Corel Painter - 05 - Magazine, Art, Digital Painting, Drawing, Draw, 2d

Official Corel® Painter TM Magazine

Learn to paint digitally today!

Issue five

Official Magazine Drawing still life

Discover the rules of this traditional art technique

Artistic advice and inspiration Explore Esoterica effects Get graphic with Art Pens Tips and trick for artists

Pain t En glish

landscapes Capture the tranquillity of the countryside by creating your own John Constable masterpiece – p22

Special tutorial! See page 40

Concept design Expert advice on turning a sketch into beautifully rendered product art

Visit us online – www.paintermagazine.co.uk

PC an d Mac

Free CD inside PHOTOS | VIDEO TUTORIALS | BRUSHES

New brushes How to create, save and load custom brush variants

OPM_05-Cover2.indd 1

Water art Great techniques for painting a fluid underwater scene

www.paintermagazine.co.uk

Oil illustration Celia Yost reveals how she merges pencil and oils for stunning results

ISSUE FIVE ISSN 1753-3155

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

Art Pens Explore your graphic side by loading up the new Art Pen brushes

Pg 32 Sketch and oils Create great illustrations by combining pencil sketches with oils

Pg 66 Drawing 101: Still life Set up and draw a successful still life scene

ISSUE FIVE

Pg 52

Welcome once more to another packed issue of the Of�icial Corel Painter Magazine. We’ve got a great selection of tutorials and inspirational art, starting with our cover image. Jeff Johnson has reinvented the traditional Constable style and produced an exquisite landscape scene. Immerse yourself in the English countryside and see how he did it on page 22. And to really stretch your imaginations, check out the concept car tutorial on page 40. Learn the fundamentals here, and then start designing your own futuristic vehicles. And if the hot weather (maybe?) is getting to you, cool off by taking a dip in page 58 and learning how to create a fantastic underwater scene, courtesy of a fellow reader! If it inspires you to write a tutorial, let us know and we’ll see if we can print it. Our Drawing 101 this issue looks at what’s involved in making a still life masterpiece, and we give you advice on the Art Pen brushes and Esoterica effects. Happy 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 users

Jo Cole, Editor in Chief [email protected]

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ON THE FRONT COVER

Celia Yost masterclass pg 32

Pain t like

P66 DRAWING STILL LIFE

SIX-PAGE GUIDE TO DRAWING STILL LIFE, WITH EXPERT TIPS AND SKETCHES TO HELP YOU LEARN

P40 CONCEPT DESIGN

OUR DIGITAL EXPERT TAKES YOU THROUGH DESIGNING AND DRAWING A CONCEPT CAR ENTIRELY IN COREL PAINTER X

Regulars in every issue 08 Subscriptions Take out a subscription to the magazine to save money and ensure your copy of the magazine

10 Corel Painter Community The best sites and companies for creatives, and your letters page

97 Readers’ Challenge Haven’t done one of our challenges? Turn here and get started

98 On the disc

A full breakdown of the content on this issue’s free CD

20 Painter showcase

pg 22 Immerse yourself in Constable country with this fantastic Pg 34 tutorial WIN!

YOUR WORK PRINTED TO CANVAS

pg 96

Reviews 82 Pentax K10D We put the K10D through its paces, to see how the advanced amateur DSLR shapes up when it comes to getting great reference shots

84 Wacom Cintiq 21UX The mightiest graphics tablet you ever did see. We take a look at this huge LCD screen that lets you draw directly on the monitor

86 Books

The first in our special pages dedicated to outstanding Corel Painter art

Another inspirational dose of literature to fire your creative imagination – so what are you waiting for?

74 Art Class Another merry gaggle of artistic problems sorted out

88 Japanese Fibre paper

92 Reader’s Gallery Discover more about what a fellow reader is getting up to in our gallery section

Constable

Original artwork by Ryan Mauskopf

Try your hand at this unusual way of presenting your work. The heavily textured and transparent paper is just the thing for delicate watercolour or ink work

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Daniel Conway pg 22 pg 40 Concept car design

Original artwork by Daniel Conway

pg 58 Underwater scenes

Interview

Getting to know Painter artists 14 Daniel Conway We catch up with the young, self-taught artist to find out about is inspirations and motivations for creating his stunning images

Visit our website now!

tutorials

Create inspirational art 22 Paint like Constable John Constable produced some of the most famous scenes of English country life. Learn to re-create his style

32 Celia Yost shows you how Discover how this talented artist work here

40 Design a concept car

Drawing 101 Traditional artistic techniques 66 Still life scenes Capturing a still life scene is a great way of practising and improving your drawing skills. Discover how to set up a classic scene and then draw all the elements

Our expert walks you through the essential skills that go into designing a concept car

52 Create, load and save brushes in Painter More creative options

58 Paint an underwater scene Make a splash with this intriguing tutorial

Primers

www. painter magazine. co.uk

Get up and running… 38 Effects: Esoteric They are a strange bunch of effects. See what they do here

64 Brushes: Art Pen

They are new in Corel Painter X, so get the lowdown on them

Feature focus

Get to know your tools 48 Get the most from our website We give you a guided tour of the Official Corel Painter Magazine website, and the resources available to you for free

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y t i n u m Com Tutorial xxxx

