Corel Painter - 16 - Magazine, Art, Digital Painting, Drawing, Draw, 2d

Create digital digi tal art today!

 O  f   fi   c  i     a  l     C   o  r   e  l    ®  P   a  i    n   t    e  r  T  M

M  a   g   a  z  i    n   e 

Understand Painter’s tools Learn to draw from scratch Quick start guide on the CD

Official Magazine I    s   s   u  e   s  i    x   t    e   e  n 

Expert tips

Plan your composition Essential skills for creating strong focal points

Art skil skills ls

Understand perspective

 O v e r

 5 0

Use perspective tricks to give your landscapes depth

 p a g e s o l f s  a s  t u t o r i a

Create the cover!

Turn photos into

V  i     s  i     t    u  s   o  n  l    i    n   e  – w w w  .  p   a  i    n   t    e  r  m  a   g   a  z  i    n   e   .  c   o   .  u k 

sketches FREE CD

INSIDE PC and Mac

Learn to apply contour lines and then build up shading to create a pencil masterpiece – page 28

TEXTURES | STOCK PHOTOS | TUTORIAL RESOURCE FILES

Paint like…

Brush primer

See how Painter X’s RealBristle brushes can re-create Renoir

Discover how the Eraser brushes can create lush artwork

Realistic rain We reveal the tricks to adding a splash of rain to your art

ISSUE SIXTEEN ISSN 1753-3155

£6.00 16

9

771753 315000

www.paintermagazine.com www.paintermagazine.c om

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

Pg 34  3 4  BrushPrimer: Erasers Erase your way to a masterpiece with these much-ignored variants 

Pg 46 46 Paint like: Renoir Take a look at the Impressionist-style painting, The Umbrellas

Pg 52 Art study: Rain We show you how to create realistic rain in your paintings 

There’s no denying that painting landscapes and objects can be an intensely rewarding experience, but they do sometimes run the risk of being viewed as lifeless. It’s incredible how adding a person or two in a scene can transform it into something something that viewe v iewers rs can interact with, rather than merely observe. And the good news is that you haven’t got to be a maestro when it comes to life drawing; our quick guide on page 66 reveals how joining a few triangles and circles can result in some simple �igures to liven up your artwork. art work. You haven’t haven’t even got to draw a face! But if you would like a go at a portrait, turn to page 28 where one reader shares share s how she created a sketched masterpiece. If you’re re just starting star ting out with painting, our feature this issue is a must. Susi Lawson Lawson walks through how to plan a painting; from playing with composition, through to assembling reference photos and onto the �inished article. Be sure to let us know if it helps your creations.

 I    S    S    U   E   S    I    X   T   E   E   N 

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.co.uk  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 use rs

Jo Cole, Editor in Chief  [email protected] 

3

 s   e   t   i   s   b   e   w 

  y   t   i   n   u  C  o  m  m  Tutorial xxxx

NE WS E VEN TS RESOURCES  ITES S T LE T TERS  WEB INFO FORUM

Fontplay.com Fontplay.c om includes not only free fonts but also a substantial archive of high quality, high-resolution images to use freely in your artistic endeavours 

10,000 free photos and counting… Fontplay.com – it’s not just for fonts U  R CE  S  OU  E S  O  R E 

Unusually, Fontplay. com photos can be used in commercial projects. “Having no entrepreneurial bones in my body, I added free commercial use to the images,” explains founder Dennis Hill 

10

riginally a resource for free fonts, Fontplay.com began modestly. But interest soon grew when founder Dennis Hill added his favourite photographs. Newly interested in photography, Hill started using his own photos as backgrounds, then added the photos to the site for free for anyone to use them. “Eventually it worked into more of a forum to share my hobby of photography,” explains Hill. “I started tak ing photos when I was taking a Photoshop class, and I couldn’t �ind many images that didn’t have a lot of strings attached to using them. And I wasn’t organised enough to keep track of ‘Terms of Use’ for the images I found.” Initially aimed at st uden udents, ts, teachers, hobbyists and enthusiasts, the free photo section now attracts tens of thousands of visitors each month.

Photos are available to download in different sizes and resolutions by simply clicking on an image, waiting for it to load, and saving it to your desktop. An A-Z listing gives some idea of what’s on offer, and the main page gives details of recent updates. Hill is assisted by a group of friends who offer their own photos for free in the same spirit of sharing. With over 10,000 images currently available, there’s certain to be something for everyone, from landscapes and nature to wonderful wonderful textures and graf�iti art. ar t. Fontplay.com Fontplay.c om also contains beautiful beauti ful public domain antique illustrations and greetings cards, scanned lovingly at 300dpi. With new photos added weekly, sometimes daily, Fontplay.com is a vibrant online resource worth visiting regularly. “If I ever get to where I know what I’m doing, I may charge for photos. But since I

hate reading instructions, I may never get to that point,” laughs Hill. All Fontplay.com images may be used by anyone for any artistic artis tic endeavour, personal personal or commercial use, without having to give credit or a link. Visit www.fontplay.com/ freephoto and star t downloading! downloading!

 TUTORIALS 

In short

 A passion for pencils

Creative happenings from around the world

Blog offers drawing tutorials and video guides orn in El Salvador and now living in Canada, Lisandro Peña maintains a blog (www.onlypencil.com/blog) where he shares his enthusiasm for drawing, nature and animals. Using the humble pencil as his medium of choice, Peña offers a range of simple tutorials and tips – including creating realistic hair, eyes, teeth and animals. Over two detailed pages the tutorials offer a stepby-step approach to reproducing realisticlooking images, as well as information on pencils used to achieve each look. A section devoted to tools of the trade offers further insight and advice on a range of devices for making your mark. Links to YouTube and Facebook offer the bonus of watching Peña draw before your eyes, and you can visit his eBay and Etsy shops to buy prints.

Notes And tips

OnlyPencil.com offers a range of free tutorials devoted to the art of drawing with a pencil, as well as links to video guides 

Graphics.com

 S & A D VICE   IP   T 

Where there’s a Will… Website offers masterly painting tips and techniques professional artist since 1965, the website of William Whitaker (www. williamwhitaker.com) contains some stunning examples of his paintings. Among the portrait, still life and landscape work, visitors can also view some insightful examples of his techniques, including fascinating workin-progress shots. Although working primarily with oil on canvas, the tips and advice will apply to anyone trying to replicate natural media faithfully with Corel Painter. Accompanied by detailed descriptions, you can also take a peak into Whitaker’s wonderful home studio – complete with a classic Barclay easel and inspirational banjos.

Illustrator Nate Owens offers a range of tips on his website, covering digital drawing and painting in Corel Painter. As well as step-by-step guides, you can watch a number of QuickTime movie files. “Although these were done on the computer, the procedure would be the same if you were working with pencil, paper and paint,” explains Owens. More at www.nateowens. com/howto_tips/HowTo.htm

Get a great start with Finalcrit PORTFOLIO

Since launching in April 2007, Finalcrit has attracted talent from around the world with the offer of free professional-  looking online portfolios 

Create, update and showcase your free online portfolio romoted as the easy way to search and view the latest design and creative talents, Finalcrit ( www.finalcrit.com) offers free online portfolios with a professional sheen. The Flash-based portfolio builder is fast, easy and attracti ve to the eye, with a choice of customisable colourful frames to showcase your work. No code or web experience is required, and you can upload up to 100 images a long with a bio, work experience and contact details. “It offers serious designers, practitioners and other creatives the opportunity to present their work in a sophisticated surrounding. It’s more of a Facebook than a MySpace,” enthuses Henry Westcott, one of hundreds of regular users. The range of creative talent on show is reassuringly varied, so newbies shouldn’t feel intimidated. And as a bonus you can browse a rang e of industry jobs.

Billed as a news portal for all things graphics, from print to web, Graphics. com also includes a wealth of tips, tutorials and reviews. Among the highlights are free Corel Painter tutorials from artist, author and digital painting expert Cher Threinen-Pendarvis. A useful directory includes links to more free and commercial resources, including stock images, fonts, tips and tutorials.

Nice rack With dozens of categories to choose from, PhotoRack (www.photorack. net) offers thousands of free images for you to download and use in your creative projects. A great slideshow function lets you view a category hands-free at your leisure, and a Hotlist reveals the highest rated and most downloaded images. Although the images aren’t the highest res we’ve seen, the choice and range is excellent.

MAY

of 22 Issueon17 sale! OPM

William Whitaker’s site includes some insightful painting demonstrations and techniques, including a stunning oil on canvas portraits 

It’s time to go and collect the latest issue of this very magazine! Highlights include a ink and wash tutorial, a guide to Acrylic brushes and a look at recreating Grant Wood’s iconic view of the American landscape.

11

 e   c   r   u   o   s   e   r 

 s   r   e   t   t   e   L   r   u   o  come Welcome to the part of the magazine where you can and share your thoughts on anything you fancy!

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

Production explanation I was interested to see you advertise your eMag and book, but was wondering what the difference was between them. And do I need Painter X for the tutorials?

Peter McMurphy Our Digital Painting bookazine can be thought of as a ‘best of’. It contains material from the first 11 issues and is perfect for anyone who is looking to get started with Painter or who

 just wants a glossy compendium of creative projects. It is the same size as the magazine, with full colour throughout. The eMag is a digital version of the firs t 12 issues of the magazine. The interactive DVD holds PDFs of every page in those firs t 12 issues, presented exactly as they were originally ( except any advertising is taken out). This means you have a digital copy that you can keep on your computer to call upon whenever you need. It’s perfect for anyone who missed out on an earlier issue or who wants to keep their magazines nice and pristine. The bookazine can be found in branches of WH Smiths, Borders and Barnes and Noble or can be ordered from our online shop. The eMag can only be ordered onlin e, at www. imagineshop.co.uk.

Underneath the layers I’ve bought a few different computer magazines and one thing I’ve noticed is that they generally include layered �iles on their discs. I �ind this very useful and wondered why you didn’t do the same.

 Henry Ralphe The main reason why we don’t include final artwork in its layered format is because of size. For an image to be the size and resolution we need to be printed in the magazine, it needs a hefty amount of disc space. As an example, the layered file of Charlene Chua’s Ukiyo tutorial in issue 12 came in at 70MB. Bearing

Our eMag or Digital Painting bookazine is the perfect collector’s item 

Featured gallery

A lot of Painter artists will routinely drop their layers in order to have more manageable files 

in mind we only have just under 600MB to play with, you can see that we’d soon end up with a disc that just had a few files! T he other reason is that many Painter artists will regularly drop their layers or some won’t bother using layers at all. We obviously mark up in a tutorial if a new layer is needed and if it’s an image that relies on layer order to work, we’ll include that on the disc. Would it help if we provided screenshots of what the Layers palette looked like? Let us know.

Full Moon

Floribunda

Our favourite reader’s gallery this month

Gerry de Wit  http://www.paintermagazine. co.uk/user/gw0625 Based in Auckland, New Zealand, Gerry has uploaded 160 images to his gallery, although that was at the time of writing and we’re sure it’s gone up since then! With such a large portfolio, it’s no surprise to learn that Gerry flirts with all sorts of artistic styles and subjects. We are particular fans of his still life images, especially his Floribunda image (see middle right). To see what else Gerry has been painting, head over to his gallery today!

Langs Beach

© Gerry de Wit © Gerry de Wit

12

Paint Shop Pro Photo mag!

Our regular challenge is a chance to win a years’ subscription to the magazine 

If you use Corel’s Paint Shop Pro to edit images before using Painter, you might be interested in the new magazine we are launching. The Officia l Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo Magazine is a project-based title that looks at all aspect s of the program. Each issue will have special guides to taking a type of photography, in addition to plenty of tutorials on how to improve your shots in Paint Shop Pro Photo. The creative tutorials will show how to have fun in the program and produce digital art. The first issue will be on sale the 22 May, and will be available in newsag ents or from our online shop ( www.imagineshop.co.uk). If you have any ideas for tutorials that you’d like to see in the magazine, simply pay a visit to our special forum…

www.officialpspp.com/forum

Challenge query I’d like to enter your readers’ challenge but can’t email it in. Is there a �ile size for an attachment and do they have to be a certain resolution? Plus, can I enter more than once and can I use my own bits of artwork? Iris Hamilton Hello Iris. There is indeed an attachment file size – it’s 2MB. So with this in mind, it ’s probably best to keep your images as JPEGs. You can set them at whatever resolution you like, and if it’s impossible to make your entry less than 2MB, you can always post it. You can enter as many times as you like and as long as you use at least one of the suppli ed images, you can incorporate your own artwork. Just as an aside, there was a bit of a mix-up with dates in challenge number 7. As a result, we have elected to have two winners for that challenge, and will have longer deadlines to avoid this in the future.

Picture Stall

© Gerry de Wit

© Gerry de Wit

Interview

   s    e    m    a    J    e    v    e    t    S    y     b     k    r    o    w    t    r    a     l    a    n     i    g     i    r    o     l     l    A

14

Steve James

WEBSITE JOB TITLE CLIENTS

www.fridayeve.com Sr.ProductionArtist  Eat Sleep Play, SCEA Incognito Studio, Perpetual Entertainment, Gearbox Software, Vivendi Universal Games

An interview with…

Steve James Steve James’s day job is working in the video games industry, but at night he loves to produce striking paintings using Corel Painter. Nick Spence meets him teve James has been working in the video games industry since 1999 as a texture and concept artist. He received a BFA in Illustration from Brigham Young University, where he studied traditional painting techniques. He now works primarily on his computer using Corel Painter, and he maintains a busy blog where many of his digital paintings can be seen. He is currently employed at Eat Sleep Play, and has previously worked at Sony’s Incognito studio. His projects include the video games: Warhawk, Twisted Metal and Advent Rising . He is represented by Shannon Associates. We caught up with Steve to discover how he applies Corel Painter to create his recognisable, sketchy style.

[LEFT]

Abraham Lincoln A study of Abraham Lincoln taken from Steve James’s FridayEve blog, which is sometimes updated daily with new work, particularly portraits and more fantasy-based images.

How would you best describe your work? I have been working in video games for the past nine years as a production artist. My tasks change, based on the project in hand. During pre-production I spend most of my time concepting characters and environments, and creating artwork that will describe the look and feel of the game. As the project moves forward I create the texture maps that will go on the 3D models. I get to do a little of everything, from painting a character’s textures to the rocks and dirt, and anything else you may �ind in the levels.

And what role does Corel Painter play in your work? I use Painter to get the ideas from my head onto the computer. I use it exclusively when doing concept art. You can’t beat Painter’s brush speed and blending, even at larger sizes. Painter’s Color Wheel picker is a far better way of selecting colour compared to other software. I started using Painter with version 5 at university; at that time using a computer to create artwork was still a kind of novel concept. The art department had a couple of computers stuck in a small closet, and you would have to sign up for a chance to use one for a couple of hours. I would go to the computers at odd hours just to be able to use the software for longer periods of time.

of work. After �ive years I realised I had nothing of my own to show for it. While I had a major in�luence of the projects I had worked on, my art skills suffered. In my head I had the idea that if someone was not paying me to create artwork it was not worth doing. At that point I had a change in attitude and decided to create in my own time. I started doing daily sketches on forums and worked into the habit of painting daily, instead of playing games or watching TV. My blog acts as a refrigerator door to hang up my artwork – it’s a place to experiment and just have fun making pictures.

Is developing character concepts and working for the games industry your major source of income? I work full-time at a game studio, and with the commute it pretty much �ills my day. I enjoy making games, but it is nice to be able to spend a few hours each night painting just for fun.

How does this help you develop as an artist? I �ind a great deal of enjoyment in my personal projects. It’s interesting to see how my processes and methods have changed over the years. I had periods of time when I would play with black and white, or incorporate 3D models into the paintings. By far, I have learned the most from doing the portraits. I feel I have just scratched the surface of what there is to know.

Do your blog’s ( www.fridayeve.com/   wordpress) images reflect some more personal work? The blog is entirely made up of personal work. When I �irst star ted making games I rarely did any drawing or painting outside

Many of your images look sketched – do you work entirely digitally? My work is entirely digital. I usually begin by sketching on the computer. In fact, I am more comfortable drawing on the computer than with a pencil – I miss

15

Interview

Steve James

The Little Match Girl This was based on the famed Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. Steve James created this evocative image for an online community site for artists

Beauty Beast Steve James’s Chinese spin on Madame Gabrielle de Villeneuve’s, Beauty And The Beast , first published in 1740. Painted for another Illustration Friday challenge

layers and undo far too much. Painter does allow for a work�low that is similar to a traditional approach. Most of the time, instead of creating a line drawing, I will block in the major forms with a big brush. And can you briefly tell us about your setup and how you work? I use a Windows machine I built a few years ago, with a 6 x 11 Wacom tablet. My workspace is not that exciting – I spend most of the time just looking at the screen unless my cat decides it wants to sit on my tablet. I use Painter for just about everything. After I am � inished I will check the colours and save it for the web in Photoshop. What are your favourite tools to use in Corel Painter? My favourite brush is the Cover brush from Painter 5.5. It is similar to the Scratchboard tool, but with a little more sensitivity to pressure with size and opacity. It’s my go-to brush for sketching and roughing out shapes. I really like the Artists’ Oils in Painter – you can get some

16

Tranchefeux’s website is divided into various categories, including concept designs, academic drawing, fine art, illustrations, cartoons and hyperrealistic work. The website includes a collection of tutorials showing the creative process from drawings to finished paintings 

Phobia Another example of his after hours artistic activities, creating work for an online blog

Although trained in traditional painting techniques, Steve James now works primarily on the computer. He lives in Lehi, Utah, with his wife and their crazy cat

“I’ve learned a great deal about face structure  and expression by working from a reference” cool blending and colour effects with the paint that is on the canvas. The two Artists’ Oils brushes I use are the Clumpy brush and the Oil Palette Knife, I �ind that I can do just about every thing I want with these brushes. I also like to use the Digital Airbrush for tinting, as well as the Variable Spatter Airbrush for creating textures. Some images are looser than others. How do you decide which ones to develop and add detail to? Most of the images on my blog are just studies. I like to experiment with how just a few simple strokes can create the form. Everything I do at work has to be pixel perfect, so it’s a nice break to just play with the colours on my studies. Having said that, I do feel it is time to start creating more �inished pieces in my free time.

