/ bleed and dryout. Check the "Brush loading" option. By all means, don't just stick with these settings. Experiment with them! I use short quick brush strokes with my wacom tablet to get my ideal look w/ the watercolor brush. in simple water mode.
Ok, so far, we've been using Watercolor (simple water). I'm done with fleshing things out so I'm ready to "Dry" the Canvas and begin using other brushes.
Select the menu Canvas and you'll see we're in "Wet Paint" mode. To dry the canvas, simply select "dry"
While painting in watercolor or any brushes, these are the two palettes that you should get really familiar with. The Well palette is sweet. Resat bascially means how much paint you're using...putting it all the at 0 will kinda blend things together. It's a useful technique. You must play with it. The general palatte give you more properties for any brush. it's infinite really. You gotta play around to get the hang of it. I still barely know what's going on!
Ok, we're ready for the next step now that our canvas is dried. Don't forget to save. Select the "Brushes" (captured bristle mode). We'll use this tool to get to the next level with our painting. Set the Well resat to about 25 and keep the bleed and dryout at about 30. Feel free to experiment though.
Now, this is pretty important. Leave the "Brush Loading" unchecked. From what I see, when this is checked off, it's basically just like taking a blotch of paint and smearing it into the painting instead of have a consistent amount of paint unloading from your brush as you paint. This is nifty because you can take a lighter tone and blend it in really nicely. Play around with this. Try using fairly quick strokes...don't mud it up. When the "brush loading" is checked on, it's the reverse. Paint is consistantly coming from your brush and blending isn't as easy.
Here I am showing the painting halfway through this "captured bristle" phase. I haven't painted the face or the background. But notice on the body that all sketch marks are gone. The captured bristle brush at the parameters I specified, blend the dark lines into your painting. It's pretty cool stuff.
Now, I've begun getting into the face area with the captured bristle brush. Still on low resat and medium dryout, and bleed. "Brush loading" is checked off. Swift brush strokes seem to work best w/ blending. I started off witha bit of a caricature..but blah. it didn't work out so I'm trying to go back (a no no). so I don't expect much of a likeness.. Notice that all the sketch lines were blended into the painting.
Here we go...gettin' closer and closer. I worked on the background a bit. I'm beginning to use more of the "brush loading" feature to get a consistent line for some spots where I need it. That means when you need an opaque line..like along an arm or something, check the "brush loading" on.
Well...as far as I'm concerned, everything is done except for the hair. There is a cool tool to use especially for the hair so I saved it for last.
Well, I'm finished. I'm kinda shocked tho. You see, I've learned a lot from doing this painting myself. I used to use a crap load of different brushes but for this painting, I found that the captured bristle did the job for virtually everything including the hair. All I did was shrink the brush size to a very small size, check "brush loading" and wisk away strands of hair for the detail. Either way, I'll share some other brushes that were helpful to me in the past.
-For hair, the "opaque flat" brush with the camel hair setting in the general palette worked well. Give it a shot.
-Smeary Round brush is pretty good too. When you have the resat setting set down all the way it's an interesting blending tool.
-Opaque round is another good brush to use for painting. Each one of these brushes will give you a lil bit of a different style. As you can see from my other paintings, my Painter style has changed the more I got familiar with the program. See Arnold
And voila! Here is the finished product. Hope you found this tutorial useful. If you have any other questions, email me.