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NEWS EVENTS RESOURCES LETTERS WEBSITES INFO FORUM

Make an exhibit of yourself Online art gallery offers creatives inspiration and a place to sell artwork PORTFOLIO This image, New England by John Harris, is just one of the many works available to buy on the Tokarta website

ou don’t have to wait for art galleries to open in order to get inspiration – the internet houses lots of online galleries that are bursting with beautiful images. Tokarta is one of the best, and offers visitors the chance to peruse a variety of

© John Harris

artworks, make purchases and even set up their own online gallery. All of the work seen on the site has been uploaded by artists, and all of it can be bought. You can browse according to category or medium, and �ind out more about the artist as well as any history behind the painting. In addition to the fact that you can browse and buy some truly breathtaking work, you can also upload your own creations to sell on the site. For a monthly fee (starting at £10 a month), you can use Tokarta’s space to exhibit your own work. There is a Digital category that will happily hold any Corel Painter creations you may have produced. “We wanted an international site that specialised in all kinds of art,” says co-founder Girts Gailans. “But most important, it had to be a site where the artist charges the right money for their work, not bargain-basement rates. A site that is not forbidding and ‘exclusive’,

Tokarta (www.tokarta.com) is an online gallery where you can exhibit and sell your Corel Painter creations

but accessible and welcoming, with a wide range of artworks. We don’t charge commission on sales, or listing fees. Just a modest monthly rental for the space used.” If you’d like to become part of the Tokarta empire, head over to www. tokarta.com and sign up for an account. Alternatively, pay it a visit if you’re lacking inspiration, or if you’re on the lookout for the perfect image to hang in your room.

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

In short

Stock up on photos Take advantage of Crestock’s bank of affordable images f you pay a visit to this issue’s disc, you’ll �ind 50 glorious images taken from the Crestock image library. This site is a fantastic place to come and gather source photos for your digital paintings, and you can be sure of �inding whatever you need. You can either buy credits to purchase images individually, or take out a special subscription to download up to 20 extralarge images a day. You can �ind pretty much anything you need here, and with thousands of photos to browse through, you’ll �ind loads of options for any search query you enter. And be sure to check out the best and worst images of the day for an idea of what to do and not to do! Head over to www.crestock.com and see how you can bene�it from the site.

ART TOOLS

Find goodies at Pixelalley.com Popular Corel Painter site gears itself for new content

hen it comes to giving Corel Painter users extra content and help, one of the best sites is Jinny Brown’s Pixelalley (www. pixelalley.com). On here, visitors can enjoy a wealth of tips and tricks, as well as valuable tutorials and links to great websites. Now visitors can enjoy even more content, as Jinny’s site is in the process of a rebirth. “I never had a plan with the site,” says Jinny. “The main goal was to share content with other users. I hoped people would �ind the site accessible and wanted to keep it very simple.” There are no �irm dates for the new content, so keep checking back!

Creative happenings from around the world

There are plenty of Crestock images on the disc and then visit the site for even more!

Karen Sperling’s Artistry Online website If this magazine isn’t enough for you, pay a visit to Karen Sperling’s Artistry Online site. Here you can subscribe to her monthly e-zine ($10 monthby-month) to enjoy lots of tutorials and articles about using Corel Painter and learn about the special Artistry Retreats. See www.artistrymag.com.

Get creative with 3D stock images and backgrounds RESOURCES

Make use of JLStock’s creativity by using her models in your own work

Use models as the basis for your Corel Painter artwork ombining 3D models with the brushes in Corel Painter is a fantastic way of creating art – turn to page 58 for an example of how it’s done. But you don’t have to learn a 3D program to do this. Just call upon the services of JLStock (http://jlstock.deviantart.com). Here you will find a glorious array of 3D models that can be downloaded absolutely free and used in your projects. You can immerse yourself in winged creatures, mermaids, nymphs, flowers and buildings – all of which are finished to the highest quality. If you do use any of the stock, be nice and credit JLStock, as the excellent work deserves as much attention as you can give it.

Immerse yourself in some watercolour skills The excellent Watercolor Painting.com site (www.watercolorpainting.com) is packed with tutorials and helpful advice for painting with watercolours, many of which can be adapted for Corel Painter’s own brushes.

Become a student at the Manga University Fans of manga will love this great site – an online learning resource for drawing manga! You can take a tour through the free tutorials, picking up advice on drawing things such as hair and clothing, in addition to getting advice from manga professionals as well as buying drawing packs. Find out more at www.howtodrawmanga.com.

JULY

Issue 6 of OPM on sale! 19 goes

For Corel Painter help, inspiration and advice, pay a visit to Jinny Brown’s website

Get the latest issue of Official Corel Painter Magazine from your newsagent today! Guarantee your copy every month or just save yourself the effort of leaving the house by taking out a subscription via www.imaginesubs.co.uk.

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n ts res our ces eve s ew n o inf te bsi we s ter let ces our res ts n eve s n ew

s r e t t e l r u o

e Welcome to the part of the magazine where you can com 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

Good source of knowledge?