Do you use photographic reference for your portraits? I have been working from photos for head studies the past couple of years. For a long time I just made up characters from my head, but they tended to all look the same. It’s been a long time since I had access to a model to paint from, and it’s just not practical for these quick digital studies. There is a popular stigma against people using reference, but you can also see they should have used it. I’ve learned a great deal about face structure and expression by working from a reference. How do you ensure they don’t look like you’ve simply run a filter over a snap? Photographs have bad colour. You can tell if someone has used a �ilter or used colour directly from a photo. Sure, the colour looks �ine in the context of the photo, but usually there is a loss of colour in the

H ea  d    S tu  d   y   1 5,  a n e xa  m   p   l e    o f S te   v  e   J am   e   s  ’ s   w on  d  e    rf  u   l   p or  t  r  a   i t  s   . “ I’ v  e    l ea   r  n  e  d    a g re  a   t    d ea   l   a bo  u   t   f ac  e    s tr  u   c  t  u   r  e    a nd    e xp   r  e   s  s  i o  n   s   w or  k   i n  g    f ro  m     r ef  e   r  e  n   c  e   , ” e xp   l a   i n   s   J am   e   s   

17

Interview

Steve James

S te   v  e    J am   e    s o ri  gi n  a   l l y   m ad  e    u p h is   o wn    f ac  e   s   a s a b as  i s    f or   h is   p or  t  r  a   i t   s tu  d   i e   s   , b ut    n ow    u se   s   p ho   t  o    r ef  e   r  e  n   c  e    t o a vo   i d    t he    m a ll   l oo  k     i   n    g t he    s am   e   

shadow areas. I distance myself from my photo by creating my own colour and expressing texture with tools that could not be mistaken for a painterly �ilter. I don’t want my paintings to look like a photo. If that’s the look I was going for, it would be better to just use the photo. Finally, your website includes several sports shoe concepts for Nike etc. Why the interest in shoes? I have been a runner for a very long time, and the only equipment you need is a good pair of running shoes. I am always on a quest to �ind the perfect ones! I worked at a shoe store to pay my way through school, but didn’t consider it work because I liked doing it so much. I have thought about designing shoes for a living, but worry that doing it would take the magic out of it. I enjoy looking at the designs and innovations they make with shoes, and it always gives you something to look forward to.

18

“I don’t want my paintings to look like a photo. If that’s the look I was going for, it would be  better to just use the photo”

Ahab Steve James created this image of Captain Ahab for the online Illustration Friday competition, a weekly ‘creative outlet and participatory art exhibit for illustrators and artists of all skill levels’

Feature

How to plan a painting

 Artist insight…

How to plan a

1

 Takin g the photos   P   l a n    n   i   n    g t   h   e   o  c  m   p   o   s   i   t   i   o   n 

2

  y   d  a    e   r    g  n   i   t   t   e   G   e   n  c  o   o   l   t 

 3

Before you start throwing digital paint on your canvas, follow Susi Lawson’s guide to planning the image and enjoy better results nless you are blessed with a natural ability to draw and paint whatever is in your imagination, photos will play a large part in the creative process. But just because you are using a photo, it doesn’t mean you can’t plan beforehand or try out digital ‘sketches’ to make sure your painting is the best it can be. In t his lesson we’re going to learn how to go about acquiring that great picture. We are not going to take the lazy way out and scour the internet for free stock photography, we’re going to put on our hiking shoes and head to the country! All you need is a decent digital camera to capture your vision of what will make a beautiful work of art. If you’re not a professional photographer and feel a litt le uncomfortable in this area then this is the time to cast aside your inhibitions and get away from the computer for a bit. This article will give you the information you need to stretch your legs and your digital camera IQ! I will be taking along the Canon 1D MkIII and a Canon 70-200 f/2.8L IS telephoto. This lens provides a great range for zooming in and out. I also will bring my Canon 24-105 f/4L IS in case I want a good wide-angle shot. Let me stress that you can use a point and shoot with a good zoom for this task as well, so can still enjoy the fresh air and excitement of taking your own reference photos to use as the basis of some great art. We’ve included three photos on the disc for you to see how and why we changed what we did. The �ile ‘Landscape 2’ was the main inspiration, but ‘Landscape 3’ is used, too.

21

Feature

How to plan a painting

Choosing a composition As I approached the scene I knew right away that I wanted the little weathered shack to be the focal point and the stark winter trees to be the backdrop, but I also knew that the scene needed more, such as leading lines that help bring the composition together and add more interest to the overall scene. There are actually several such elements in this scene, and the way we frame the image in the view�inder is essential to a successful composition. Even though cropping and such can be done in software, it’s best to get the composition as pleasing as possible in the camera. In these samples, you will see what is included and why.

 Location: Ceres,  Virginia USA 

Portrait

✓

This scene’s composition works because I have placed the cabin in the lower left, and the lines of the farm truck path lead the eye from the tree line straight to the cabin.

Landscape

Taking the photo Choose the time of day with care – early morning or late afternoon is best For this shoot we are going to a beautiful valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia in a little far ming community called Ceres. The back roads of this area are �illed with the charm of old abandoned farmhouses and weathered cabins of days gone by, and they make for a great element of interest in a landscape shot. We will be shooting from a hill and aiming the camera at a scene about a mile away, so that’s why the telephoto lens is essential in capturing a variety of shots. It is always good to vary the shots from close to far, and from portrait to landscape mode, to enable you to have plenty of variety to play with and choose from, when you get back to the computer. When shooting landscapes it’s best to arrive either after sunrise or just before sunset to catch the best light. But don’t let this be a hard and fast rule, as you may never �ind the time to take pictures! These shots were all taken in the late afternoon around 6.30 to 7.30pm, so it was getting close to sunset. This light gives the long low shadows and pleasing warm light which makes for interesting scenes. (My good friend and budding photographer, Denise Romano, came along and shot the location pictures of me in action).

22

This area of Ceres is my favourite spot. The little cabin with the sloping landscape and tree lines make for a great composition. I have taken pictures of this scene in every season. It’s now coming to the end of winter here, so the colours are not at all vibrant. But we can improve the image during the painting phase. When taking photos, try standing in different positions for a variety of viewpoints. Don’t be afraid to squat down, or even take something to stand on!

This image has beautiful lines that lead the eye all over, and yet it comes to rest on the cabin. Notice the diagonal triangular shape of the fence coming from the left corner and uniting with the tree upper line – complemented by the ‘S’ curve of the truck line.

Close-up Here I capture a closer view of the cabin using my zoom at 200 and walking to the right side. Notice the converging diagonal lines of the landscape connecting all the elements.

 Portrait 

 Landscape 

Close-up 

Sketch it out 

The Rule of Thirds works on the theory that if you place points of interest in the intersections of nine equal squares (or close to them), your photo becomes more balanced. Our eyes usually go to one of the intersection points naturally, so the Rule of Thirds works with this natura l way of ‘seeing’. Here are some doodles to show how this has worked in our photo.

This composition is pleasing because the cabin is not in the middle of the image, and all lines lead your eye around the image, but back to the cabi n.

Notice, once again, the focal point of the image is not in the center – yet the eye is guided by the adjoining lines all leading back to the cabin.

Landscapes do not have to be horizontal. Notice in Portrait Mode, the leading lines work just as well for a pleasing composition.

Painter’s composition tools If you don’t fancy drawing out compositions, you can use Painter X’s tools. The best are Divine Proportion (Canvas>Compositions> Show Divine Proportions) or the Layout Grid (Canvas>Compositions>Show Layout Grid). These grids appear over your scene and can be modi�ied to suit your needs. Move them around and then crop the image to the desired composition.

23

Feature

How to plan a painting

Prepping the final photo It’s easy to make a photo bend to your needs. I like the photo I have chosen (Landscape 2), but it could do with some more height. The Resize Canvas tool will add some empty canvas to the bottom. I will a lso use the Straight Clone brush to add elements from another image and get the perfect scene for my vision.

The final artwork  Turn your creation into a masterpiece with a little help from Corel Painter Now that we have the pictures taken and the composition worked out, it’s time to t ake our favourite scene into Corel Painter and make this into a painting worthy of framing! I know right away that I want to add more colours to those winter trees and bring in some depth and light in the shadows, and just generally add some life to the landscape.

 HERE ’S HOW…

01 Painting the grass

For the grass I chose the Oil>Round Camel brush for its smooth soft quality. Paint over all the large areas left to right, taking care not to paint over the tyre tracks.

01 Close-up

To resize the canvas, go to Canvas/Resize and add 500 pixels to the bottom of the image as shown.

02 Cloning

To clone the foreground area of another image into the empty canvas area you just created, choose the Brush tool and select your Clone brush using the Straight Cloner.

Start your clone source in the left corner of the first image you want to copy, then move your cursor or stylus to the empty canvas and paint the new foreground onto the white area. Now close Landscape 3 as we no longer need it, and use the same Clone tool to eliminate the distracting pole in the foreground by using the grass beside it. Clean up any other debris using this method.

Colour controls Before we paint our landscape we need to prepare it with simple tools. Now that we have the composition and elements we want to include, we can boost the colours and darken the tyre tracks that add human interest to this weathered

03

04 Painting the tree tops

Now let’s use the Fine Sponge brush at 50% Opacity, and brush the tops of the trees using an up and down motion for a really pretty effect that works well for this area.

Adding 07 more tree colour

Burn tool Since the truck path in

this landscape is an essential part of the composition, let’s make it stand out even more by using the Burn tool and going over this area to really emphasise it, as shown. You will find this tool in the Photo brushes.

24

and otherwise lonely landscape. The tracks tell the viewer that ‘there’s life on the farm’. Increasing the saturation will reveal colours that weren’t apparent before and help you decide where you want to go with your painting.

04 Adjustthecolours

Now let’s adjust the colours by going to Effects>Tonal Control>Adjust Color, and add more saturation to the landscape to liven it up.

By using the Regular Sponge brush and deselecting Use Clone Color, I can add some bright yellow to the top of the trees to suggest the sunlight.

Things to remember Be prepared for the shoot It’s always good to have at least two lenses to choose from. If you can bring along a second camera with a wide-angle lens, and one with a telephoto, you will be ready for anything and won’t have to worry about changing lenses.

02

Painting the tracks Now I zoomed in using the same brush, and

I painted over the tyre tracks following the lines of the tracks with my brush, while adjusting to the curves so as not to smudge them away.

03

Blending shadows Still using the Camel Oil brush, zoom in and

paint over the blue shadows and areas between the trees, tak ing care not to rake across the trees. Don’t worry about any small twigs and suchlike in theses areas.

05 Keep sponging

Continue using this sponging method on all the trees, using more pressure at the tops and less in the limb area, because you want to try to preserve the tree trunks and limb areas as much as possible. Zoom in where you need to.

06 Tree limbs

The tree branches add interest to the painting, but using the Acrylic Capture brush and painting over them by following the lines with a Small Tip brush make s them less ‘stark’, and makes them blend in more with the rest of the painting.

Cautious and courteous The best place to find beautiful scenery is usually in remote areas of the country that you discover by  just driving around and stopping when something catches your eye. This is how I found the ‘Kidd Farm’ featured in this tutorial. However, when you are on private property it’s always best to call or knock on the door and ask permission to be there. Not only is this courteous, but also safe, as you never know when someone might have a watchdog, or just not be too friendly towards strangers!

Don’t get too caught up in rules Glazing 09 in ground shadows

08 Adding shadow colour

  Again, using the Regular Sponge brush, I will now add dark purple to the shadow area of the trees to add some depth.

 To add more colours I chose the Oil Glazing brush, and added some soft violet shadows to the ground. Be sure that Use Clone Color is deselected.

The rules of composition are good to learn as a guide, but don’t let it stand in your way if your scene doesn’t fit this rule. Be creative and follow your own heart – you are the artist and the ultimate rulemaker or breaker of your own work!

25

Feature

How to plan a painting

Finishing touches Paint the cabin, add a fence and brighten up the overall scene There’s a fence in 11 the left foreground that Add a fence

paint over the entire cabin – taking care to follow the natural lines of 10 the roof and boards.

Paint the cabin Using Clone Color and the Acrylic Capture brush,

adds to the composition, so I defined it more by painting over it with dark brown using the Acrylic Opaque Round brush. The last thing I always do is pump up the brightness and contrast of my painting by using Effects>Tonal Control> Brightness, Contrast and Adjust to get the most pleasing result.

IN G  T    P A IN  F IN A L CL ON E D

“THE LAST THING I ALWAYS DO IS PUMP UP THE BRIGHTNESS AND CONTRAST OF MY PAINTING” 26

Tutorial

Turn photos into sketches

 O   r   i  g  i n a   l p  h  o t o   

28

T    u  t     o  r   i       a  l      T   u  r  n   p  h   o   t    o   s  i    n   t    o   s  k    e   t    c  h   e   s 

Turn photos into sketches In this tutorial we will show you how to create a ‘sketchy style’ pencil drawing, using a photo and just four brushes in Painter Tutorial info Artist

Jill Garl Time needed

1.5 hours Skill level

Beginner On the CD

Start and final photos

ainter is an awesome program to use for creating this ‘sketchy style’ pencil drawing. Whether you start out with a photograph or draw your image freehand, the steps outlined in this t utorial will help you to successfully achieve this look. This style is perfect for drawing people. With its simplistic beauty, you will be able to create a port rait that has emotion and personality. By drawing just a few strokes for the background, the focus will be concentrated on the subject. Using much more detail and shading in t he face, compared to the �luid lines in the hair and clothes, is another way to have the focus be on the mood, the ex pression and the uniqueness of the subject.

There is very l ittle blending or smudging involved here, the contour lines are the basis for this style of art . Your initial pencil lines will become an intricate part of your drawing. It’s a beautiful t hing to look at your drawing and realise you’re looking at a part of yourself in the ex pression of those lines. You will learn how to use the Conte brush, along with t he Chalk brush a nd pencils. The Soft Cloner, Eraser, Quick Clone and Equalizer are just a few features you will learn in this tutorial. It is so exciting to watch your subject come to life in front of you, using these brushes, features and te chniques. You may �ind yourself looking through the photographs you already have in a new way – to choose one to use for an expressive new pencil drawing!

Preparation Start by preparing your chosen photograph

01

03 Set colour for the background

Prepare photograph for drawing

Before you begin creating your drawing, you will want to prepare the photograph. We start with desaturating the image. To do this, go to Effects>Tonal Control>Adjust Color. Slide the Saturation bar all the way to the left. Click OK. T his will desaturate your photograph.

02 Brighten up

In order to really see the highlight and shadow areas when you are shading, bumping up the Contrast after you desaturate is an important step. A good way to do this is to use the Equalizer. Go to Effects>Tonal Control>Equalize. Slide the Brightness control from left to right to adjust. Now click OK.

In this step we will set the Background Paper colour. First choose the colour you want to use from the Color Wheel. For our example we have used an ivory colour. Next, go to Canvas>Set Paper Color. You will not see anything happen to your image at this point, but your paper colour will show up in the next step.

29

Tutorial

Turn photos into sketches

Clone and sketch Get ready to trace, draw and blend

04 Quick Clone image

Now clone the image and get ready to draw! Go to File>Quick Clone. A duplicate of your image will open up, with tracing paper covering it in the colour you chose from step three. This will happen all in one step! You can toggle the tracing paper on and off by clicking the Tracing Paper icon.

05 Sketch outline

Trace over the image using the tracing paper and the Cover Pencil variant. Keep in mind that a lot of these lines will become part of your final drawing. Keep your lines nice and fluid. You can always use the Eraser tool, or Ctrl/Cmd+A, to clean up or repeat any lines you want to redo. Angling your paper may help while you are drawing.

06 Draw features on the face

Zoom in very close to the face. Trace over the features with a lighter touch. Using the Cover Pencil, or Number 2 Pencil, outline the eyebrow area, pupils, irises, eyelashes, etc. Make sure your lines are accurate, as this will be the step that identifies the subject’s likeness.

Interactive save Save your photograph with a new name after you make changes, such as desaturating and Equalizing. Once you have saved, you can click off the original photograph. Your original will remain untouched. The new saved version will be the one you are working on with the tracing paper. It is also a good idea to use the Interactive Save feature as you go, saving each step.

07

Zoom out and check sketch Check your sketch with the tracing

paper off. Make any adjustments you feel are necessary, and will benefit your sketch. Erase any areas that need cleaning up. Redraw any areas you feel could be better at this time.

08 Adding shadows

Begin to add in some shadows. With the tracing paper on, and using the Conte brush, brush over the shadow areas that you see. The creases around the nose, under the eyes and under the bottom lip are common areas. Take advantage of the pressure sensitivity in your stylus, create heavy and light opacities of colour.

09 Swatch of colour

Turn your tracing paper on and off to check your progress. Make a swatch of the colour you are using,  just in case your colour becomes altered. Even though you are only using a grey tone to draw with, there are many different grey tones available!

30

10 Blending in your shadows

At this point we will begin to blend in the shadows. Using the Soft Blender Stump brus h, blend the shadow areas. Go in the natural direction of the areas you are working in – for example, round out your shadows around the nose and under the bottom lip. Think of this step as moulding your subject’s face.

Face the details Rotate Page

Eyes and ears, and mouth and nose…

11 Working on the eyes

For this stage we have the original and the drawing open side by side on screen; we can see the detail in the eyes much better this way. Darken the pupil and fill in the irises with the Conte brush. Now blend with the Stump blender, using a tiny brush size. Go over the eyes with the Eraser tool to bring out the catch lights, and watch your subject come alive!

12

Hands and arms Next, we will work

on the hands and arms. Using the same technique as in the face, brush on your shadow colour and blend with the Stump blender. Shadow and blend around the knuckles, edges of the hands and arms, and into the darkened areas of the photograph.

13 Clothesdetail

For this step we used the Square Chalk brush. With a loose, free motion, stroke on colour inside the lines. Don’t worry if you go outside the lines, as long as your strokes have a nice fluid feel then this will just add to your drawing. Avoid the urge to ‘fill up’ all the outlined space. Let the lines that you created in step five become part of the drawing.

T    u  t     o  r   i       a  l     

The Rotate Page tool is extremely useful in positioning your page on an angle that works best for you. The page may be rotated in a complete circle in either direction. You may move the paper on its side or upside down to check your composition. The Rotate Page tool is located in the toolbox as a flyout, next to the Move tool (it looks like a rounded arrow). You just grab onto your page and turn it in any direction. Remember to return back to the Brush icon to continue using the brushes. When you want to bring your page upright, choose the Rotate Page tool again and click on your drawing. It will straighten right up.

T   u  r  n   p  h   o   t    o   s  i    n   t    o   s  k    e   t    c  h   e   s 

on 15 Working the hair

14 JewelleryDetail

Details, like the rings in this example, are drawn freestyle. They are drawn using the Cover Pencil, or Number 2 Pencil, using a very small size brush. The necklace is drawn using the Conte and Chalk brush to fill in colour. The highlights are brought back with the Eraser tool, similar to the eyes.

The hair is another step that will really bring the subject to life. Sketch in the hair with a long, sweeping motion using the Conte brush. Varying the opacity of colour helps the hair to look natural and adds depth. Again, your original lines will show through, giving the hair a nice sketchy, loose style. Leave some areas untouched to create the highlights.

Fade tool

16 Preparing to work on the background

We are now ready to add some background strokes. Create a duplicate of the drawing on the screen; go to File>Clone. You can now click off the original. You should have two windows open, the ‘clone of’ and the ‘clone of clone’. Check your Clone Source to make sure a check mark is next to the ‘Clone of’, as this will be your new Clone Source.

The Fade tool is a great option for when you feel you overdid a step with too much saturation, and want to bring the colour or contrast down some. Also, it’s a good way to judge how far you may want to go with colour. First, deliberately over-saturate the colour in an area. Then go to your Fade tool and fade to the desired amount. To use the Fade tool, after you have performed your step and want to fade it, go to Edit>Fade. A window will open with a slide bar, where you can fade the last action performed by a percentage. Click OK.

31

Tutorial Turn photos into sketches

Finish it in style Complete your masterpiece!

17 Backgroundstrokes

 Using the Square Chalk brush, brush over some background areas near your subject, in an angled motion. We sampled a colour from the hair in this example, for the background strokes. If you want to come back into the strokes from the outside edges, just sample the background colour, which is ivory in this example, and brush the new stroke s.

Sketchy summary Although we have left the clone command for the shading of this image, the use of a source photos means the technique is accessible to even very nervous artists. The loose style allows you to get away with unconfident lines!

HIGHLIGHT AREAS If you keep some areas of your sketch without colour it will indicate highlights. This allows your chosen background colour to become the highlights. In this example the effect is most evident in the hair and clothes, helping to bring your drawing to life!

18 Soft Clone image back

Zoom into the area where you sketched the background strokes. With your Soft Cloner brush set at 100%, brush over the areas you want to bring back (in this example it’s the arm). The Soft Cloner brush is a tool that tends to spread out a little bit, so be careful not to use too large of a brush. Remember, you can always Ctrl/Cm d+Z and try again, it doesn’t have to perfect first time.

19 Finishing up your drawing

  That’s it, your drawing is complete! For the final step you can play with the Equalizer to get more, or less, contrast. Also, consider warming up your drawing in Photoshop for an alternative look.

How to create a ‘sketchy style’ pencil drawing

BACKGROUND Keep the background simple to bring the focus to your subject. Just a few strokes in the background will help to bring your subject forward and create depth

BLENDING Do not over blend in the clothes or hair area. Let the beauty of the line and brushwork show through. Most of your blending will be in the shadows on the face, arms and hands

ERASER TOOL Use the Eraser tool to create the catch lights in the eyes and lips. This tool is also used to create highlights in the rings and the necklace

32

CONTOUR LINES Keep your lines free, loose and deliberate when drawing out your initial sketch, as these lines will become an intricate part of your drawing. Have your lines vary from thick and thin for more interest and realism

Primer

Erasers

 BRUSH CATEGORY 

 Erasers If you thought erasers were only good for rubbing out mistakes, take a look at these much ignored variants and erase your way to a masterpiece!

PRIMER 

s a traditional artist, when drawing, you would not have relied only on your drawing media to make a picture. You would also have made great use of erasers – particularly when using media such as charcoal, chalk or pastels. When using Corel Painter, we tend to rely on other correction techniques, such as unlimited Undo. But Painter has erasers too, and their usefulness is not limited to simply rubbing out mistakes. By establishing your drawing in very dark tones, you can actually paint with erasers, subtly lightening tones already laid down to create midtones and highlights. Painter features a group of 25 eraser variants, which range from hard-edged erasers through to soft erasers. You’ll also �ind a number of ‘Bleach’ erasers which gently lighten tones. You’ll see the f ull range of erasers opposite, and we’ve created an image by using them. If, like many Painter u sers, you’ve passed the erasers by without a second glance, take another look at these powerful painting tools, and experience the act of drawing and painting by removing areas rather than adding them. In terms of erasers, less is de�initely more!

BLEACH ERASERS Here, one of the Bleach eraser variants was used at very low opacity. These Bleach variants slowly bleach the existing colour beneath, and can be useful to introduce not only lighter tones, but colour, which appears as the existing colour is slowly bleached – revealing new colour notes from within the colour itself.

HARD EDGES The Hard erasers are especially useful for creating hard edges to your erased areas, which can help to give your subject form and outline. Also, Hard erasers are great for adding gestural, calligraphic lines to your work – creating texture and interest.

How erasers work 

Erase on layers It’s always best to do your initial painting on a floating layer, with a filled Canvas layer below it. This means that when you start to erase you are erasing to transparency. You can then easily change the colour or tint of the erased areas simply by filling the Canvas layer with another colour or tone.

34

Each type of eraser works in its own unique way, and this depends on the particular subcategory of the variant. Straightforward Eraser variants, such as the Erase All Hard variant, will erase the colour beneath down to the paper colour, just as an artist’s eraser normally would. The Bleach variants will gradually erase to white by lightening the colour beneath. The Darkener variants gradually increase the colour density, building to black. All of the Eraser variants are pressuredriven, their effect increasing in line with the pressure applied to your stylus.

Eraser brushes Get to know your tools…

E  r   a   s   e  r   s 

ADDING DARKER AREAS Here you can see the result of scribbling with one of the Darkening erasers. Where with normal erasers you’re drawing with gradually lighter tones, the Darkening variants darken existing tones within the painting – resulting in effective darker calligraphic lines.

1 Pixel Eraser

Flat Eraser

Block Eraser 10

Gentle Bleach 7, 10

Block Eraser 20

Pointed Bleach 7, 15

Darkener

Pointed Eraser 7, 15

Erase All Hard

Rectangular Eraser 10, 20

Erase All Soft

Tapered Bleach 10, 20, 30

Eraser

Tapered Darkener 10, 20, 30

Flat Darkener

Tapered Eraser 10, 20, 30

SOFT ERASERS For gently lifting darker tones out of an area, try using one of the Soft erasers at very low opacity. Remember, erasers can be very powerful, so you are much better using them at a low opacity value so you can gently and gradually pull up lighter tones in your painting.

Erasers that darken! Of course, we’re all used to an eraser removing paint back to the canvas or paper, but Painter comes with a number of erasers that actually darken existing paint rather than removing it. The subcategory of these erasers is set to Soft Paint Thickener in the Variants properties. These erasers can be used to add darker detail to your image. Again, it’s best to use them at a low opacity value, so that you can build tones gradually and subtly.

35

Tutorial

Creating with distance

Creating with distance Let’s explore some of the most powerful ways to create a sense of distance in a painting while on a leisurely walk through the woods

36

Tutorial info Artist

Jeff Johnson Time needed

2 hours Skill level

Intermediate On the CD

Resource files

T    u  t     o  r   i       a  l     

ne of the most enjoyable things about learning the craft of picture-making is adding to your set of tools and techniques to solve painting’s biggest problem: creating a sense of three-dimensional depth on a two-dimensional surface. This is of paramount importance when it comes to landscape painting, and artists have built up a long list of ways to achieve it. The main four we used here are overlapping, distinct planes, linear perspective and atmospheric perspective. These are wonderful, time-tested techniques that have been in use for generations. In fact, this whole effort is a straightforward piece of painting, with few bells and whistles required that are not available to our natural-media cousins – other than some simple layer management. The only tools we will use are the Digital Airbrush, the Soft Blender Stump and the default Eraser. Foremost in the toolbox is perhaps the simplest method available – that of overlapping objects. If you overlap two objects, the mind will immediately assume that the one being obscured is behind the other. Almost half the work is already done. This little painting literally starts at the sky, and works up to the very front in a long series of overlapping objects. Next is a neat little trick that helps create a distinct foreground, middle ground and background. Alternating light and shadow on each layer to create very distinct borders between them is an excellent way to trick the eye into seeing them as separate planes in space. Whereas Rembrandt and his ilk might have started with a foreground in shadow, we’ll begin our little jaunt emerging almost directly into the morning sun, walk through some chilly shadow, and end up back in the glorious warm morning sun again. Linear perspective is a powerful tool to employ in creating depth, because the mind interprets the path towards a vanishing point as a traverse into the distance. The combination of a nice leading line (a line the eye can follow into and through the picture) with linear perspective is doubly useful, and our little footpath accomplishes this dual objective smartly. One technique that’s great fun is atmospheric perspective. The theory is that the more space there is between viewer and object, the colour and shape of objects change. One change is that the object gets lighter in value and cooler in colour, and the other is that details merge into one another and then all but disappear. If there’s a fair amount of moisture in the air, this effect is increased. The conditions we chose here were a hazy morning with yellowish light, which �its the objective nicely. It allows us to paint our background with simple, broad strokes and forgo details almost until we get to the foreground.

 C  r   e   a   t   i    n   g  w i     t   h   d  i     s   t    a  n   c   e 

37

Tutorial Creating with distance

Different values Build up your painting with values and blends

step 02 One forward

01 The sky is the limit

The sky is first painted with a very pale yellow using the Digital Airbrush (which will be our main brush throughout). Next come the furthest trees using the lightest, coolest and least saturated colours. At this stage very little detail is best, with soft edges and the furthest objects nearly blending into the sky.

Put your details and colours where they are needed Nothing flattens a picture faster than a uniform treatment of details. It’s pretty difficult to direct the eye around the picture if everything is in competition with everything else. The same goes for colour, but the effect is greater. Put a patch of bright colour next to a nice but drab detail, and the colour more than holds its share of the eye’s attention. For these reasons you need to plan where such elements are to go, because the eye will naturally go there as well. The background, for instance, would not drop off in space as effectively if too many details were included, or if the colours were too intense.

38

03 Taking the next plane out

We are already done with the background, and are moving closer quite fast. Now block in mid-tones for the middle ground on a separate layer. Very basic drawing is used to suggest a couple of rolling hills covered with bluebells and crowned with a row of scrub trees on either side. Notice how the trees create nice lines of linear perspective to enhance the sense of depth.

06

Still with the Digital Airbrush, add some trees that are nearer. This is accomplished by making them less blue and a little darker in value. A few more small details can begin to reveal themselves. Use a couple of values very near one another to model a bit of volume into the foliage.

04 Roundingthingsout

Build volume in the trees with some lighter values. It’s still too early to focus on details, and simple strokes with a low opacity Airbrush, combined with the Soft Blender Stump are all that are required. The trees on the left are emerging into the light as they recede into the background, while only the tops of the trees on the right are catching any light, throwing the entire middle ground into shadow.

Mixed greens To add interest to the middle ground, some

patches of grass and green cover are added among the bluebells. Since we are getting closer, we’ll use warmer shades of green.

07 Around the hill

05 Rounderstill

Now for some of the darker values. Use a couple of them to build shadows and more volume. Work in a truer (less blue) green to the closest trees. Keep within the general lighting scheme – darkest values will be used for the closest trees, with the majority of the trees on the right in deep shadow.

Next, we’ll quickly paint in some lighter values with directional strokes. Vary the blues a bit with violets and light purples. Now blend things together with the Soft Blender Stump. Start to add details such as grass strands, and a slight highlight on the crown of the hills.

Eye-catching

Managing layers

Draw attention by using extra details

08 Details to draw the eye

A pair of small saplings alongside the trail are a nice way to draw attention to it. Keep things simple, as there will be time later to sharpen details as needed. A little lighter value at the base of the saplings is all that’s needed to catch the eye.

09 We’re here

Now open up a third and final layer for the foreground. Establish the gentle slope of the nearest hill using mid-tones of a warmer bluish-violet, and suggest the path by using warm, yellowish mid-tones for the grass that lines it.

10 Rounder

After painting in a nice mid-tone for the sandy path, begin to model in a couple of lighter values to the shoulder of the hill. In this scheme the leading edge of the hill is going to be used to draw a sharp distinction between the foreground and the middle ground, with emphasis added by throwing the closest part of the hill in some shadow.

11 A little shade

After blending in the highlights as before, start adding darker values to the shadows in the near foreground. This frames the centre of the picture, and provides a strong visual clue as to a succession of value changes that lead back into space. Note the greenery that’s lining the path is roughly painted at this point, because layers of detail and blending will be used to build up realism and textural variation next.

13 Little things add up

This screenshot highlights a couple of little moves that are helpful in creating maximum distance. Use a slightly larger brush for the dabs as you work closer, to reinforce scale.

T    u  t     o  r   i       a  l     

It can be useful to work things like branches and leaves on a separate layer, yet too many layers can throw a spanner in the workflow. The method to employ is pretty simple: open up a layer above the one you’re working on, add the element(s) desired, alter them as needed, and select the two layers to be merged by holding down the Shift key and clicking on both layers in the Layers palette (this works with multiple layers). Now go to the Layers pulldown menu (located in the menu bar) and select Group. Once the layers are grouped together, go back to the Layers menu and select Collapse.

 C  r   e   a   t   i    n   g  w i     t   h   d  i     s   t    a  n   c   e 

12 Details,details

Now start building a bit of texture and detail. The sense of depth is enhanced greatly by diminishing details in the distance, so the foreground is the place to build up most of the textures and details. Note that simple dabs of varied hues and values can be rapidly applied, then blended together with a light touch of the stump. Fast and easy!

14 Branching out

This is the point at which painting on a separate layer will come in very handy. Open a layer above the foreground layer, and block in the shapes of the trees and saplings using the darkest tone to be applied to them. Since you’re working on a layer, it’s possible to amend any contours and edges with the Eraser.

15 Cast shadows

Once the tree silhouettes are established, it’s time to paint the shadows the trees cast. By sampling appropriate colours taken from the foreground shadows, loosely paint in the shadows.

39

Tutorial Creating with distance

Final details Light, shadow and the finer details

Lead ‘em by the nose The object of this painting is to get the viewer to follow the footpath through the picture. This was accomplished via a host of devilish means! For instance, scientists inform us that we of the Western world enter a picture via the lower left-hand corner, so the path begins there. It is not too wide, or the entrance would dominate the scene and make it hard to get beyond it. The path itself is an exercise in linear perspective, with its single vanishing point. It moves up and down a varied landscape and is surrounded by details that add interest to the  journey. It disappears tantalisingly close to the lighted background, which is purposefully hidden at its base so as to be more intriguing and alluring. Finally, look down that path and count the succession of groupings of three items (or shapes) – a rhythm which the subconscious picks up and adds to the overall flow.

20

16 Painting light on the trees

17 Barking up the tree

18 Now for the birch

19 Leave-ening

After merging the tree layer to the foreground (remember that the part of the trees above the hill can still be modified with the Eraser), begin applying lighter values. Pay attention to maintaining a consistent light source, and make good use of the Soft Ble nder Stump in the process. Use warm yellowish colours to really bring them forward.

Repeat the last two steps for the birch saplings lining the path. It’s a useful trick to leave the very base a bit darker, because this both follows nature and helps to draw a contrast between the trunks and the ground.

Layers of leaves For the next round of

leaf-making, open up a Darken layer (so as not to obscure the branches yet), while painting in the leaves of the larger trees. We began with a pass of lighter leaves (in the sun) and went back to put in some darker leaves (in shadow), keeping true to form regarding overlapping layers.

40

21 Closing in

After the first pass of modelling and blending, go back and begin painting in more highlights, tex tures and contours to the larger trees. This time, be careful not to obscure these details too much with excessive blending.

Now for the foliage. Start drawing in the leaves of the various trees as single strokes. As we’re now in the foreground, it’s time to enrich the area with the greatest amount of detail in the whole picture.

Now start finalising the details a bit. Take a Basic Eraser set to 100% Opacity and varied in size to suit, and sharpen up the contours of the branches as needed. Once the shapes are right, reduce the Opacity of the eraser to 20%, enlarge it a good deal, and lightly brush over the thinnest branches to soften them a bit and plant them within the atmosphere of the rest of the scene.

22 Wrap it up

Now all that’s left is to work the entire canvas a bit, making necessary alterations and cleaning things up. A few rounds of adding layers of highlights, details and blending are about all that is needed. We decided we would like to make one of the trees a bit wider, and since the layers were separated out it only took a minute or so to do.