Hello to you all. Just bought my �irst copy of the magazine and I love it! I’m hoping it will take me from fumbling beginner to a dazzling artist! I wanted to ask you what you thought about traditional art resources. I know that the software is championed as a

If you’d prefer to contact us via email, send your message to [email protected]

Everywhere you look in Corel Painter, there are examples of traditional techniques influencing how the software works

real media tool, but how close is the relationship? I only ask because I have been given a load of old art books, but they are all about things like traditional watercolour and oil painting. I haven’t got any experience with traditional art whatsoever, so am completely clueless when it comes to any artistic subject. Any advice is gratefully received.

Chris Parker

As you say, Corel Painter is a real media tool but it goes far beyond mimicking how traditional art materials look. A lot of the brushes work exactly as their real world counterparts would, so it is beneficial to have a grounding in traditional art theory and technique. You might notice that our book reviews cover traditional media as well as digital techniques, simply because the two are so closely interlinked. A lot of Corel Painter artists approach the tools as they would real brushes and paints, so you should get a lot of help from your inherited books!

Website woes

I’ve been a member of an artists and illustrators club for a few years now, and we’ve got to the stage where we want to show people outside of the club what we

It’s a good idea to look at other sites for inspiration and the Sketch Motel is a great example of how a simple theme can work very well

get up to. The obvious solution is to build a website, but we can’t think up any good ideas. Have you seen any good ones?

Simone Rougele

Sketch Motel (www.sketchmotel.com) is an excellent portfolio site. It follows a motel theme, where each illustrator is a guest and you can visit their rooms to see their works. It’s a great example of how a concept can be done very well, and helps raise it above the wash of other portfolio sites.

Featured gallery Our favourite reader’s gallery this month

Kenya Lion

Kobi McKenzie

www.paintermagazine. co.uk/user/kobi Kobi is a firm favourite among the OCPM team, as her mixture of subjects is very pleasing to the eye. Now a retired graphic designer, Kobi can immerse herself in digital painting without worrying about deadlines and other restraints. The examples we have here are just three found in her gallery, so we wholeheartedly recommend you head over and view the rest. We particularly like the sports action paintings, although the animal portraits are very hard to resist!

Hockey Player

Bright Palm Beach

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Interview Daniel Conway

WEBSITE JOB TITLE CLIENTS

www.artofconway.com and http://arcipello.deviantart.com Freelance digital artist Corel Corporation, Fightstar

An interview with…

Daniel Conway Though still in his early 20s, Conway’s work has a certain maturity fused with digital skill. We caught up with this talented artist to discover how he went from university graduate to Painter Master

[BELOW] Forget Me Not This took me forever and a day to do! But it paid off, as it’s how I wanted it

ne thing that’s really inspirational is seeing an artist you admire and then �inding out that they taught themselves everything they know. It proves that not all skill can be taught in the classroom and some people are just born with talent . Daniel Conway was one artist that we had our eye on – not only is his work beautiful, haunting and technically

perfect, but he has also joined the hallow company of Painter Masters despite having had no formal training in digital painting techniques. Daniel graduated from Dundee University, Scotland, where he studied digital and traditional animation, which is probably where the graphic feel of his paintings comes from – not to mention the patience to create his digital art. We caught up with Daniel to discover more about how he works, where he gets inspiration from and, of course, to take a closer look at some of his spectacular and eye-catching artwork! You can see more of his work at www. artofconway.com or visit http:// arcipello.deviantart.com and order some prints before they are gone. How do you go about creating a painting? Does it change according to what you’re working on, or do you follow a set routine each time? My work�low changes a lot depending on the piece I’m setting out to do. If it’s a simple character piece, I’ll start by sketching out poses until I �ind one that I like and from that point it’s generally

just a case of getting a good colour composition and laying the foundations. If, however, it’s a piece that involves characters and a lot of open scenery, I will spend a great deal longer working on the composition alone. I’ve spent many a night moving elements around because they just didn’t feel right. After the painful task of balancing everything, it’s mainly just a great deal of time spent rendering the scene to a high and consistent level. Did you come from a traditional painting background, or did you delve straight in with digital painting? Before I ventured into digital painting, I had never really painted much on canvas, if at all. In fact, I think the closest I came was acrylic paints on paper. The �irst image program I used was Paint Shop Pro and it was great for starting out and learning all the simple stuff, but as soon as I bought my �irst Wacom (a small A6 Graphire 2), I wanted to try more advanced stuff, and that’s when I found out about Painter 7. I’ve been creating digital art for about �ive years now and in that time I’ve learnt a great deal, so

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All original artwork by Daniel Conway Motoko Closeup This was a sketch I did while preparing to do my Fragile Shell piece

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Interview Daniel Conway

Sketch of the Colossus Fan art for the game Shadow of the Colossus

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Sub Emergence I had this idea in my head for months and felt I had to get it onto digital canvas. I’m very glad I did too!

“Inspiration can come from anywhere really, but inspiration is just a trigger that sets off a series of other thoughts and ideas” much so that I want to now go back to traditional oil on canvas – so I guess it works in reverse too! What inspires you when you are creating your works of art? Inspiration can come from anywhere really, but inspiration is just a trigger that sets off a series of other thoughts and ideas, meaning the �inal image is often nothing like the initial inspiration – and that’s how I like it. I �ind that photography has a bigger in�luence on me than actual paintings. I think this is because painters are often more concerned about the visual quality of their work rather than the ideas behind the work. Photographers don’t suffer from this since the world is their canvas and it has already been painted beautifully for them. This gives a lot more freedom for creating images with much more interesting concepts.