Distance 101

The ingredients needed for building up depth

SOFT, COOL AND LIGHT Contrast between the three fields is helpful in creating a sense of distance. Picking the right kind of lighting can increase that contrast a good deal, greatly enhancing the sense of distance. This piece was conceived as being awash in morning light, with a light haze. With these conditions, by the time we get to the background, the entire scene is awash in reflected light and everything is dramatically lighter than the foreground objects. Anything but the vaguest details blend into masses of light, cool colour with soft edges – which will serve to really set this layer apart from the sharper focus of the layers to come. In addition, this layer begins building up rhythms of form, and is suggestive of the overall topography and make-up of the woods. In this case, just a few tree types were employed – which in general is good practice, as it’s far easier to manage placement and rhythm.

T    u  t     o  r   i       a  l     

 C  r   e   a   t   i    n   g  w i     t   h   d  i     s   t    a  n   c   e 

 Back ground 

 Midground  EARLY MORNING SHADOW The middle ground in this scheme is in shadow, which helps set it apart very distinctly from the soft, light background and the bright leading edge of the slope in the foreground. It is placed a fair bit higher than the foreground plane, which serves to enhance the illusion of distance in space. Pictorial alchemists are aware of this trick of perception, and use it to great effect. Linear perspective is a strong element of this layer. The footpath snakes its way through the gentle slopes, towards an implied vanishing point. The lines of shrubs on either side work in the same fashion. Details begin to emerge here and there – most of them placed strategically to draw interest to various parts of the picture.

 Foreground  FRONT AND CENTRE The strong leading line of the path begins in the lower left-hand corner, directing the  journey through the picture. The far edge of the slope is bathed in bright light, which sets the entire plane off quite sharply from the middle ground. The majority of details and textures in the picture are on this layer, a nod to atmospheric perspective. In the same vein, the warmest, brightest and most saturated colours are in the foreground as well. The small saplings are added to draw sharp contrast with the tall trees in the background – a powerful tool of scale relationships that serves to drive home the distance between the two sets of objects. Finally, the dark foliage of the trees combines with the shadows in the near foreground to effectively frame the path.

41

Feature focus

Clone from HDR images

Clone from HDR images How HDR and Tone Mapping can bring a whole new look to your cloned paintings

U R E     T   F EA  OCU S  F 

ur eyes are prett y good at seeing detail in shadows and in very bright areas. They do this by switching from one area to another, and swiftly adjusting to the light or dark (they can’t see the detail in shadows and highlights simultaneously). Cameras do rather worse than our eyes, and this means that many photos lack the detail that was actually present. This has implications for us colour-cloners. If we want to see more detail in a photo we need a way to reveal a nd present the detail in the scene. This is where the techniques known as Higher Dynamic Range (HDR) image creation and Tone Mapping can come in useful. We are going to look at how an HDR photo can easily be produced and Tone Mapped. Don’t be put off by the intimidating terminology, the process we will use is quite straightforward. A Tone Mapped image is not ‘better’ t han a photo straight out of the camera – it just presents its scene in a different way. The real fun of HDR and Tone Mapping is the variety of effects t hey offer. You can use the trial Photomatix Pro version 2.5.4 if you have Windows XP, or the Photomatix Pro 3.00 Bet a 12 RC if you are using Vista. The software is included on the accompanying CD, or it can be downloaded from www.hdrsoft.com. Mac versions are also available.

THE HDR CLONE This side of the image is the clone version of the HDR photo. You can clearly see the improvements made. The shadows and highlights are far more interesting and inviting, and the colours are brighter

HDR and Tone Mapping – the basics How it works

Setting up your camera and taking the picture First we create a blended, composite image (HDR image) using three photos exposed separately for the highlights, mid-lights (normal), and lowlights of a scene. This HDR image will not display correctly on our monitors, so we need to process it so that we can see the extra detail from the three exposures. This processing is called Tone Mapping. When we Tone Map there are a number of parameters we can adjust, and they can have a big impact on the image (we cover these on the next pa ge). Finally, we need to save the Tone Mapped image in a file format that Painter can read. For this we use the 8bit Tif option. That’s it, we’re ready to paint!

42

Getting ready Take three photos with a wide range of exposures: under-exposed, normal, and over-exposed. Set up the camera to take the photos using Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB) with gaps of two stops between photos. If you have them, use a sturdy tripod and cable release (or remote shutter release) to ensure there is no camera shake. Set the camera to Aperture Priority (you need to keep the depth of field the same across the images) and use as slow an ISO setting as you can. Also set your camera to take photos continuously so that a single depression of your shutter will take all three exposures in one burst. If you can’t do this, just take the photos singly.

BACKGROUND DETAIL Look at the background on this side of the cloned original and see how it compares with the HDR half. There’s nowhere near as much detail or texture, making the non-HDR clone seem very dull

Tweak the settings

F   e   a   t    u r   e  f    o   c   u  s 

Get the most from Photomatix The default settings often work well, but it is a good idea to know a little about the effects that adjustments will achieve. First we look at the main settings for the creation of the HDR image, then at the Tone Mapping’s two processing methods: Details Enhancer and Tone Compression. Remember that many of these functions are available in other programs.

01 Generate HDR settings

HARSH SHADOWS While strong shadows are fine for charcoal, if you want a thick and juicy effect, the HDR method will give a greater range of tones (and therefore smooth things out)

BRIGHTER COLOURS Here you can clearly see the benefit of working with the HDR technique. The colours in this vase are much stronger on the left (the HDR version). This has meant a greater tonal range, and therefore more interest for the viewer’s eyes. Notice how it also brings out more detail in the blue areas

The software Which software to use? For this feature we are using Photomatix Pro. But there are a number of programs which can give us HDR, or other blended images. Some of these programs also provide easy routes to Tone Mapped images, and there are still others that provide some of the effects of Tone Mapping without using blended or composite images. For example, Photomatix, Dynamic Photo HDR, and Photoshop CS2 and CS3 cover both HDR creation, exposure merging and Tone Mapping – though the dedicated programs give good results easier. CS2 and CS3’s Highlights/ Shadows filter can give something of the look of a Tone Mapped image to a single, unblended image – as does a powerful, separate program called LucisArt.

 C  l     o  n   e  f   r   o  m H  D  R  i    m  a   g   e   s 

Leave Align Source Images ticked – though alignment should not be a problem if you are using a tripod and AEB. No need to tick ‘Attempt to reduce ghosting artefacts’, unless you have something in-motion in your image. Leave ‘Take tone curve of color profile’ selected.

Mapping, 02 Tone Details Enhancer

The Details Enhancer method produces often dreamlike, images. Strength controls the strength of contrast enhancements (to bring out detail). Light Smoothing smoothes light variations – higher values help to reduce halos. Luminosity compresses the tonal range – more boosts shadow detail and brightness. White Point and Black Point determine the maximum and minimum values of the tones. Gamma adjusts the mid-tone. Colour adjustments affect the colour temperature of the final image. Micro adjustments affect how far details are accentuated. Shadows and Highlights Smoothing, and Shadows Clipping, reduce contrast enhancement in shadows and highlights, and how much the shadow’s range is clipped.

Mapping – Tone 03 Tone Compressor

Broadly, Tone Compression works on the whole image and produces an image closer to a straight-out-of-the-camera photo. The two adjusters that may be unfamiliar are Tonal Range and Contrast Adaptation. The former controls how the HDR image’s tonal range is compressed in the Tonal Mapping process. The latter sets how much the contrast is adapted to the intensity of the pixel values. However, in practice, the parameters that seem to have the most intuitive and useful effect are Brightness, White and Black Points, (colour) Temperature and (colour) Saturation.

43

Feature focus

Clone from HDR images

F  E AT   U  R     E  F    O CU    S   

Creating an HDR image Adjust sliders and values to perfect your image We are going to produce a composite HDR image from three exposures, Tone Map it, then get it ready for Color Cloning. We will use Photomatix Pro, but there are a number of programs that you could use. We will use the Details Enhancer and the Tone Compressor methods of Tone Mapping so that we will have both available to us in Painter, and you will be able to see what each method can do.

01 Generating the HDR image

We open up Photomatix Pro and select Generate HDR Image from the Windows Shortcut options box (that appears automatically). We could use Exposure Blending to produce a composite image and process it, but this time we will create an HDR composite.

02 Creating the HDR image

The Generate HDR Image appears, and we use the Browse function to find the three different exposed images we are going to combine. We will use three files, which you can find on the CD. Once the three images appear in the box’s window, click OK.

the HDR processing 03 Selecting options

We need to set the options for the HDR process. We leave ‘Align source images’ selected (it is by default). We don’t need to select Ghosting Reduction because there is no movement in our scene. Leave ‘Take tone curve of color profile’ selected. Click OK.

Checking 04 the HDR image

You will see the unprocessed HDR image next. This cannot be displayed properly by standard monitors, so don’t be alarmed by the look of it. You can get an idea of how the Tone Mapped image will look by moving the cursor over the large image and watching the little box window (top-left). Save this as an HDR (RGBE) file using Save As under File. If you are unhappy with a Tone Mapped image you can just open the RGBE file and start the Tone Mapping process again. Now click Tone Mapping.

05

Changing the default Tone Mapping settings A Tone Mapped

image will appear. This uses the default settings, that include Details Enhancer. You can use the Tone Compressor method, which can be selected using one of the top tabs. However, for this exercise we will use the Details Enhancer.

These settings are self-explanatory; Strength increases the contrast enhancement and Color Saturation affects the intensity of colour hue. There is no correct setting, you can experiment with Strength until you like what you see. For this exercise, increase the Strength to 65 and Color Saturation to 63.

Why HDR? – more detail…

…more colour…

Capture more detail

Reveal more colour in your painting

Although painters often simplify their subject to achieve a loose style, and to focus the viewer’s eye on focal points, bringing out detail is effective too. Detailed portraits with the subject in a particularly relevant context (work, home, sport, etc) can be more telling than portraits with generic backgrounds. See Andrew Wyeth’s work to marvel at how detail can be used to simultaneously reveal, with great clarity, the look and personality of a subject. And create a mood. Similarly, high detail can really enhance subjects whose interest flows from their specifics, as much as from their overall look. So if your thing is painting cars or aeroplanes, or you are a keen gardener to whom plant accuracy is important, an HDR Tone Mapped starting photo may be just the thing for you.

44

Strength and Color 06 Changing Saturation

A common visual characteristic of Tone Mapped images is the more subtle colouring they have. This is because of the wider tonal range. The colour range is wider and more apparent because we are getting colour from the parts of an image that usually appear to be devoid of colour: heavy shadows and highlights. If you want some ideas for just how powerful an HDR image can be, have a look at the landscapes in the Photomatix website gallery. Tone Mapping can really bring colours to life.

Automatic Exposure Bracketing

07 LightSmoothingandLuminosity 08 Setting the Tone parameters Light Smoothing determines how Photomatix controls differences of light across the image. A setting of -2 will give the most sharpness, and may tend towards halos around light areas, while +2 gives a natural look. We want a little more focus, so we go for -1. Luminosity affects shadow detail. Set this to 3.

The White Point and Black Point settings control overall contrast in the image, and the Gamma controls overall brightness. Moving the slider to the right increases contrast across the image. You can experiment with these too, but for now make the value for White Point 0.559%, and for Black Point 1.672%. Set Gamma to 0.81.

09 Color settings

The Temperature sets the warmth or coolness of the overall colour. The Saturation Highlights and Saturation Shadows effect the colour intensity in the highlights and shadows. We want to get the look of warm sunlight, so set the Temperature to 1. Leave Saturation Shadows at 0, and set Saturation Highlights to 2.

F   e   a   t    u r   e  f    o   c   u  s 

If your camera has these facilities (many do now) take your three exposures using the Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB) function in Continuous Shooting mode, so that one continued press of the Shutter button takes the three different exposures (-2EV apart) in a burst. This helps to ensure the images are aligned.

 C  l     o  n   e  f   r   o  m H  D  R  i    m  a   g   e   s 

Change the setting Play around with the settings and prepare to paint

11 Shadows/Highlightssettings 10

Micro settings Micro-contrast

determines how far details are accentuated, and Micro-smoothing sets how the Micro-contrast changes are smoothed. We will set Micro-contrast to -2, and Micro-smoothing to 18.

Highlights Smoothing reduces contrast, increases the highlights, and is useful for preventing white highlights turning grey. It also reduces some halos round objects. Set a value of 47 for this. Shadows Smoothing reduces contrast increases in the shadows. Set a Value of 57 here. Shadows Clipping is helpful for cutting out noise in dark areas. Set it to 22.

12 Applying the settings and saving the image

We are now ready to apply the settings, and to do this we use Process. T he processing will take a few minutes. You will then have the Tone Mapped image, which is nearly ready to take into Painter. When the finished image appears we save it. Go to File>Save As and select .tif as the file type. Open Painter and the image file. Start painting!

…subtle values…

…and a different world

Achieve a greater tonal range

Create dreamlike images

Many photos make poor and uninspiring starting points for paintings because they exhibit too many solid, dark shadows and blown highlights. Tone Mapped pictures can give you smoother, more gentle transitions from dark to light, and vice-versa. They can help the eye to flow around the image, and achieve a more balanced composition. This approach, used in black and white after desaturating your Tone Mapped image, can make for very attractive pencil simulations. It’s well worth having a go.

Many people who see Tone Mapped images do not need to analyse their wider values or increased details to find them attractive and intriguing. Tone Mapped images are immediately recognisable as such. They have a very distinctive look; an ‘otherworldliness’ that is immediately familiar, but diff icult to describe. The view they offer is dreamlike, sometimes surrealistic and fantastic. They show you elements of a scene you did not know were there, and reveal a level of detail in the everyday, which can change and heighten the way we perceive it. The images show how much we miss day-to-day, even if we take photographs. In this way they give us, not only a fascinating way to paint our world, but a spur to our imagination to maybe try painting in a different way and experiment more.

45

Tutorial Paint like Renoir

Paint like: Renoir

We take a closer look at one of Auguste Renoir’s paintings and try to learn more about the most characteristic Impressionist-style features… Tutorial info Artist

Joanna Michalack Time needed

3 hours Skill level

Intermediate On the CD

Sketch and final image

46

hy shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.” Renoir’s paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated colour, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects, which he would not �inish until it was as realistic as possible. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely bru shed touches of colour, so that his �igures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings. In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water in the open air, he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the colour of shadows is neither brown or black, but the re�lected colour of the objects surrounding them. The works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid-1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more

disciplined, formal technique to portraits and �igure paintings – particularly of women, such as The Bathers , which was created during 1884-87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path. For the next few years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. This is sometimes called his “Ingres” period or “dry” period, as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasised the outlines of �igures. In a painting such as The Umbrellas , featured in t his tutorial, Renoir’s change in practice is evident. The painting was begun around 1881, before the tr ip to Italy, and the right-hand side of the canvas betrays a �luffy handling that is characteristic of his work at this time.

The work was �inished some four years later, and the much tighter, structured and linear approach differentiates t he lefthand side of the painting. After 1890 Renoir changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed colour as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, �ine examples of which are Two Girls At The Piano , 1892, and Les Baigneuses , 1918-19. The latter painting is the most t ypical and successful of Renoir’s late, abundantly �leshed, nudes. A proli�ic artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir’s style made his paintings some of the most well-known works in the history of art. For more information on Renoir and his work go to www.renoir.org.yu.

“In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested  details through freely brushed touches of colour”

Sparkling colour

Freely brushed touches

Softly fusing

The Impressionists’ style mixes vibrant light and saturated colours to create the illusion of movement and transitory moments 

Renoir, in his Impressionistic phase, painted with characteristic freely brushed touches of colour – the outlines are dissolved and the figures merge with the backgrounds, as is the case with the lady behind the girl 

In Renoir’s “dry” period, the outlines of figures are more precisely defined, and the form is more constant 

T    u  t     o  r   i       a  l      P   a  i    n   t   l    i    k    e  R   e  n   o  i    r 

47

Tutorial Paint like Renoir

Sketch and colour Sketch a copy and start painting

Online galleries If you’re looking for good-quality reproductions of great masters and artists overall, you certainly need to visit Art Renewal Center at www.artrenewal.org . It’s a great source of art that’s still growing.

a 01 Making copy

We chose a fragment from the Impressionistic side of the painting (the righthand side) to work on. When you make a copy it is important to get the proportions of the painting right. The best way is to draw a basic sketch over a file of the original – it’s much faster than having to draw it from scratch.

03 Colour palette

We created a colour palette on a separate layer. Because the colours will strongly blend with each other it’s better to use some bright and clear hues too (you can also find these on the CD).

02 Sketch

We made a loose sketch with the Fine Point Pen (FPP) here. Because of the specific style it is not necessary to worry about details – it’s just about getting the overall composition. (You can find the sketch on the CD.)

04 Colour map

On a layer under the sketch we filled in the basic colours with the FPP again, creating something like a colour map, which we will later add shading and more hues to.

05 RealBristleBrushes

For most of the painting we used Real Oils Short and a bit of Real Round. They imitate actual painting brushes well and work similarly to a real brush, which means you’ll add a new layer of colour with every stroke and the colours will blend when you paint with one continuous stroke.

Shortcuts You can use these shortcuts to save time and make your work easier: Ctrl/Cmd+Alt – Colour picker, Ctrl/Cmd+Z – Undo, Holding Space (you can move the image freely with your pen or mouse), [ & ] – resizing brush.

48

06 Starting to paint

Now we can start the actual painting. We added the first colours (on a new layer above the sketch) with Real Oils Short (Opacity between 30% and 50%, and even higher when we wanted a stronger tone).

07 The background

We then turned our attention to the figures in the background. They are not very detailed or defined, which means we can paint more freely. To paint the darker parts or some visible detail s we set the brush to higher Opacity, or used the FPP and Grainy Water.

Custom brush palette

08 The man on the right side

The man’s coat shows more Impressionistic features so we had to use many colours and paint with shorter strokes. We also started to work on the big umbrella in the middle.

09 Stroke features

It’s obviously more difficult to copy an Impressionist painting than a picture with precisely defined shapes and lines. You need to pay particular attention to brush stroke s – their directions, strength and pressure. These features decide the specifics of the painting style. Here it is downwards strokes.

T    u  t     o  r   i       a  l     

It makes things much easier if you create your own brush set with the brushes you use most often. This way you don’t have to look through the whole brush list every time you change tools. You just need to drag the brush symbol on the free space in Painter and a window will be created automatically. You can add more brushes to this personal set later on and control the size of the little window. Now you will have all your favourite tools always at hand.

P   a  i    n   t   l    i    k    e  R   e  n   o  i    r 

it works 10 How as a whole It is good to take a break from time to time and look at your picture from a distance. It helps to see how it works as a whole. Working on a small area means that you don’t see the entire painting, so it is easy to overlook things. We can also check if the details are visible enough because we have to remember that most of them will disappear after resizing.

11 Painting the dress

First we need to define the shape of the sleeve, which is the most recognisable part of the woman’s dress. We used the FPP and a brighter colour that will later be blended with the darker background.

Blending and detail Make textures look realistic

12 Blending

We switch now to Real Oils Short and try to distort the lines to make them less visible but still present. We also add more colour with the FPP, and blend it softly with Oils Short set to very low Opacity.

13 Colourdetail

When we’re more or less satisfied with the blending, we fill the shape with more hues and many short strokes. Even if not clearly defined, the fabric has to look soft, like velvet.

14 Decoration

We will come back to the sleeve later to add more details and change or fix anything that’s not quite right. Now we move to the decorative piece. We add some spots, star ting with the darker colours and finishing with the brightes t ones. Here we used the FPP and Grainy Water (on very low Opacity).

49

Tutorial Paint like Renoir

Finishing details Faces, hats and hair – details that complete your painting

Merging layers If you create many layers your computer might slow down. To avoid this, merge layers from time to time (try to keep three layers at most – background, lineart and the actual painting). If you are still unsure when overpainting your previous work to correct it, you can save your picture in a separate file keeping all the layers, so you can always go back.

15 Filling the free space

Because we cut out only a fragment of the painting, we had to remove the basket, which the girl on the left side is holding. It would have been a bit distracting for the composition if we had left it. So now we have to paint the missing part of one of the dresses. But what to do with all the remaining space?

17 The woman’s face

The richly dressed woman with the big umbrella is the centre of the scene, so she draws our attention at first glimpse. Her face is very bright, the features more sketched than painted. We still use Oils Short, wit h help from the FPP and Soft Blender.

16 Lovelylittlebrushstrokes

After some struggling we decided to leave it empty, because this way we could paint more of the most characteristic features in Renoir’s style. The actual painting here is made of many short brush strokes that blend several colours with each other. We try to show it on the dress and ground, using Real Oils Short again.

18 Another sleeve

We’ll probably come back to change some details on the woman’s face, but for now we move to the two little girls in the foreground. We added bits of blue, grey and yellow to the green basic colour of the older girl’s sleeve. We use the same method as when painting the woman’s sleeve.

little 22 The girl

20 ... that isn’t white

We continue to work on the hat using Oils Short to blend the colours and soften the edges. At the end we repaint the brightest elements to make them more visible and defined.

50

21 Redhead

After painting the older girl’s face we finish her red hair. We used the brightest reds and oranges from our palette to mark the brightest parts, and yellows to paint in the highlights.

Now we can finally move to the girl with the hoop. We painted the basic colours for her before, so now we just need to add the details. She’s the most colourful and detailed part of the painting.

19 The white hat…

This is the brightest spot in the picture. We used the FPP to define the colours, adding different shades from our colour palette. It looks very messy now.

Trees

T    u  t     o  r   i       a  l     

Paint Renoir-style trees Because we chose only a part of the painting for this exercise we couldn’t include the trees on the left-hand side. However, we think they are still worth mentioning, so here’s a short tutorial.

P   a  i    n   t   l    i    k    e  R   e  n   o  i    r 

23 Redrawing lines

First we need to redraw the lines from the sketch to define her features. We draw it on o n a layer over the painting while hiding the other layers. We will merge it with the rest later on.

25 What draws our attention?

Now we blend the colours with Oils Short, and at the very end add some highlights with the FPP. At the same time we work on her face, concentrating mostly mos tly on her lively eyes. At the end we will go back and fix anything that still needs work, as this will be more visible visibl e then.

24 Basiccolours

Because of the amount of details, we add the basic colours again – this time more precisely. We use the FPP at this point and add greens, blues, yellows, browns and greys to her hat, and yellows, browns and reds to her hair. As we said before, the girl is the most m ost colourful and vibrant part of the painting.

01 Looking at the original

The first thing you should do is take a closer look at the original painting and study the st yle for a while – just like we did di d with the rest of the painting. Again, Ag ain, we picked the colours and used some from our earlier created piece.

26 Soft light

If you’re not happy with the contrast of your final painting, you can use a little trick to change it without withou t using the contrast settings. Drop all layers and duplicate the resultant one. Now, in Layer Properties, set the top one to Soft Light and lower its Opacity. Opacit y.

02 Basic colours and shapes

Now, as ever, we paint in the basic colours and try tr y to define the shape of the trees. We use the FPP to do this.

27 Colour correction

We wanted the colours of our finished painting to be more ‘greenish’. We played a bit with the colours and saved it. We open the other file in Painter and choose Effects>Ton Effects>Tonal al Control>Match Palette, picking the green picture as our source file. If you still want to try out other options, you can modify the amount of colours using the settings of this feature.

03 Strokes and details

Finally, we blend the colours and add new ones with Oils Short. Because the trees were painted with rather thick and rough strokes, we switch switc h to the FPP again and use Real Round for the final strokes and touch-ups .

51

Art study How to paint rain

How to…

 Paa in t re  P reaa lisistiticc ra in 

Whether it’s pouring rain, mist, rain-spattered windows or stormy skies, we show you how easy it is to create realistic rain in your paintings…

 Poou ririnn g ra in   P GREY SKIES

By far the easiest way of showing that a scene is in the rain is by having dreary skies. Avoid solid blocks of colour, as it will look very fake. LIGHT ON DARK

Having rain in front of dark areas will help highlight it. You can obviously use any colour background you like, but have some dark areas to let the eye fill in the rest.

SPLASH ABOUT

Puddles are an excellent way of bringing a touch of authenticity to your paintings and are very easy to do.

VISUAL CLUES

To really get the impression of rain pouring down, have reminders dotted around the image. A figure with an umbrella is perfect for this.

We might have h ave a grumble when it’s raining but it gives artists a In this Art Study, we’re going to look at a few handy techniques lot of potential for great paintings. It might be better to be sat for painting realistic rain. The fundamentals are pretty simple  under a cloud cloudless less blue sky sky,, but for drama dra ma and an d interest, interest, a sky filled  and once onc e you hav havee them mastere m astered,d, you yo u can apply them to all a ll with angry rainclouds will win every time.  sorts of differe d ifferent nt scenes for interesting results. results. Let’s dive div e in… 52

Pouring rain

An photo ph oto of a girl sat with an umbrella was the inspiration inspiration behind this  painting.  pai nting. However, However, we decided d ecided to add drama by painting pa inting a downpour d ownpour.. You  haven’  hav en’t got to paint pa int each eac h rain drop indivi indi vidu dually ally - we show sh ow how some cunning application of the brush controls can give you the perfect effect without wasting lots of time. Step-by-step

01 Setting the stage for rain

The only thing ‘rainy’ about our original photo is the umbrella. Before painting the rain, we used Soft Oil brushes to paint the structures, medium-dark skies, and highlights. We were thinking of sudden summer downpours when the warm sun shines intermittently between dense clouds and lends a golden hue to the rain-soaked landscape below.

03 Making a splash

To make the Splash brush we began with the Calligraphy Thin Smooth Pen 10, and went to Squeeze: 2% and Angle: 75 degrees. This provided the long down stroke. Then we played with the angle, added 3 shorter strokes, and captured the whole image as a brush variant. Once it’s captured, experiment with size and angle to get some believable splashes.

02 Then came the rain

We modified the Leaky Pen brush by squeezing it in the Angle slider to 8%, and setting Angle to 80 degrees. We chose a light colour from the clouds, and then went to Effec ts>Esoterica>Auto Clone. A couple of tries to get the effect just right, and voila! We have a downpour! No need to feel guilty – it’s still your painting, just easier.

A  r   t    s   t    u  d   y 

Mist  The cha  The c hallenge llenge in painting p ainting mist m ist,, which wh ich is wispier than fog, is two-fold. First, we want to make it  interesting,  interes ting, and not merely a solid, opaqu opaquee sheet sh eet  draped across the th e landscape land scape (thou (thoughgh that th at may  be what wh at we remember of mists). mists). Mist is a low-lying ying cloud clou d which whic h is alive a live,, revealing patches of  background as it glides gl ides silently s ilently across water or land.  The  T he second secon d challenge ch allenge is to give g ive it colour c olour - a broad white expanse might be descriptive, but would  be a total bore in a painting. p ainting. We want to express the presence presence of moistur moisturee through low colour contrasts, and the way in which we apply paint to the canvas, canv as, utilising utilising cool, analogous colours for a look of calmness using soft brushes and low opacity  strokes.  str okes. In this example, our main ma in brushes brush es were the Digital Airbr A irbrush ush and the Just Add Water  Blender - using u sing small sm all brushes brush es so as not to lose the  detail in our str strokes. okes.

H   o  w  t    o   p   a  i    n   t   r   e   a  l    i     s   t   i     c  r   a  i    n 

[RIGHT AND BELOW] From clear skies to misty haze. Altering the colour palette of a scene makes it easy to give the impression of misty conditions

04 And a puddle

For a puddle on the stone floor we used the Lasso tool to select an irregular shape on a new layer set to Screen, chose a pale beige, and with a Soft brush at 9% Opacity, stroked within the edges of the selection. Even on this overcast day one side of the puddle will have more highlights, and this will add dimension.

53

Art study How to paint realistic rain

Rainy window What’s your favourite way of watching rain? Most say it’s from the warmth of inside, looking through the window. Here we’re trying for that archetypal, close-up look of rain-streaked windows, where the streaks and spatters take centre stage and the view is  secondary. Did you know Painter has  a rainmaker? Read on… Step-by-step An image 01 worthy of streaks

Choosing 02 highlights and shadows

We chose this lighthouse for our example. To begin with we alternated Gaussian Blur with Sharpen, until we got the required soft look. Go to Effects>Focus>Soften and choose Gaussian, then Effects>Focus> Sharpen. Start with an amount of 6 or 7. The intended effect is that of looking through wet glass, with moisture in the air outside.

We want low contrast lighting, but when looking through moisture, whites seem magnified. Choose Effects>Tonal Control>Equalize and move the bottom slider to the right to lower the brightness, and then the top slider to the left to raise the white points. This will also retain some of the focus on the landscape through the rain streaks.

04 Finishing touches

03 The rainmaker

Here comes the fun part! Clone the image. On the Layers Palette click on the Dynamic Plugins icon, choose Liquid Metal, select Clone Source from the drop-down menu, and click Rain. Now watch as rain spatters your glass. Click on the canvas to stop the process. Now drag your cursor down the canvas in irregular, rain streaking motions.

54

There, we knew you would enjoy this effect! To finish up, we sharpened the final image just a bit and raised the contrast slightly, but it’s a matter of taste. Experiment with all of the sliders. When you want to start over, click the Clear button. Even if you’ve clicked OK you can Edit>Undo. Create several layers of rain effects, closing each one as you work on the next so you can choose the best effects later.

A  r   t    s   t    u  d   y 

Colours and rain clouds  Have you ever noticed that your world looks smaller when it’s raining? The clouds hang lower, and colours are quieter  and more subdued. What colours describe  a rainy day?  ATMOSPHERE IS KEY

You could still paint rain falling from the clouds in the brighter version of the beach painting, but it wouldn’t have the atmosphere of a rainy day that folds around us

 s s f u l  e  c  c  u  s n U

 Successful  RAINY BLUES

H   o  w  t    o   p   a  i    n   t   r   e   a  l    i     s   t   i     c  r   a  i    n 

GREY COVERAGE

Greys are fine hues to incorporate in your rainy day painting. Take any grey and mix in the other colours from your painting until you have a whole range of greys

Low-key blues are also great for painting rainy scenes because we equate blue with water. You may find that you enjoy painting rain, so be sure to save your colour palettes

x MAKE IT REAL

We’ve all seen it raining while the sun shines brightly, but that’s the exception. If you’re going to make a believable rainy day, think in terms of sombre, muted tones

DEPRESSING COLOUR

Psychologically, a string of drab rainy days may even make us feel depressed, and part of this is due to the subdued lighting, as well as lower colour contrast

Rainy sky In this painting we have rain falling in the distance, and we painted  it very simply by using the Soft brush effects used in painting the  mist. A sky such as this has clouds that are billowing and white  on top, reflecting the sun - but appear flat and dark underneath as we watch them moving toward us. As we began to get into the colours of this, we decided we wanted to reflect the excitement of  an approaching thunderstorm. We chose a purplish-blue and some  gold tones for contrast and made the water a little choppy, as if  blown by the wind. We hope you’ve enjoyed our walk in the rain together. Contact us  on the Painter magazine forum if you’d like to share something with us, or if you have any questions.

55

Tutorial Create with brushes

58

T    u  t     o  r   i       a  l     

 C  r   e   a   t    e  w i     t   h   b  r   u   s  h   e   s 

Create with brushes

Painting from scratch might seem an impossible task but Painter’s brushes can do most of the hard work. We take inspiration from Bob Ross to show how anyone can have a go

Tutorial info Artist

Cat Bounds Time needed

50 minutes Skill level

Beginner

hough Bob Ross (29 Oct 1942 – 4 July 1995) might well have been the �irst to say his art would never hang in the Louvre, this gentle man in blue jeans, with the childlike sense of humour and �luffy afro, introduced legions of artists around the world to his wet-into-wet oil painting style. In more than 400 Joy of Painting  television episodes, he st ill entrances even non-painters as he completes an entire painting in 28 minutes and entertains with his familiar musings about “friendly little trees” and “happy

accidents”. He is best known for his landscapes and was in�luenced by the years he spent in Alaska. Few painters have managed to equal the adept �lick of his palette knife into a mixture of Phthalo Blue and Titanium White to create, as if by magic, a stream in the foreground or a mountain in t he distance. And yet he never nagged us to paint according to rules, but transported us back to the innate creativity of childhood where, whatever we create from our imaginings, our art is wonderful because it is ours. Bob Ross

made painting accessible to everybody and made us all believe that we too, could paint! In truth, t he only way to make a Bob Ross painting is to use Bob Ross brushes, gessoes, knives, paints and canvases, and to study with a Bob Ross instructor. In this walk-through we are not going to attempt to copy his technique, but will instead draw inspiration from his imaginative, spontaneous style for our digital brushes and reveal how simple marks can suddenly blossom into recognisable forms.

02

03

First steps Pick your colours and start blending them

01

Choose a colour palette Load up the Artists’ Oils Color Set and

make sure that the Display Name option is enabled. This lets you pick out colours according to their familiar name (Colbolt Blue, etc). Decide on the colours you want to use and brush them onto the Mixer Pad. When you have them all, you can save it for future use.

Painting wet-into-wet Bob Ross

painted ‘wet-into-wet’, meaning he didn’t wait for the oils to dry before painting over them. A similar effect can be achieved by lowering the opacity here and there. Dab on blues for the sky, covering two thirds of the canvas. Use a dark and light blue and the Oils>Bristle Oils brush.

Blend until it’s just right! We

used the Just Add Water Blender brush set to a large size and 29% Opacity to soften the random brush strokes, being careful not to lose the variations in colour, hue and light. Use quick strokes, exactly as you would move a traditional brush in blending wet paint.

59

Tutorial

Create with brushes

To texture or not to texture

From clouds to rivers Begin creating your landscape

That is the question… If you’re printing your painting on canvas, you may not want to add a texture in Corel Painter. However, if it’s to be exhibited online or printed on a smooth surface, there are a number of ways to achieve canvas surface effects. We’ll look at a few of these techniques.

04 Bring in some clouds and light

01

Apply Surface Texture… When our painting was

02

Grainy texture effects This technique works

03

Texture with Impasto Impasto Depth adds texture,

complete, we chose Coarse Cotton Canvas in the Papers palette, then went to Apply Surface Texture and played with the sliders. It’s best to turn off Shine – and the rest is experimentation unique to each painting. After you’ve clicked OK, you can still Edit> Fade the effect.

beautifully using brushes with ‘Grainy’ in their names. We selected Gessoed Canvas, applied it faintly to the canvas we were working on and made painterly strokes with a Grainy Hard Crayon. A traditional canvas will show deeper canvas texture in places where the paint is thinner.

interest and character to your brush strokes and to your oil painting, and most of the Painter brushes have a Color and Depth option under the Impasto tab. We chose a bristle brush here, and by varying the Depth percentage you will find the buttery oils are amazingly touchable.

60

We can now splash on some pale yellow that will read as clouds and highlights against the sky. This step can result in some of those happy little accidents, because we haven’t determined yet just how the landscape will be laid out – so think in organic, irregular shapes and enjoy spreading the light.

when to stop can be the 05 Knowing hardest part We continued to blend with Just Add Water and decided to blend away most of the cloud features, but of course you may want to leave some fluffy edges and later add more shape and drama to them. The main thing here is to create interesting shapes rather than ending up with a monotone expanse of sky.

06 A simple sketch

We don’t recall Bob Ross ever making a preliminary sketch, but we’ve made a quick sketch on a separate layer so our illustrations will show up better. In traditional painting you would paint over it, but in digital art it’s just as easy to delete when it has serve d its purpose, and we can ignore it whenever we decide to paint something dif ferent.

07 Paint a mountain

You could begin painting the mountain shapes with almost any wide brush, including airbrushes, oils, acrylics and chalks. We chose to use the Thick Wet Camel 20 Oil Brush set to Color and Depth, varying the colours from terracotta to light pink. We like the realistic way this brush feathers at the end of a stroke.