What are your favourite Corel Painter tools and brushes? My current favourites are the Pencil tool, which I �ind great for sketching; the Sumi-e brushes, because I love their textures; and, of course, the Artists’ Oils. Oh, and I also must mention the Blending tools since they are the best of any program I’ve used. Do you have a favourite personal piece of work? It’s hard to say really; I like some work more due to the visual content and others because of the concept. I would say it would be between Broken Dawn and Bright Eyes. Is there any kind of style that you would like to try that you haven’t already touched on? I think I would quite like to try my hand at combining messy oil painting with

crisp, clean, cell shading, simply because it would be a nice challenge to achieve the right balance. Who are your favourite Corel Painter artists? It’s actually quite hard to distinguish as to who uses Corel Painter or not these days unless they state speci�ically, so I would rather pick out some of my

[ABOVE] Her Silent Silhouette I’m most happy with how the sky and water turned out. I don’t use references so I just keep drawing until I feel it looks right

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Interview Daniel Conway

Bright Eyes This was a sketch created for the Fightstar album booklet. It was also used in the Corel Painter X promotional material

favourite digital artists across the whole genre. First up for me is Yanick Dusseault [check out his work at www.dusso.com]. I remember staring at his work for the �irst time �ive years ago and suddenly realising that digital painting was clearly the way forward to me, so his stuff was a big inspiration. I also really enjoy the work of Jason Chan [see for yourself his inspiring work at www.jasonchanart.com]. [He has some] very nice concepts and [his work is] always wonderfully executed.

What are your plans for the future? Goals for the future would include learning a lot more about creating captivating images, and I guess to that end learning more about my new copy of Painter X. I would also really like to become an art director within the industry of games and/or �ilm; the two mediums are quickly merging together so I think it’s going to be easier to cross over from one to the other. My main goal, however, is to always enjoy the work I do.

[ABOVE] To Sleep This was another sketch I created for the Fightstar album booklet

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Broken Dawn This was another image created for the album cover for Fightstar

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showcase

ATA ALISHAHI TITLE WEBSITE JOB TITLE

Beautiful Day www.atadesigner.com Freelance artist, photographer and designer

Ata’s work first came to our attention when he joined up to the website, and we’ve constantly been amazed by the work he produces. Colour is a major driving force in his paintings, which is demonstrated perfectly with this example here.

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Tutorial Paint like Constable

Paint like: Constable Let’s use digital tools to explore the methods of the great landscape artist John Constable Tutorial info Artist

Jeff Johnson Time needed

3 hours Skill level

Intermediate On the CD

Line sketch

or the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which I set out, but have rather tried to make my performances look like the work of other men… there is room enough for a natural painter. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth.” With this statement, John Constable (1776-1837) turned his back on the prevailing styles of the time in order to re-dedicate himself to wresting some visual truths from his beloved English countryside. Born in the river village of Suffolk, young Constable had become intimately familiar with his environs, making many trips out into the �ields and woods to sketch and paint. His love of simple, un-manufactured pastoral beauty never left him, and indeed many of his most famous paintings are of settings he grew up around. In fact, the area around Suffolk is called ‘Constable country’. While his peers were busy in their studios creating their scenes of nature from imagination, he began to actually venture outside to plan and execute whole paintings based on keen observation of what he actually saw. He began to make visual notation of �leeting light and weather effects for use in later works, and developed a very scienti�ic approach to investigating these phenomena �irst hand. This was a true revolution in thinking and studio practice. Along with a handful of other like-minded artists, he ushered in an approach that led to the great Impressionist movement, which elevated the study of natural light and atmospheric effects to the same level that realistic depiction of the human form had obtained during the Renaissance. His name brings to mind massive sixfoot canvases, but did you know that most of his works were rather small? A good

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Tutorial Paint like Constable

deal of his outdoors work was done on canvases he could tuck under his arm. His oil sketches are a prized part of his legacy owing to their highly expressive and nuanced brushwork. Just look at one of his cloud studies and you will see how brave an experimenter he was. We have often thought that his ability to suggest complex form and content on small canvases with what we would call shorthand notation informed his trademark brushwork and surface treatment. In this tutorial, we are going to use elements from three of Constable’s works, and add on a fair bit of our own scenery to boot. We will borrow the river and grounds from Flatford Mill (Scene On A Navigable River) 1816-17, the wagon and folks from The Haywain 1821, and the glorious sky from Wivenhoe Park, Essex 1816. You may be thinking that blending those elements into a cohesive whole would be challenge enough, but we will be given a full third of the canvas upon which we will extend the scene à la Constable! This will offer a fun test of our understanding of his approach and style, for not only must our subject matter be styled in a fashion similar to that of the master, but also our very handling of paint in creating form and light. Constable is known for innovations in painting, like using sharp dabs of white to simulate dew, putting dots of red in foliage to activate the green and using broken strokes to create facets that suggest natural light. Re-creating some of these techniques in digital media requires