08 Maybe a few more mountains

We’ve ended up with three mountains in the distance. The dark one will mostly be lost behind the trees, but we’ll know it’s there! Remember to place warmer colours in front of cooler colours to indicate depth and distance. We’re still painting under the sketch layer, not directly onto it.

Bob Ross colour palette

09 Awatercolourstream

In traditional painting you would never paint watercolours onto your oil canvas. That’s part of the fun of painting digitally – we can combine all mediums, sometimes on separate layers, giving us even more freedom to explore the possibilities. We used the Broad Water brush to block in the pale blues for the stream.

10

Friendly little trees The Oils, Thick

Wet Camel 20 brush set to 50% Opacity, and Impasto Depth set to Color works well for small areas like the tree trunks where we just want a base colour on which to build. You might want to use this versatile brush later in the painting, set to Color and Depth at 100% Opacit y.

Light and shade Add shadows, glints of light and some texture

can’t draw a 13 Istraight line

12 Now for a few shadows

Using the same brush in a deeper green/charcoal, we’ll now lay in a few shadows. It seems like magic, as you find shape and dimension in the foreground, and the whole painting begins to take on life and interest. Don’t overdo it. We want more light than shadow.

When you tell people you paint, chances are their reply is, “I can’t draw a straight line”. Well, even for those of us who paint, straight lines are a challenge, but Corel has thought of that too. Click the ‘V’ key, touch your brush to the canvas twice, and you’ll get a perfectly straight line between two points. Click the ‘B’ key in order to turn off this function.

For the glints we’ll bring out one of the F-X brushes, appropriately named Glow. Set it to a small size, Color to White and Strength to about 6% – higher where you want brighter glints. You can also add more opaque strokes with the Thick Wet Camel brush.

And again, back to the digital watercolour brush – this time for the grass. Most of this layer will be covered up, but we want some variation in the opacity, and this will even help us decide where to make shadows and highlights later. These decisions aren’t big, but they must be made somewhere along the way.

Bob Ross typically painted with a basic set of tube oil colours, including Cadmium Yellow, Sap Green, Phthalo Blue, Alizarin Crimson and Titanium White. Select these in the Artists’Oils Color Set and mix your own colour palette in the Mixer Pad, then save your new colour set. We digital artists can become spoilt by the range of colour possibilities at our fingertips. Starting with basic colours and mixing your own is a rewarding experience. We learned in kindergarten that mixing blue with yellow makes green. Now amaze yourself with your own colour expertise!

 C  r   e   a   t    e  w i     t   h   b  r   u   s  h   e   s 

Learn more about the joy of painting

The 15 beginnings of texture

14 Some watery glints of light

11 Block in some grassy shapes

T    u  t     o  r   i       a  l     

Once you’ve laid down some random colours in the grassy area, choose the F-X Shattered brush to stir them up a bit. Leave it at 81% Strength but reduce its size to around 20. This gives some nice, unstructured texture to this area and others, such as tree trunks and rocks.

Bob Ross Workshop videos are still widely available. If you’re interested in this gentle, intuitive style of painting, you may want to order a video and watch his process from beginning to end for yourself. Pay a visit to www. dickblick.com/ vendors/bobross/ #videosanddvds . (You can also order traditional painting supplies here.) You’ll learn techniques that will translate into your digital painting – and who knows, you might even decide to add traditional oil painting to your talents. But you will have to deal with having paint under your fingernails and on every piece of clothing you own. Digital paint is far less messy!

61

Tutorial Create with brushes

Mountain greenery home Create foliage and rocky shapes

Happy little accidents in some foliage 16 Sponge

Bob Ross was fond of saying, “We don’t make mistakes – we  just have happy little accidents”. Isn’t that a beautiful philosophy for what we do? If we take anything from Bob’s teachings, we should embrace this ideal. As digital artists, we’re prone to reach for the Delete or Undo button too quickly. In your next painting, make a deal with yourself not to reject anything that happens on the canvas. So that brush stroke looks really strange? Leave it – and it may become your favourite part of the painting. In painting this way, what we do becomes art rather than a craft.

Our favourite Sponge brush is the one called simply Sponges, and left at the default settings, its texture is beautifully suited to blocking in foliage shapes in the distance. Vary the look by changing colours from dark to light as you paint in the shapes. This one is really fun. You’ll find yourself dabbing all over the canvas.

18 Shadows and highlights for crevasses

Rather than painting with a loaded Palette Knife, it’s best to paint in the rocky mount ain colours with other brushes and then use the Smeary Palette Knife 10 set to Color and Depth at only 5%, to spread them and give them shape and dimension. The paints spread like soft butter.

17 Begin to define some rocky shapes

Use the Chunky Oil Pastel 30 to lay streaks of whites, beiges and charcoal, and then, as we did in the grass, use the F-X Shattered brush to texture them. Vary the size of the brush as you go. Our mountain is taking on personality.

19 A Fan brush for foliage

Here’s a Fan brush variant we created, beginning with the Smart Stroke brush, Chalk Textu red: Size: 70, Opacity: 95%, Grain: 35, Jitter: 29, Spacing: 48, Impas to Color and Depth: 85%, Squeeze: 7%, Angle: 183, Color Expression: Direction. We also sprinkled in some Leaky Pen strokes for added texture.

21 A brush for grasses 20 Leaky Pen to the rescue again

As you might guess, we like this brush, and when we wanted to add some more scattered and opaque texture to the distant trees, it fitted the bill. Vary the size of the drippy dots it brushes on and don‘t worry about anything but the overall shape of the trees. You can go back in and soften them a bit with the Sponge brush.

62

And here’s the Leaky Pen again, but we came up with another variant we like a lot. Set the Spacing to 4%, and under the Angle tab set the Squeeze to 8% (for now), and play with the brush angle so that you can paint grass growing vertically and at angles. If you set Color Expression to Direction, you’ll also get some interesting colour variations.

22 A brush for small branches

This is the most interesting variant that we came up with for this painting, and it begins with the F-X Gradient Flat Brush 20. Warning: you’ll enjoy this one so much your trees may become very branchy! Set it to Size: 4, Opacity: 100, Jitter: 20, and set Color Expression to Pressure. Vary Size and Pressure as you go.

 A soft touch T    u  t     o  r   i       a  l     

Keep some areas of softness and add one or two finishing touches

25

23 On the rocks

We need some outcroppings of rocks to balance out the softness of our grasses and water. Play with the Palette Knives to determine which ones give you the hard, sharp rock edges that work best for you, and if you create a variant that works well, don’t forget to save it.

Know your brushes

24 Keep some softness

Bob Ross didn’t fill in every nook and cranny with a tree or rock or mountain. Part of the beauty of his art was that there were also areas of softness where our own imaginations could play. If you’ve lost the softness, you can always go back in with Just Add Water and find it again.

 C  r   e   a   t    e  w i     t   h   b  r   u   s  h   e   s 

Finishing touches

Now it’s time to step back and see what’s missing. Maybe it needs a waterfall cascading down that mountain, some highlights on the tree trunks and foliage, or more splashes of colour in the grass. This painting is about experimentationand non-judgemental creativity. That’s how Bob would’ve done it…

Find out how we created our effects

Sponged foliage

A touch of grass

These trees illustrate the lacy effect of the Sponge brush. It can be squeezed into different shapes using the sliders under Brush Controls>Angle tab. It’s good for blocking in shapes of bushes and trees, and varying colours gives preliminary highlights and depth.

The Leaky Pen brush we used and modified to paint grass blades may spur on your imagination for other artistic journeys, perhaps for a background texture or an abstract painting. Play with the Angle slider, Opacity, Size and Color Expression – and your inspiration will grow.

Painting with light

Splashes of creativity

The F-X Glow brush is ideal for highlights. Play with the size and opacity to get awesome effects. With Color set to White, you get glowing highlights that are easy to use. Change to a vibrant colour, and it behaves like a soft airbrush that paints in neon.

The first time we tried the Leaky Pen brush we wondered how it could be useful, but it soon became a favourite. We like it because in its default setting it looks like paint dripping from a wet paint brush, and adds a painterly look wherever we use it.

Fan brush effects

Watery mist

This is the variant we used to make some of the foliage. Traditional fan brushes have limited uses, but every painter has at least one. Ours is versatile – it can paint transparently or with Impasto Depth, and change the Size/Squeeze setting etc, for any number of variants.

The Tiny Spattery airbrush lends a misty, watery appearance to rushing water, whether it’s down a mountainside or tumbling over rocks. Many of the Brush Controls sliders are greyed out for this, but you can get some great effects via Feature, Flow, Spread, and trying the tip shapes under the Size tab.

63

Primer

Angle Brush Controls

 BRUSH CONTROLS 

 Angle This issue, Cat Bounds is putting the squeeze on some of our favourite brushes, as well as changing their angle and expression

PRIMER 

n this, the fourth instalment in our Brush Controls series, we are taking a peek under the Angle tab to reveal more of the magic that Corel Painter’s brushes offer. We also look at the controls that make them even more unique in the world of digital painting, with painting effects so realistic you sometimes can’t believe it yourself. The sliders within the Angle controls provide added in�luence over brush shapes and angle of media application. Some of the Angle controls work in conjunction with Expression settings, and these offer the most exciting possibilities for creating and tweaking our brushes and variants. The Squeeze slider controls the shape of the brush imprint, making it possible to convert round dabs into razor thin brushes for fan shapes, and even palette knife effects. Very cool stuff! In the main image, the Angle slider was used to alter the effect of the Sponge brush. Usually this would give a much rounder effect, but here it has been used almost like a chalk. Hopefully you can see how the Angle setting allows you to drastically alter a brush’s behaviour to get the exact effect that you want. So, open Painter, grab your stylus or mouse and follow along with me, as we begin our explorations and discover what awaits beneath the Brush Controls Angle tab.

Start with a squeeze Here we used the Leaky Pen brush with Squeeze set to 8% and Angle beginning at 90%. With the original image open, we went to Edit>Clone. With the Cloning option selected on the Colors Palette, go to Effects>Esoterica>Auto Clone. Change the Angle to around 113%, and repeat the Auto Clone process. Some of the elements have been lost, so we used the Soft Cloner set at 44% Opacity to bring back detail in some of the large tree branches, posts and windows. To wrap things up, we used the F-X Glow brush to highlight additional areas where we wanted to simulate sunlight on what was actually a dreary, cloudy February day.

64

THE SOURCE IMAGE This is the photo the final image was based on. The dramatic lighting and downcast look of the child lends itself perfectly to a bit of dry media

Painting with an angle We wanted to create a frame for this vintage photo, using the Image Hose in conjunction with the Angle slider. In a later segment we’ll create our own Image Hose images, but for now we chose these blue flowers (Baby Blue Eyes) in the Nozzle Palette from the toolbox, set the Angle to about 250%, and chose Direction in the Expression drop-down menu. Now watch, as you stroke from side to side and up or down, how the images follow the direction of the stylus or mouse. This brush is also sensitive to pressure, so a light pressure yields a tiny stream of images while greater pressure makes a large spray. Choose other Nozzles, and play with the Angle slider and Expression settings.

SQUEEZE IN ACTION The chalky effect here was not made using the Chalk brushes. Instead, the Smart Stroke Soft brush was modified in the Squeeze controls

 Angle Expression A look at the options in the Expression menu

A  n   g  l     e  B  r   u   s  h   C   o  n   t   r   o  l     s 

WELCOME STREAKS One effect of using the Squeeze slider is this streaky effect, that wouldn’t have been possible with the Chalk variants

Velocity This adjusts the brush feature according to the dragging speed. Drag quickly to minimise the setting, drag slowly to increase it.

BUILD UP TEXTURE Extreme Squeezing gives you straighter lines, which are perfect for adding a few flourishes of extra texture

Direction Direction adjusts the selected brush feature based on the direction of the stroke.

Pressure The Pressure setting adjusts the brush feature, based on the pressure applied by the stylus.

Going off in all directions For this star image we went back to the modified Leaky Pen variant that we used above. The result is very much like the Pen and Ink art drawings done using Rapidograph pens, where the object is to create precise images without colour, using shading created by countless pen strokes, which, of course, can be done using single stroke digital pens. But when you take a multi-stroke brush like the Leaky Pen, the job goes much more quickly. So we began with a new image, chose Direction Expression, and began playing with the Angle controls we needed to lay down the directional strokes. This is a very simple image, but you can see the possible applications using these controls.

Wheel The Wheel adjusts the brush feature, based on the Wheel setting on an airbrush stylus.

Tilt The Tilt slider adjusts the brush feature based on the angle of the stylus from the tablet. When the stylus is held perpendicular to the tablet, Tilt is set at zero.

Bearing Bearing adjusts the brush feature according to the direction in

which the stylus is pointing. A bearing-enabled brush dab shape will dynamically change based upon the angle of the stylus.

Rotation This is a very specialised Angle setting, and can be used in Painter IX, Painter IX9.1, Painter IX.5, Painter X, Painter X.1, and in combination with a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet and 6D Art Pen. Well worth checking out if you paint with these.

Source Next comes the Source slider, which adjusts the brush according to the luminance of the clone source. Higher luminance (closer to white) increases the setting for that particular component, producing a wider stroke.

Random Random adjusts the brush feature on a random basis, leaving lots of room for creative, uncontrolled brush strokes with a bit less control, and a more painterly look to them.

65

Drawing 101 Drawing people

 h e s  i m pl  e g u  id  e t o…  T 

Drawing people This challenge calls for a ‘less is more’ approach, have the confidence and courage to stop working at just the right moment

here will be times when you need to add something more to an image; the foreground subject may overpower a bland background or unbalance the composition by being the sole focus. You may feel as if the ma in subject needs a foil or contrast in shape, size, colour or pose. See www.artlex. com/ArtLex/f/images/�lag_hassam.4th.16. lg.jpeg for The Fourth of July, 1916 (The Greatest Display of the American Flag Ever Seen in New York, Climax of t he Preparedness Parade in May). The Flag painting of Childe Hassam

66

exempli�ies the potent, powerful contribution the smallest, subtlest suggest ion of humanity can have. The viewer can project their own thoughts and feelings onto these ambiguous, non-speci�ic �igures and perhaps imagine what it would have been like to walk along Fifth Avenue beneath t his mass of colour, vibrantly �lapping in the wind. The feeling that something may be missing is an instinctive sense that needs a considered, yet expressive response. The composition of your image can be balanced or unbalanced,

naturalistic or arti�icial. You have the exhilarating free dom to be omnipotent and create a unique impression or suggestion. Dauntingly, drawing, painting and imagemaking demands that you take responsibility for an entirely personal choice. Childe Hassam is a skilful and sensitive conjuror of an impression. His suggestions of people act as a supporting role to his main feature, or the ‘st ar’ of his show. He magically transforms the simplest brushstroke into an arm, face or hand.

D  r   a  w i    n  g  1    0  1  

Divide this task with the magic number three Painting figures is easier if you break it down… Break down this �igure by drawing and painting it in three steps. Wield your paintbrush with freedom, above the sturdy foundation of a proportionate drawing. Aim to capture t he spirit of the pose, some areas are crucial a nd some areas can be ignored. Trust your discriminating, inner-visual critic to decide.

03

01 Blocking in the figure

Simplify the posture of your figure by using shapes that represent the important parts to indicate position or movement. Begin with an egg shape for the head, and use a ‘stickman’ skeleton for the arms, legs, shoulders and spine. Use little circles for the joints, ie: shoulders, elbows, knees, ankles and toes. Larger circular shapes are good for the feet, hands, hips and torso.

D  r   a  w i    n   g   p   e   o   p  l     e 

the base 02 Applying coat of colour

 Use watercolour to mix up the lightest tone or colour of one your figure’s features. Then, with a clean medium sized brush, sweep the watery colour over the shape. Consider which direction you are sweeping your brush. For example, we tried to bring the brush down to flow over the head and describe the fall of the fringe.

01  02

“The feeling that something may be missing is an  instinctive sense that needs an expressive response” Hassam was a protagonist of the A merican Impressionist style, and a wonderful selection of his work can be see on the Metropolitan Museum of Art website (www.metmuseum. org/special/Hassam). The majority of his work was produced outside, keeping with the t heme of Impressionism in both Europe and America.

This website has a very comprehensive selection of Hassa m’s impressions. This particular work is notable for the role the �igures play by bracing themselves against the elements, their authentic body language deftly and sparely represented to evoke the cold and wind Hassam wished to record.

shadows to the figure 03 Applying

 You will have to use your discretion at this stage. In some situations the figures will not need too much detail, distant ones may be best left sketchily suggestive rather than finished and three dimensional. We have polished our drawings with layers of shading to enhance their realism. Keep the marks as expressive and free as you dare.

Monet’s inspirational, ground-breaking work, ‘Impression : Sunrise’ (www.artchive. com/artchive/M/monet/sunrise.jpg.html ) was reputedly painted in 40 minutes. It is t he artist’s speed, dexterity and discrimination when selecting brushmark and colour, which we need to grasp for this t ask. Their courage to stop working and resist the temptation to revisit or re�ine it, leaving it with just enough information for our brains to imply the rest, is indeed a talent and skill that we would all like to have. We take a look at t hese infamous techniques…

67

Drawing 101 Drawing people

Different stances Quick guide to people positions Paintings can bene�it enormously from even a very simple human �igure. The easiest position is the standing still, but this wil l soon become laborious. However, just because you are t rying a more dynamic pose does not mean lots of extra work. A lways apply the principle of breaking the human form down into circles and lines. Then it’s just a case of ‘�leshing’ out t he guide by thickening the lines. In no time at all you have an array of postures at your � ingertips.

 BEND THE KNEES  Part of the left leg is bent sharply behind the right one. It could be hard to make sense of it in t he picture, so imagine and represent it on your stickman. Once again, the folds of the jumper and the shadows help to describe the curve of the back. Decisive but subtle black strokes on the shoes suggest the patent leather highlight s as they glint and bend.

FLAT ON YOUR BACK  Draw your stickman skeleton. Feel free to represent areas that may be concealed when he is dressed; include his left leg for example. Ensure that the angles and proportions that will be naturally distorted are correct – for example, his overly shortened right ar m. Pay attention to the folds of the clothing, they will do most of the work for you. Especially describe the heavy shadows that you find above the socks.

68

 DOUBLE THE TROUBLE 

 TAKE IT ALL IN YOUR STRIDE 

These two prove the rule that small is beautiful. We tried to use as little shading as possible; detail on their faces would have proved distracting and fraught with complex shading and shapes that are nearly impossible to replicate with paint. Enjoy the instinctiveness of simply sugges ting the eyes and mouth, a shadow for the noses, and leave the casual clothes as loosely described as possible.

D  r   a  w i    n  g  1    0  1  

This businessman typically wears very dark clothes, so sometimes the highlights and shadows are hard to define. But a light black wash all over the clothing followed swiftly by layers of black following the downward direction of the folds should work. The hat needs to be a solid black, but the shoes can have more freedom – a mixture of highlights and shadows in well-observed spots.

D  r   a  w i    n   g   p   e   o   p  l     e 

“Enjoy the  instinctiveness of  simply suggesting the  eyes and mouth”

69

Drawing 101 Drawing people

 BACK TO YOU 

This image is a great example of usin g pattern to help you describe t he contours of the figure. The stripes on the boy’s jumper follow both the folds and the arms beautif ully to ask the eye to create the jumper on the pa ge. The folds of the trousers and the shading on the hair are quite detailed in this image, but the shoes are very sparingly suggested.

“A great example of using pattern to help  you describe the contours of the figure.” 70

Your

questions answered Softly does it 

On this issue’s panel… Wen-Xi Chen Wen-Xi is a very talented artist who has created some outstanding tutorials for us in the past. This issue, she shares her knowledge for painting.

Jo Cole Always on the lookout for quick and easy methods of photo editing, Jo examines some nifty tricks to turn a photo into a painting as well as apply a solar effect.

What you’ll find in this section

I recently took a lovely photo of a sunset at the beach, and I’d like to create a soft painting of it as a gift for a relative. I’ve tried different types of brushes, but it either comes out too soft or just a mess! Have you any tips for brushes to use? It would be good if it didn’t involve any painting from scratch!

in the screenshot to the right. Areas of colour are softened and blend into each other. Harsh edges erode into each other, which is perfect for clouds in a sunset scene. Keep brushing over the areas in your image. If things get too smudgy you can use the Soft Cloner or Straight Cloner variants (from the Cloners category) to bring back some of the original photo.

It’s easy to smudge areas with the Just Add Water blender, and it’s perfect for scenes with less detail, such as sunsets 

N��� �

The Blenders category offers an interesting brush in the shape of the Just Add Water variant. If you do happen to paint from scratch then this is a very useful tool for smearing blocks of paint and getting smooth edges. You’ll notice a lot of our freelancers use it in thei r work. But it also lends itself very nicely to the task of cloning a photo – especially where a softer effect is needed. Open up your photo in Painter and go to File>Clone. Now go to the Blenders and select Just Add Water. Drop the Opacity slider down to 30% and start brushing over your i mage. Use a larger brush for less detail, or go smaller for defined areas. You can see the effect it has

 B  e  f  o  r  e 

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

 A  f  t  e  r 

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 [email protected]

SHARE YOUR PROBLEMS! Send in your questions for our experts to answer at [email protected]

74

If any areas look a little overworked just use the Soft Cloner brush to bring back detail. Keep the Opacity low, so there’s no harsh difference between the blended areas 

  Q   &  A 

Glossy lips

A  r   t    c  l     a   s   s 

How do I get the impression of glossy lips? Every time I try I just make them look wet, and it’s driving me mad! Please help! � 

Specular lighting is what gives the impression of a glossy surface. This is when you see a highlight or a spot of brightness, as it is the point where the li ght source reflects off a smooth surface. The position of this is view dependent, and so changes position depending on the angle of the viewer. In most cases this would be centred on the middle of the lower lip, and a little on the top of the upper lip.

01 Determine light source In order to get the specular lighting in the correct position you must determine where the main light source and the viewer’s eye are. In my picture it is a straightforward front-right light, and a front view.

02 Foundations

To start off, begin with the basic colours for the lips. They might look flat and non-glossy at the moment, but that will all change in a couple of easy steps!

03 Bottom lip

Judging from the positions of the light source and view point, I can dab a few dots of white along the middle-right side of the bottom lip. This is why it’s important to establish the light source.

04 Upper lip

Now add a few more dabs of white to the very top of the upper lip, and to the upper right side of the upper lip.

75

Q&A Art class

Dramatic Perspective What’s the best way to get dramatic perspective in my images? � �

One simple, but dramatic, perspective you could use is the single point perspective – where there is one vanishing point in the image. You can draw out a perspective grid by hand (drawing straight lines radiating from a point), or use the built-in Perspective Grid in Painter. To do the latter, go to Canvas>Perspective Grids>Show Grid. Two planes (horizontal and vertical) will appear, along with a horizontal line that acts as the horizon line. To position the grids, go to Perspective Grid Move on the toolbar and drag the outer lines of the planes. You can hide the grids at any time by choosing the Hide Grid option (Canvas>Perspective Grids>Hide Grid).

01 Get in line

I started out with a character sketch and dragged the Perspective Grids into position. To change the position of the Vanishing Point, drag and drop the Vanishing point while in Perspective Grid mode.

03 Dynamic!

Straight, angled lines help to create a feel of dynamism – so some buildings, or perhaps a street scene, will be ideal for a background. Once you have established what perspective you want, you can start to fill in the landscape and the other objects in your painting.

76

Grid 02 Perspective

Make sure you are in the Perspective Grid mode if you want to make alterations to your grid, otherwise you won’t be able do anything!

A limited palette can even be extended to objects that are not naturally a certain colour, such as the trees and hills in the background 

Keep it simple Is there a beneit to working with a small colour palette? I’ve heard many people say they prefer using a smaller selection of colours. SIMON REEVES

Yes, there is a benefit. In fact there are many benefits. Using too many different colours in a picture can cause the image to look cluttered and disconnected. Working with a small colour palette can help to unify a painting and to create a strong sense of atmosphere, allowing you to convey your message or intention much more clearly. Light, warm tones can create a feeling of calm and serenity, while dark, cool tones can be interpreted as mysterious or eerie.

Using a coloured light source gives you an excuse to use a limited colour palette 

Solar powered I have seen some Solarization photos and wondered if it is possible to achieve this look using Painter? I really like it! BRETT SUMMERS

Indeed it can. Solarization is a traditional photographic technique that forces a photo’s tonal range to become reversed. This

is caused when the negative is exposed to a flash of light as it’s being processed. If the original image had a good amount of contrast between values then you’ll be able to achieve some striking effects. You can mimic the look of Solarization by using Painter’s Express Texture feature. You can also play around with the Brightness/  Contrast slider for a bit more ‘oomph’. Here’s how it’s done…

 B  e  f   o  r  e 

  Q   &  A  A  r   t    c  l     a   s   s 

01 Getting negative

Open your photo and go to Effects>Tonal Control>Equalize (this will help things along). Go to File>Clone. Now repeat this, as you will need two clones. Keep one as it is, but go to Effects>Tonal Control>Negative for the other. The result is one positive and one negative image.

 A  f  t  e  r 

02 Side-by-side

We’ll turn both clones black and white. Click on one and go to Effects>Surface Control>ExpressTexture. Select Image Luminance from the Using dropdown menu. Do the same for the other clone. You should have one with dark shadows and one with bright highlights. Alter the sliders until you’re happy and click OK.

03 Mergeexposures

With your two black and white clones open, go to File>Clone Source and pick your positive clone. Click on your negative clone and go to Effects>Fill>Clone Source. Adjust the Opacity until you are near to the Solarization effect. To give a bit of a boost, go to Effects>Tonal Control>Brightness/Contrast. Reduce the Brightness slider, but increase the Contrast.

77

Q&A Art class

Nosing about  I’m having trouble with painting a nose. I am painting a face that’s looking up and I just can’t get the nose right. I �ind that it either looks as though it is stuck too far out, or it looks �lat and as though it is stuck on. It’s extremely frustrating, can you help?

01 

KITTY JAMES

Noses are tricky, and since they are such a prominent part of the face they can’t, unfortunately, be bypassed. However, there are a few ways that you can prac tise your nose craft. By far the best is get ting a reference to look at. This can either be a photo reference (use one of the character files on our CD), by looking in the mirror or asking someone to model for you. These methods allow you to see what the no se, in relation to the angle of the rest of the head, look s like. The main problem is usually not the nose itself, but the angle of i t on the face. If these aren’t practical options, then tr y to think of the nose in terms of simple shapes. Try to imagine the shapes below in 3D, and what they would look like if they were tilted.

Sometimes sketching out the rough lines without too much concern for the intricacies can help you achieve the end result 

02

03 04

Starting out with simple geometric shapes as a guideline may also help you to g et the overall structure of the nose right 

Why coloured backgrounds? Why is it that some people use a colour on their canvas? I’ve noticed it with pastel artists. Doesn’t it interfere with the colours being put on? ROB JACKSON

It does interfere with the colours, and that is actually why people do it. Since you mention pastel artists, let’s look at that medium first. If you buy a pad of pastel paper it will generally be coloured, or be a selection of colours. These range from beige and taupe, through to greys and blues. The general rule is that you pick a midtone colour to use as a base. This affects all other colours and gives

78

an overall colour theme, albeit very subtle. Colours obviously react differently, so it’s also a tool to emphasise a feeling – for example, pick a darker background hue to make the highlights really stand out, or go pale to empasise the dark areas. The use of a toned canvas is used by other mediums, such as oil. Artists will rub a thin layer of paint and turps all over a canvas to establish an overall tone. This colour will peek through any paint applied over it, and also means you don’t have to face an imposing white canvas. Here the same pastel colour has been applie d to two different canvas colours to show its effect 

Reviews CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 £387 | Award winning graphics suite offers something for just about everyone

Box Of Delights The boxed version of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 comes loaded with useful value for money extras, including 10,000 clipart images, 1,000 new iStockphoto royalty-free photos, fonts, professional templates, training videos from www.clicknlearn. com and printed step-bystep help and inspiration from design professionals

lthough something of a linguistic mouthful, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 stuffs plenty in with this latest upgrade – offering several creative applications in one and around 50 new and enhanced features. If you need to produce crisp vector-based graphics and illustrations, trace and convert bitmap-to-vector images, supply desktop publishing layouts, or edit your photos, then Corel offers a convenient, affordable package. Streamlined for productivity, X4 bene�its foremost from a new simpli�ied and intuitive interface, a workspace that doesn’t distract from the job in hand and actually helps guide you with a series of onscreen context-sensitive hints. Central to the suite is CorelDRAW X4, which combines a vector-drawing tool, similar to Adobe Illustrator, with the page layout functionality found in Adobe InDesign and Quark. The Coreldraw.com  community site gives some idea of the kind of images you can produce, including surprisingly large-scale signage, engraving and vinyl cutting from your vector designs. On the desktop publishing front you can now create independent layers for each page in a document, adding independent guidelines for individual pages and master guidelines for an entire document that should signi�icantly speed work�low and reduce tedious repetition. Also included is Corel PHOTO-PAINT X4, a bitmap image editing application pitched at potential Adobe Photoshop users, with the ability to retouch and enhance photos with a series

of similar adjustments and effects. Although it may lack the marquee name associated with Photoshop, it does a commendable job without many of the new features recently offered by Adobe with Photoshop Extended. Support for the latest Photoshop PSD format, Adobe colour management and RAW �iles are new to X4 too, and greater compatibility with a range of �ile formats, including improved Corel Painter integration. Corel PowerTRACE X4 gives users the ability to accurately convert bitmap pixel-based images into editable scalable vector graphics, suitable for the main CorelDRAW X4 application. CorelCAPTURE X4 is a simple one-click screen-capture utility, ideally suited to grabbing images from external sources, par ticularly the internet. An extended selection of new and specialist fonts are incorporated, including OpenType cross-platform fonts and singleline engraving fonts. The amusingly named WhatTheFont is fully integrated, an online font identi�ication service from MyFonts.com, which attempts to identify fonts you �ind or fancy using in future projects. New live text formatting offers real-time font previews, so you can see how the text and image will combine before applying them to a document, saving valuable time doing and undoing work. You can now preview many different formatting options, including fonts, font size and alignment. A new Interactive Table tool gives users the ability to create and import tables to provide a structured layout for text and graphics. You can

Independent Page Layers Users can control and edit layers independently for each page of a document, reducing the occurrence of pages with empty layers

ConceptShare This lets users share designs and ideas with colleagues or clients in real time within CorelDRAW

“X4 stuffs plenty in with this latest upgrade  offering several creative applications in one.” Enhanced Tone Curve adjustments With the enhanced Tone Curve dialog box, Corel PHOTO-PAINT X4 users can adjust their images. With an integrated histogram, users now receive real-time feedback as they make adjustments. In addition, the new Eyedropper tool lets users pinpoint specific colour locations on the tone curve of their image, as well as select, add, or delete nodes along the Tone Curve

82

Corel transforms into Adobe CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 offers numerous options to customise your workplace and settings to further speed productivity. CorelDRAW and PHOTO-PAINT include a workspace conversion option found under Tools>Options to transform both to look more like Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 Price

  s   c   e   p    s

System requirements

 £387 including VAT, 512MB of RAM, Upgrade: £175 430 MB of hard disk including VAT space Website Pentium III, 800MHz www.corel.co.uk/ processor or AMD coreldraw Athlon XP Operating System 1,024 × 768 or better PC – Windows XP monitor resolution (Service Pack 2) DVD drive / Vista (32-bit or Mouse or tablet 64-bit editions)

 Corel has a makeover CorelDRAW X4 comes with a redesigned sleek streamlined interface that includes new icons, menus and controls

 Handy hints A simple, but effective Hints box is context sensitive and offers notes and advice on each tool selected

“CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 is equally suited to PC-based  aspiring designers seeking value for money as it is to professionals” align, resize, edit tables and table cells, convert delimited text, and add and adjust images in individual cells. A selection of professionally designed templates, combining solid design principles with the ability to adapt them to best suit your needs, can kick start your creativity. Designer Notes provide information on the design choices made for the template, tips for outputting a design based on the template, as well as instructions for customising the template while still adhering to design principles. Due to enhanced Windows Vista integration you can

New Camera RAW Support New in this latest version is camera RAW file support, enabling users to import RAW camera files directly from their digital camera. With support for approximately 300 different camera types and interactive controls that provide real-time previews

search for �iles by author, subject, �ile type, date, keywords, or other �ile properties directly from within the Open and Import dialog boxes, by using the improved desktop search capabilities. If you’re tempted to buy the download only option, think again. The boxed version comes loaded with useful extras, including 10,000 clipart images, 1,000 new iStockphoto royaltyfree photos, fonts, templates, training videos and printed help and inspiration. This is a real bonus if you want to ease the pain of learning a new program, or several bundled programs, from scratch. The user-friendly makeover is a real plus, but the learning curve still requires a level of dedication to master. Videos provided by Scott Georgeson of Clicknlearn.com give a good overview of new features and an idea of the software’s true potential. Sadly Corel abandoned a Mac version some years ago, so CorelDRAW lacks the crossplatform user base of products from Adobe, and particularly the CS Suite. Another minor grumble is the potentially productive online collaboration tool, ConceptShare, which allows users to share their designs and ideas with colleagues or clients in real time, requires a monthly sub to be of any great use. Although Corel probably views their potential customer base as professional studios and marketing departments, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 is equally suited to PC-based aspiring designers seeking value for money and a variety of new skills.

Adjustments and Effects Corel PHOTO-PAINT X4 includes a full range of photo editing tools for manipulating pixel-based images. Users can view file properties, adjust image colour and improve image quality

What we like

Intuitive interface, much improved layout tools, live text formatting

A solid productive suite for many of your creative needs

What we don’t like

No native Mac version, ConceptShare requires monthly fee

Features

8.0

Ease of use

  y    a   s   e   w

   t   c   i    d   r   e   v

7.0

Quality of results

9.0

Value for money

8.0

Overall score

8.0 83

Reviews µ[mju:] 790 SW

µ[mju:] 790 SW £150 | Excellent portability and a design to suit everyone, welcome to the super-tough camera that will go anywhere you do… lympus has gone all out to make this camera as tough and ready for every occasion and activity as possible. Built to withstand knocks and drops, with shockproof protection up to 1.5 metres and waterproof defences up to 3 metres, the 790 SW is the kind of camera that you don’t need to worry about knocking around, dropping or getting a bit wet. Not only is this particular Olympus model practical, it’s also stylish. Available in �ive colours: starry silver, midnight black and marine blue for the more conservative user, and sunset orange and lime for those who wish to stand out from the

Located on the rotating dial, as you would expect, are all the major elements of the camera. The Guide feature is something that beginners will �ind particularly useful. Getting the desired image effect, without needing any speci�ic knowledge, you are able to compare the different effects before making your choice. There are plenty of preset effects to choose from, to help shooting at night and to reduce red-eye. The 790 SW boasts an impressive array of 23 different scene modes so you can select the best settings for the occasion. On board you’ll �ind Underwater, Low Light, Behind Glass and Beach/Snow options. However, the numerous options means

“The 790 SW is the kind of camera that you don’t have to worry about knocking around, dropping or getting a bit wet”

Zoom The 3x optical zoom is a bit of a letdown, but it can be boosted by using the camera’s built-in FineZoom feature. This maintains image quality by combining optical zoom and cropping the image

crowd – so there’s a colour to match everyone’s personal taste and style. The rear of the camera is dominated by a large 2.5-inch LCD screen, which makes viewing your pictures and the menu options a simple task. The compromise for a screen this size on such a dainty camera is that the buttons are tightly packed to one side, which can make things slightly awkward. On our test shoot we actually found the buttons to be quite f rustrating. Although each is assigned a handy function for quick access to crucial settings, they’re located very closely together – so unless you’re concentrating you can quite easily �ind yourself pressing buttons you didn’t mean to.

an extensive list, which doesn’t make navigating through them a particularly quick process. Some simple editing features accessed through Playback mode enable you to make some subtle changes to the images you have taken – long before putting them on a computer. Change the colours of the image, �ix red-eye and adjust shadows. Or if you’re feeling creative, try applying a frame, building a calendar, or adding a label to your image. When we used the camera out and about in lowlight conditions, as the end of a cold wintry day drew closer, the µ[mju]: 790 SW picked out some wonderfully vibrant colours. It coped remarkably well with the low-lying sun and bright, re�lective

 Backlighting Turn on the Shadow Adjustment Technology to ensure the foreground subject appears clearly against a strong backlight. The sun is shining through these trees, but the plants are still well exposed

Anti-Shake Blur is a perennial problem for photographers, even more so in low-light conditions. By using the feature on this camera we were able to capture this quick-moving critter with ease

 Rich colours The deep colours of the green grass were picked up beautifully. Have a play with the different exposure settings until you are happy

Slim and lightweight Weighing just 136g with a depth of only 21.3mm, you can’t get more portable

Size Small, robust and built well, any member of the family should be able to get to grips with this model. Once you remember what does what, using the interface is a breeze

84

Useful shortcuts Shortcuts are assigned to each button on the arrow pad to give quick and easy access to a variety of options, including Exposure, Macro, Flash, Timer and even advanced settings.