[RIGHT] Cloud study Constable studied the sky and clouds in paint throughout his career. His rapidly executed oil studies attempted to capture oft-fleeting effects of light, form and atmosphere. The result of such efforts is perhaps the largest single body of such studies in all of Western art

[BELOW] Simple strokes Just look at how simply this study is put together, yet how much information it holds about the kind of day and quality of light!

making good use of the right tools. The Wet Oily brush is perfect for working up the basic values, as a loose treatment with it immediately begins to layer textures and colour variation. We will throw in a Spatter Airbrush in places (hey, the only reason he didn’t use one is there was no such thing at the time!) to simulate the spattery �licking of paint he sometimes used. The Grainy Blender will come in handy as we progress, as it creates a lovely texture, as well the Oily Blender and the Round Blender brushes. The �irst order of business will be to bring all of the elements together in a

simple line drawing. Then, using a colour palette sampled from a set of the best web reproductions we could �ind, we will rough in the entire painting, starting with the sky and working forward in nice, manageable steps. We will be working ‘wet on wet’, always painting into midtones with darks and lights. Once we have a working rough, we will work back into the canvas, adding textures, highlights and details that help create a sense of light and atmosphere. The end result should, if we do our due diligence, be distinctly reminiscent of the work of the master himself. Good luck to all of us!

Wikimedia Wikimedia has 35 good-quality large images of Constable’s works. They have good colour and many have the kind of detail that one needs in order to see how they were painted

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Collecting the elements

composition using grabs from the web. In terms of the narrative, we decided to have our boatman crossing the river with a tether (rather than a pole as in the original) as if it were a ferry crossing. There to meet him will be mom and pop, and their rickety wagon. Make your own or use the line sketch on the CD.

First, create a new Default layer and set it to roughly 70% Opacity. Then using a size 7 Charcoal Pencil, draw in the major details. To complete the scene, place the various elements of water, land, buildings, trees and sky following the compositional themes we described earlier. Next comes a Variable Spatter Airbrush and paper white to paint back some lines in the clouds and water so they are more easily covered later.

04 Painting some sky

Each of the steps in this tutorial are designed to add texture and enliven the colour variation. This simple preliminary is no exception. The three tones of sky are applied loosely with a 60+ Variable Spatter Airbrush on a separate Darken layer. Most of the sky will be covered with clouds, but layers of paint to follow will either pick up some of those blues, or only partly cover them. Wet-on-wet painting is a process of painting into colours, so we will always rough in a ground from here on in.

together a colour 03 Putting scheme

The images on the web vary considerably in quality where colour is concerned. The same holds for reproductions in general. We scoured the net for some versions of our three Constable paintings that seemed to have a solid range of hues and values, and sampled colours directly from them using the Eyedropper tool. The result was this fairly warm colour scheme.

All of the various elements in this painting are going to be roughed in with the same brush (the venerable Wet Oily brush, located in Artists’ Oils). Brushwork and brush sizes will vary according to necessity. One of the best ways to learn what a brush is capable of is to wrestle with it in various circumstances. Change its size and/or opacity. Try short stabs with it or skitter it across the surface. Look closely at the kind of edges it creates in each circumstance. Does it work painting into another colour? Is it suitable for detail work if made small enough? Answer these questions and others before you pick up the next tool.

Paint like Constable

01

Let’s go England You can try rough

02 Making a line drawing

Tutorial

One brush at a time, please

Gather together all the pieces you need for your work

05 Look at the clouds

Next up are the clouds. Using a 25 Wet Oily brush and painting on a new Default layer, rough in the midtones of the clouds. Bring out the Variable Spatter Airbrush again for a few transition areas. Consult the sky references and carry the rhythms of the original into the new sky as well.

07 Lighten up

06 Darkness

Using the same brush, let’s lay in the various darks from our scheme. We still have the originals to bounce off of, so the going is still easy. In order to frame a scene, a common compositional technique is to darken the outer edges of the picture somewhat, and indeed Constable did so on many occasions, so why don’t we?

Now we complete our preliminary sky with our lightest tones. The red arrows show the brush direction, namely away from the light source. Using the Wet Oily brush in this way creates an easily controlled edge. It is easy to feather with soft dabs across the edge. Leave the lightest value for last and feather it back. Merge the layers.

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Tutorial Paint like Constable

Painting in the middle ground Work your way through the image with your painting tools

09 Shadows

08 Down and out

With the sky and far hills roughed in, let’s move forward. Next up is the middle ground, starting with the buildings, far trees and fields. The process will begin the same way, namely roughing in midtones of each on a Darken layer. A smaller version of our Wet Oily brush is called for. Something in the range of 10-12.

Next comes shadows and the darker tones. These are painted on a separate Default layer. Take a little time to cover the line drawing, even reworking some of the sky if needed. Loose strokes are fine, as we are trying to build texture. The close-up shows the kind of brushwork needed.

of the 11 More same

Squint Sharp eyesight can be a positive hindrance when one is painting details. It is all too easy to lose track of the effects those details are having on the rest of the painting. Sure, zooming out can help, but area averaging can play havoc with the finer stuff. Zooming in and stepping back from the monitor is excellent for closeup work, but the best overall way to track the effect of a painterly flourish is to have as much of the canvas visible as possible and squint. It is literally one of the oldest tricks in the book of painting.

Now comes highlights, starting with the buildings. It is perfectly all right to fix details along the way, but this is just preliminary work so not too much time should be spent on any one thing. Try to create a uniform handling of the brush. It is a great brush for the look you see here. Merge and save.

Notice how quickly this all comes together? We are already halfway down the painting with our rough, and things are shaping up. Now come the near trees and shrubs, following the process of roughing in midtones on a Darken layer. Flatten the image, save and move on.

12 More shadows

13 More light

10 Lighten up a bit

Here is a shot of some shadows and darker areas being blocked in rapidly. Use short strokes to create as many facets as possible for the most realistic effect, even going over longish strokes crosswise to break them up a bit.

Now we need to add the highlights. As things get closer and more details become visible, paint more and smaller highlights as you move to the foreground. It is good at this point to take some time to make some interesting shapes at the edges of our flora.

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Tutorial

Midway, now what? What’s left for you to do HOUSING DEVELOPMENT

UP, UP AND AWAY The diagonal these clouds make can be followed all the way to the edge of the canvas via the line of purplish clouds and details in the trees. It is nearly parallel to the ferry line and cuts across the strong diagonal of the river for some nice dynamic energy.

Paint like Constable

In searching through ways to complete the composition, we decided to simply continue some of the details found elsewhere, such as placing a few more buildings on a far slope. It seemed logical to do as Constable did, and integrate them into their surroundings by obscuring parts of each of them by the hill, shrubs and trees.

GO TO THE (LIGHT) SOURCE The wagon and horses are going to have to be brought into the same light as the rest of the painting. In The Haywain the light is coming from a different direction, and the values are much darker, so basic shapes will have to do. The idea is to-colour pick using the Eyedropper tool from around the canvas for some likely suspects and model the wagon in the proper light.

FENCING, ANYONE? The retaining wall on the far side was a solid tie-in with the one on the near bank. In the original, there is a hint of just such a wall. Short gesture stabs of midtones with the trusty Wet Oily Brush were quickly followed by highlights in places to suggest the dappled light in the rest of the painting.

UH OH Originally, we thought that a little lively play of the sparkling water and tree reflections would be enough here, but a little something else may have to be included to add a bit more to the overall level of interest.

Water works Reflections and shadows create realistic water

14 Thirsty?

Now we begin to paint in the water. Open up another Darken layer and bring the Wet Oily brush up to about 20 pixels. Time to start laying in horizontal strokes of midtone, starting with a greenish hue. The water is mirroring nearly everything in the picture at some place or another, so the reflections will have to, well, reflect that. That is why there are so many colours in our water palette.

15

Shadows and dark reflections Once the Darken layer is

dropped and the document saved, move on to adding the darker values with the same horizontal strokes. Notice how a little brown makes the blue in our midtones come out. The Wet Oily brush leaves a fairly sharp edge at the beginning of a stroke, so when necessary go back along the stroke to a point past its beginning to soften this edge a bit.

16 Bright reflections

Now, using the lightest tones, we paint into our midtones in the areas reflecting the most light, not bothering to completely cover up what is underneath. Do this stage on a separate Default layer, so you can modify some edges without disturbing the rest of the work.

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Tutorial Paint like Constable

Colouring the detail Now for the carriage, horses and people

Layer cake Nothing frees one up to experiment with paint more than the sure knowledge that what is underneath can be easily retrieved if things go south. Layers are indispensable for many other purposes as well. It can be extremely useful to create an effect on the canvas and erase passages of the unaffected top layer to reveal the effect with precise control.

the 17 Riding waves

After painting in the darkest darks, lightly pull some midtones across those areas. Working back and forth with horizontal strokes plays lights and darks into one another at the edges of shadows, focusing on creating a shimmering surface.

19 The right bank

After saving the image, it is on to the right side of the river. Using a size 45 Wet Oily brush on a Darken layer, quickly block in the midtones. There is a good deal of colour variation in the original, so do a little consulting before moving on.

22 Last but not least

Out comes the Oily Blender 40. Worked horizontally along the waves and ripples, the Oily Blender smoothes out those harsh edges and helps create a nice glistening surface. Use a light touch, or take the opacity of the brush down a bit for control.

20 Dark shadows

The darkest shadows in the painting will be in this area, but it is a good idea to build to the darks slowly, concentrating on colour variation and texture along the way. Merge and save.

21 Light on grass

After blocking in the light areas with the large Wet Oily brush, reduce the size to about 9-10 and quickly paint in the brightest tones in the golden areas (as well as some light and dark colours in shadowy areas) as separate vertical strokes, creating a grass-like rhythm. Go around to all of the grassy areas in the picture and repeated this as needed.

18 A new brush!

The final laying in of midtones! Like before, a large Wet Oily brush is used with quick, vigorous strokes to start building textures. Use a purplish grey for the two horses and a slightly more reddish brown for the barge.

23 The darkening

Still on the same Darken layer as before, lay in the darker tones. Most of the wagon is in shadow, as well the posts and stump. We will be working these items a bit, so don’t spend any time with edges at this point.

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Tutorial

for 24 Best last

Paint like Constable

Now for some nice details using our brightest values. The trick in painting something small that looks like something big in the distance is to get the shape, local colour and basic lighting right. A dab of the right colour with the right shape in the right place can become a very expressive arm or hat or blouse.