Olympus µ[mju:] 790 SW Price

Exposure compensation

£150 +/- 2 EV / 1/3 steps Website

Auto

www.olympus.co.uk ISO 100 - 400 Effective pixels Automatically 7.1 selected Optical zoom

Manual

Super Macro mode

Weight

  s   c   e   p    s   a   r   e   m   a   c

3x ISO 80, 100, 200, Maximum aperture 400, 800, 1600 3.5 - 5.0 Max resolution Monitor size 3,072 x 2,304 6.4cm / 2.5” Dimensions Face Detection AF 93.6(W) x 60.9(H) x Yes 21.3(D) mm Closest focusing 136g (without distance: 7cm battery and card) Number of scene modes

23

 Build design You’d think if you dropped your camera in a puddle then that would be the end of it. Not with the 790 SW, it’s shock and waterproof!

“The major attractions of the 790 SW have to be its style and  simplicity - it would make a great addition to any family” landscapes. Using the scene option for Beach/ Snow, we were able to improve the lacklustre colours of our beach shot. The sand became much warmer, and areas of the image gained improved tones to give a far better impression of the location. Fast becoming the industry standard, integrated Face Detection helps optimise the settings to keep the human face well exposed and sharp, while 7.1 megapixels will allow you to print your snaps up to A3 size. The Anti-Shake

Macro Three impressive Macro settings offer the opportunity for some excellent close-up shots. Using Super Macro mode, you can get as close as 7cm from your subject

feature did what it said, working well to stabilise the shot and also helping to capture moving objects, like our hungry, bushy-tailed friend on the opposite page. Playing its part to ensure that we didn’t miss a shot was the Playback button. It switched between Shooting and Playback modes quickly, to helpfully review the last image taken – rather than the cumbersome task of rotating the heavy dial to the opposite side to open Playback functionality. But as we mentioned earlier, the buttons were an issue, especially when operating the camera wearing gloves (something skiers should take into consideration). Another area of concern regarding its size was the manner in which you grip the camera. It’s not at all uncomfortable, but we did notice on several occasions that we naturally put a �inger over the lens, resulting in a stray �inger in our image. This was extremely irritating, to say the least. The major attractions of the 790 SW have to be its style and simplicity – it would make a great technological addition to any family. For the adventurous teenager there are some advanced settings to experiment with, while the water and shockproof attributes mean that there is no need to be concerned about younger children dropping it or drinks being spilt near it. The huge number of preset options and simple editing features make the µ[mju]: 790 SW very much a camera for the amateur photographer.

Scene modes Make use of the camera’s scene modes to ensure you get an accurate representation of your subject

What we like

What we don’t like

A great bridge between compact and DSLR – practise perfecting settings here and then move on

Features

Lithium-ion rechargeable battery Practically bomb-proof Impressive low-light performance Extremely portable

Disappointing zoom function Small crowded buttons can cause frustration

7.0

Ease of use

  y    a   s   e   w

   t   c   i    d   r   e   v

8.0

Quality of results

7.0

Value for money

7.0

Overall score

7.0 85

Reviews Books

Figure In Watercolour £17.99 | Learn essential painting craft through stunning pictures and insightful advice

Capturing candid moments This book is full of great step-by-step projects, including this lesson in painting the unposed figure using watercolour

atercolour painting is a tricky art to ma ster, especially when you throw human form into the mix too. Thankfu lly, help is at hand with this fantastic guide. Figure In Watercolour  features over 125 pages of sound painting advice, ranging from the basics of purchasing your �irst art box essentials, through to image interpretation. The main thrust of the book is based upon the various scenes and situations you would come across within �igure painting; for example, back lighting, dancing �igures and nudes. Following an introduction to your materials you are guided through the fundamentals of watercolour. It’s these basics that really get you off on the right foot, standing you in good stead for larger watercolour projects. The author gently guides you through the importance of the initial sketch, not in pencil, but in watercolour, noting the vitality that this medium brings to the paper. This sentiment is certainly apparent throughout the chapters, with magni�icent paintings springing from t he pages, thanks to their �lair and energy. Much of the artwork is the author’s own, which makes the book even more of a personal journey. You really feel a passion has been invested in the making of it, which means it’s all the more fascinating. A great deal of the chapters

are accompanied by step-by-step guides, using the art ist’s own in-progress images to help you along the way. Each project features a ‘Helpful Hint’ and ‘Procedure’ box to help you stay on track and encourage you in the learning process. Of the many projects and scenes that the book covers, the most masterful has to be the life-drawing section. The author draws upon the art of Edgar Degas to help inspire the portraits a nd create tasteful intimate scenes that really show appreciation of form. Like much of the book, this chapter is particularly focused upon achieving great lighting – something essential for creating a sense of luminosity in your images. This book is a great investment that will happily live on your bookshelf as a much-referred to and well-thumbed friend. If you want t o achieve classic watercolour effects t hen it’s an absolute must. Granted, a few of t he source photos are a little retro, but the �inal pieces are timeless and testament to the great skill of the ar tist-cum-author.

Get kitted out We begin with a lesson in kit-bag essentials. Although the book refers to traditional paint methods, the principles remain the same when using Painter and its tools

Learning the basics The book is interspersed with inspirational pages that give you an insight into the bigger artistic picture. Here, the artist talks about the importance of sketches

86

Authors

Vicenc B. Ballestar, David Sanmiguel Price

£17.99 Publisher

Batsford ISBN

0-7134-8677-5

One step at a time Each in-progress image gives you a detailed idea of how the final images are formed, starting from the simple pencil sketch through to the detailed finished piece

Inspiring artists The book investigates the technique of painting people indoors – drawing upon famous case studies, such as Edward Hopper and David Hockney, for inspiration

Botanical Illustration £14.99 | Achieve perfect petals, sensational stamens and luscious leaves with this beautifully illustrated book Author

Siriol Sherlock Price

£14.99 Publisher

Batsford ISBN

978-0-7134-9052-7

his book is written by an award-winning artist, which means you’ll certainly be in good hands when it comes to learning the basics of botanical painting and drawing. Like the �irst book review, the medium is watercolour, a delicate method for replicating your favourite blooms. This is quite a detailed read, with plenty of information and advice on offer. Thankfully, there is also a large dosage of artwork to help prevent the book from becoming too overwhelmed with text. The illustrations are stunning enough on their own for you to want to buy this book, but with the insightful text it makes it an absolute must-have guide. Brimming with information about the individual plants and �lowers, through to great painting advice, it has everything you need to keep you hooked.

 Preparing the palette This great colour guide sets you off on the right foot for achieving all those magnificent hues and blooms

Symphony of colour Discover the magic of colour with these inspirational pages. They take you through a flower and its corresponding colour palette, so you can replicate it yourself

A bunch of tips This beautiful painting is explained through a list of helpful tips. You may also pick up a spot of Latin, thanks to the plant’s full names

Understanding Digital Cameras £19.99 | Sound advice for choosing and using digital cameras Author

Jon Tarrant Price

£19.99 Publisher

Focal Press ISBN

978-0-240-52024-7

hen learning a new hobby, it’s sometimes nice to get stuck into a meaty book on the subject rather than a reference guide that stops and starts. This book offers an in-depth overview of digital photography and its related equipment, in the traditional chapter-led way. What we mean is, this book is very text-heavy. This will suit some, but will probably put a few off too. Despite the substantial proportion of text, there are plenty of large images to help give the book pace and interest. The chapters follow a logical trail of starting with the basics of menu screens, features and settings, then progressing onto the more complex issues of optical quality and printing systems. Although the style of this book will not be everyone’s cup of tea, we applaud it for its thorough approach to the subject. If you’re looking for a learning guide you can read from front to back, then this is de�initely a good choice.

Going back to nature Chapters are divided into useful genres. Here, the subject of nature photography is explored using bright and inspiring images

Getting technical Understanding Digital Cameras  explores all aspects of photography, including more high-end topics, such as lenses and optical quality

Close encounters Many of the points made in the book are backed up with photographic examples, including handy close-ups to examine the finer points of digital cameras

87

Output

Frame your work

Frame your work  Give your artwork the perfect finish by assembling your own frames with the help of FrameCo’s tools… Tutorial info Artist

Jo Cole Time needed

10 minutes Skill level

Beginner

here used to be a time when the only paper choice you got for an inkjet printer was gloss or matte. Now companies are producing different art media options, so setting up a home printing studio is a real possibility. And a visit to the FrameCo site will provide all you need to turn printouts into professional-looking framed prints. Here we will take a look at the Steel Strap Clamp and the PushMaster items.

You can either create the frame edges yourself or buy them from an art store. Place them in position and use the Strap Clamp to pull the corners in nice and tight. You can glue the edges, but the PushMaster allows you to insert the company’s V Nails to hold everything in place. You now have a perfectlyconstructed frame for your artwork. The Strap Clamp costs £49.50, while the PushMaster tool is £39.50. But

“The FrameCo site will furnish you with all you need to turn printouts into professional-looking framed prints” Both of these are perfect for assembling picture frames and are easy to use. All you need is the frame components, and then these two tools will allow you to construct the frame and get perfect results every time.

88

considering what frames cost, especially if you have large images, this works out as very cheap. Pop along to www. clubframeco.com to purchase. The company has of�ices in the UK, the US and Australia, and it distributes worldwide.

 Assembling your frame Using the right tools for the job

Other options

the 02 Tighten wire

01 Secure the perimeter

Push all the corners of your frame together to roughly get it in place. The first task is to make this nice and tight, ready for the pins to be pushed in. Loosen the side handle of the Strap Clamp and pull the spring that’s around the wire in a clockwise motion. This will make the wire slack and allow you go around your frame. Give yourself a good amount of wire, then place the three corner parts on the corners. The main par t of the Strap Clamp makes up the fourth corner. Make sure everything is nice and flat, and in place. You could apply some glue to each corner before this, to give an extra bit of control.

03 Nail it

Now the frame is held together, it’s time to join it properly. This is done with the PushMaster tool and V Nails. You can get the V Nails in different sizes and for different types of wood. The PushMaster comes with a selection held together on a strip. One side has a coloured film: red is for hardwood and white is for soft wood. The strip of nails will bend, which makes it easy to separate them and pull one off. When you have your nail, place it on the top of the PushMaster, with the coloured side facing up. The top of the PushMaster is magnetic, so the nail sits there nicel y.

 With the corner joints in place, tighten the wire to make things nice and tight. Pull the wire until the slack is taken up, and move the spring anti-clockwise to wind it around the rest of the wire. Check each corner, and make sure the holders are flat and the joins are straight. When you are happy, tighten the side handle on the Strap Clamp.

In addition to driving nails into wood, the PushMaster has a couple of other nifty tricks up its sleeve. The magnetic top part has indented bits. These are for pins and bendable clasps that keep any backing material in place. Simply place into the slot and then push against the frame as you did with the V Nail. The top of the PushMaster has another slot. This holds hook screws that can be put into the back of frames and used to thread picture wire through. A genius invention!

04 Push it in

With the nail in position, line it up so that the corner sits on the frame join. Now simply push down and it will go into the wood. We used a soft wood frame and it was no bother pushing the nail in. But if you have trouble, or you are using a hardwood frame, you can hit the top of the PushMaster with a wooden mallet. It’s best to use two nails in every corner, which will happily hold things together. Once the nails are in, you just have to loosen the wire on the Strap Clamp, remove it and wind it up using the spring. In just a few minutes you have assembled you r own picture frame!

89

Readers’ gallery issue sixteen

Brimming with creative lust, Brad Sutton has a passion for art in all its variety of forms. But it’s his colourful skill with Painter that has grabbed our attention. We caught up with the Californian artist to find out how he does it…

     y      r      e        l        l      a       G

alifornian illustrator Brad Sutton claims it was his boredom with Photoshop that inspired his search for new and exciting alternatives. Intrigued by rumours that Hollywood’s entertainment studios were using a new program called Painter, the digital artist decided to investigate. Years on, with dozens of completed works gobbling up his hard drive memory, he claims to have never looked back. What we �ind particularly charming about this enthusiast’s work is his strong penchant for creating vibrant narrative pieces, driven by his love of stories. To see more of his work visit www.artwanted.com/ BSutton where he also provides technical help and inspirational advice.

pop! It attracts the viewer, the same way stop signs are red. I feature detail, but not so much that it looks like a photograph. Do you enjoy other areas of art? If I get up early enough in the morning, I like Plein Air Painting. You have to arrive early to get the sun coming up at dawn, or when the sun is going down at dusk, so there are good enough shadows. Plus it’s too hot at noon! What are your favourite tools and techniques? The Digital Watercolor has to be the best brush in any program. I actually use the New Simple Water, which allows me to unify the highlights and shadows in a piece. It also allows you to change the mood of an illustration in no time, and pull colour out of that. I also use Artists

“Having the viewer get excited and watching their facial  expressions is the nicest thing for me” What is it about Painter that does it for you over Photoshop? I love the feel that Painter creates. The brushes take on the same characteristics as if you were using the traditional media. Having a person view my work and not distinguish if it was created traditionally or digitally, is always very exciting for me as an illustrator. How would you describe your style to someone who couldn’t see it? It’s been described as garish. I like that assessment. I create colourful pieces that

92

Impressionists regularly, as you get some great textures with this brush. What is the best piece of advice you could give a fellow Painter enthusiast? Paint, paint, paint. And when you’re done, go and paint some more. Also experiment with all the different kinds of brushes that are available, and narrow down the brushes that work best for you. Who inspires you? The people that have blazed the trail prior to me are who inspire me. J.C. Leyendecker

01  Title: Hood ornaments “It is of two hood ornaments,” the artist reveals. “I’d taken a picture of a devil hood ornament and wanted to use it in an illustration. So I conjured up the angel hood ornament so I could  juxtapose the two against each other.”

is a big inspiration lately. His use of colour and the way his highlights pop make me want to stare at his paintings until I get lost in the detail. I also like the work of the German impressionist Heinrich Kley, who has a great imagination and conceptualisation. What’s the nicest thing someone has ever said about your portfolio? When they say, “It looks so real, this reminds me of…” Having the v iewer get excited and watching their facial expressions is the nicest thing for me.

Share your art with other readers These pages of the magazine are given over to you, as a place for you to share your creations with readers all around the world and also to publicise your gallery on our website. If you have a gallery that you’re proud of, send an email to [email protected].

02 Title: Irish pride “This image shows a red Willy’s Coupe with the guy’s arm out of the window.” The Painter enthusiast recalls: “I wanted to illustrate the type of person that drives the car, based on just their arm out the window.”

03 Title: Duck, duck, goose Brad’s charming take on a competition’s ‘Wacky Wedding’ brief meant he walked away with the winning trophy. “I wanted to come up with an illustration that children could relate to.”

93

Readers’gallery issue sixteen

     y      r      e        l        l      a       G

04 Title: At the Coronado “This piece is of a girl holding a parasol with the Coronado Hotel in the background. I thought a yellow polka dot bikini was the most appropriate colour to use here. The image was created using Painter’s Digital Watercolor, Gouache and Smudge Blender.”

94

05  Title: Buccaneers’ find This illustration was generated for the book The Buccaneers Of America by Alexander O. Exquemelin. “The buccaneers come upon a woman with about 12 arrows in her back. I wanted to show their reaction to what they found, without showing exactly what they had found.”

06  Title: Night fight Featuring two ships fighting at night, Brad says he was inspired by an image of a World War II battleship. “I used the Glow tool to get that glow from the blast, but I also used the Digital Watercolor, Gouache, F-X Glow and the Smudge Blender.”

95

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 Yourprofile

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 to the avatar bit and click Remove This Image. Now click Choose File.

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 the image will be automatically shrunk to fit the 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 images are uploaded. We approve images throughout the day, but take into account the time differences if you are in another country. We are based in the UK, so are tucked up in bed while some of you are just starting your day!

of wisdom 05 Words

04 Uploading

Make any other changes to your profile and click Update. Now let’s add some images! Go to Gallery Images and click Add New Image. Make a note of the file format rules and click Choose File to select your picture. Use the Description area to give some information and then click Submit Image.

Once uploaded, other members can rate and leave comments on your image. When you look at your gallery (or anyone else’s), you can see which images have a rating or comments and how many.

97