25 A little more focus

First order of business is to copy the picture and paste. Then via Effects>Surface Control>Apply Lighting, choose Warm Globe at the settings shown. Since the effect is isolated on a separate layer, it’s a snap to gently erase a bit of the effect from places like the diagonal clouds and anywhere else it is not wanted.

Getting it right Tweak the colours and add the final touches

27 Canvas

26 Last big colour tweaks

Now for a little colour play. Open up a Soft Light layer and set it to 33% Opacity. With a large (70 or so) Variable Spatter Airbrush set to 25% Opacity, paint some light greens into the green highlights and in places on the water. It creates a subtle hue change suggestive of a warmer light. Shift the sky a bit more towards blue using the same method.

Create a duplicate layer and select the lower layer. Then, with Linen Canvas (located on the toolbox menu) as the paper choice, go to Effects>Surface Control>Apply Surface Texture. Go over the second layer, erasing lightly until just enough texture in just the right places shows through. Repeat the operation with Artists’ Canvas very lightly in order to vary up the texture.

Variation over time

28 The finish line

Now for some smaller details added with alternating Wet Oily and Impasto Oil brushes set to about four pixels each. The idea is to search around the canvas and add dabs of light and dark to flat areas. A little red in a field of green (or vice-versa) can really liven up a patch. Then comes the Grainy Blender 30 with a light touch following the stroke direction to blend them into the picture. Finished!

One of the first questions when laying out a project is what kind of surface treatment will the painting have? This project was no different. In fact, surface handling was a big part of the plan. When one thinks of Constable, one thinks of atmosphere and light. His surfaces are richly varied, and his details are sometimes surprisingly sketch like. To develop a way of getting to our own set of details via painterly means, we began early by building up layers of overlapping hues and values with vigorous brushstrokes. Then more and more surface detail was added to create the kind of faceted, shimmering light one would expect to see in an image meant to evoke Constable, using smaller and smaller brushes and applying a couple of different blenders. We went so far as to layer canvas textures on top of one another in subtly amended layers to give the whole canvas a little controlled sparkle.

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showcase

RYAN MAUSKOPF TITLE WEBSITE JOB TITLE

Robot’s Best Friend http://rye-bread.deviantart.com Digital artist Ryan’s work is a glorious combination of colour and character, mixing cartoony illustration with painterly touches you’d expect from an old master. Visit his website for information on how you can buy prints of his work, and email him at [email protected]

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Tutorial Illustrate with sketches and oils

Celia Yost shows you how to

Illustrate with sketches and oils In this tutorial, Celia Yost looks at turning a sketch of a couple of figures into a full painting with an environment Tutorial info Artist

Celia Yost Time needed

2 hours Skill level

Intermediate On the CD

Source files

orking digitally is awesome. I was trained in a wide variety of traditional media: oils, acrylics, watercolours, charcoal and graphite. They all have their advantages, and I still enjoy using them, but Corel Painter is an incredibly �lexible program that lets me not miss them too much. In this particular image, I took three drawings and a computer-generated 3D model, combined them into one composition, and then tried to make it look as non-digital as possible. While I’m a big fan of working digitally, I’m not so fond of the very clean, airbrushed look that often is the result. When working in Corel Painter, I try to think of it as I would if I was using traditional media as much as

possible. Actually, that’s a lie; I try to treat it like I would treat traditional media if my paper had magical layers that I could work on simultaneously and could be as opaque or transparent as my heart desired. What I really meant is that I try to keep in mind things I learned about colour when I was learning to paint, such as rendering by using complementary colours is a good thing (in this painting I use a lot of purple and yellow), to avoid true black, and to try to ‘echo’ colour throughout a composition. Also, I try to keep my hand visible by letting things not be perfect. But I’m probably preaching to the choir. I’m going to explain how I made this image. The 3D model makes the start a little more complicated, but otherwise this is pretty typical of how I work.

Setting the scene Get your basics together

01 Setting up

I started by setting all the layers with line art in them to Gel in the Layers palette. This gives me transparent pencils to paint under. The layer with the model will be my base, and I also fill the canvas layer with dark purple. It’ll be visible through the window, and I’ve decided it’s night time.

02 Figure: basic colour

I need to block in the figures with opaque colour, as right now you can’t see them very well. I add a new layer directly beneath the figure line art, and use the Gouache brushes to apply the colour, specifically the Opaque Smooth and the Fine Bristle options.

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Tutorial Illustrate with sketches and oils

It’s all in the detail Small, subtle brush strokes add realism

03 Clothing detail

Using the Artists’ Oils Wet and Blender brushes, I go back in and add detail once I have the general colours for the clothing blocked in. As far I’m concerned, these brushes are about the same, so I’ll just keep one more opaque and switch between them. I keep a palette with my frequently used brushes open for speedier access.

Using hot keys Hot keys are your friends. These are keyboard shortcuts that can save a lot of time when painting – especially these two: ‘{’ and ‘}’. They adjust brush size up and down, and allow me to fuss with the size on the fly. All of the tools have associated hot keys. The ones I use the most are ‘B’ for brush, ‘G’ for grab and Ctrl/Cmd+ ‘+/-’ to zoom in and out. Also, I find it expedient to keep a palette of brushes that I use frequently while painting open. These custom palettes are easy to create: drag the brush icon off of the selector bar. To see any palettes that aren’t open (they’re automatically saved), go to Window> Custom Palettes.

05 The ghost

04 Hair and skin detail

For the figure’s skin, I use a modified Fine Feathering Oils brush. Under Window>Show Brush Creator, I change the Stroke Type to Rake and the Method to Drip, giving the brush a nice smeary-ness. Around her eyes, mouth and to pick out highlights in her hair, I used a Detail Oils brush. Since she’s fair, I’m using dull purples to shade her skin.

I’m keeping the ghost translucent, so I use the Blender brush, the Fine Feathering Oils brush (unmodified) and the Fine Soft Glazing Oils brush at low opacities. This last tool is modified, changing the Method from Buildup to Cover, so that the color gets more opaque the more it’s applied.

06 The ghost’s shadow

I’m giving the ghost a very transparent double following and overlapping it, so I’m going to lightly go in with the Feathering Oils and Glazing Oils brushes, in a new layer set to Screen at 60% Opacity. I’ve turned off the other figure layers so you can see it a bit better in the screengrab.

07 Background: first attack

I’m now going to throw some paint on the background before going back to the figures. I like to move around the canvas a lot, at least touching on everything before settling down to finish anything. I’ve started to add reflective shadows on the floor and detail to the furniture. I’ve also used the Sponge brush to add colour to the wall.

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I also start adding detail to the books. You’ll note that the drawing and the model don’t quite match up. That’s because it was far faster for me to just draw in any curves, instead of sculpting them in 3D. I draw detail a lot faster than I model it, and it wasn’t necessary to see the basic form.

I’m now going to go back to the girl. I’ve decided that I need more of a directional light source, so I added some purple and blue shadows to her face, as well as a little more yellow in the highlights, blending this into the original skin tone. I’m using the Fine Feathering Oils and the Wet Acrylic brushes.

Paint an interior with features

08 More on the background

Tutorial

to 09 Back the figure

Back and forth Keep working on different elements of your composition

10 Clothing detail

I also went in and added some more detail to her clothing, using the Artists’ Oils brushes and Detail Oils brushes. I’m also going in and cleaning up the slop from my first go-round, where I wasn’t too concerned about staying in the lines. The basic eraser works fine for this.

11 The ghost again

Painting the ghost is a lot of fun. Using the Oils brushes and an eraser, I’ve added some red and orange to his face. Also I use a Detail Oils brush to pick out lines because I think it looks nifty. I’m mostly following my drawing, but in places allowing the color to drift away a bit.

Going about things the wrong way

12 Afterimage

I’m now going to do the same to the after effect that’s following the ghost. Again, here’s a shot of it with the figure layer turned off for the sake of visibility.

This image started with the drawing of the ghost and the girl. Unfortunately, only afterwards did I decide on the setting. This was a mistake, as trying to make the perspective of the interior match that of the figures was deeply annoying and I should have known better. Then I realised that everything I wanted in the interior was essentially box shaped. While my 3D modelling skills aren’t particularly impressive, I could at least manage boxes. And, even better, once I built the model, I’d be able to adjust the viewpoint without having to redo the entire thing. But now I had these pencil-drawn figures and a very hard-edged, digital background, and I needed to make them look like they belonged in the same image. So, I printed out one of my renders, traced it by hand, scanned the trace back in, and then composited the figures on top, keeping the model for lighting and color reference.

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Tutorial Illustrate with sketches and oils

Finishing touches Perfect your painting with further detailing

13 Background again I’ve decided the wall should be dark yellow. I used the Soft Fine Glazing Oils, the Square Conte and Blunt Chalk. I ended up putting the baseboard on the same layer as the colour for the figures, as I kept accidentally painting over it when it was on the layer with the rest of the background color. I used the Straight Line tool to get the edges of the baseboard, as it’s a detail that I didn’t draw or model.

14 Books need to be book-like

All those books still don’t really look like books, so I needed to put enough detail in to make them convincing. I’m not very picky with what brush I’m using here, just grabbing the Artists’ Oils brushes and Detail Oils brushes again. I like adding little bits of hatching with a Detail Oils brush for some variety in brush marks.

16 Floor

I made a new layer for the floor so I’d be able to make longer strokes, instead of trying to paint around the table. I used warm orange browns and the Artists’ Oils Wet Oily Blender brush. These brushes will blend long after the ‘pigment’ has run out, so they’re good at smoothing without annihilating the individual marks.

Get more out of brushes Brushes are the fun part of Corel Painter. One thing I did when I was first learning the program, which I highly recommend others do, is to just play with the brushes. I’d systematically go through all of the brush families, doing a sketch using each brush just to see what it did and what it was useful for. Also, if I have a particular effect in mind that I want to show, I’ll spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect brush to create that. While I certainly have my favourites, (Soft Glazing Oils, I’m looking at you), other people may prefer others. Having fun and figuring out which ones work for you is the important part.

15 Woodwork

Another thing I’m concerned about is that I have a lot of different surfaces in this painting that are wood, which need to be distinguished from one another. For the furniture, I tried to make the bookshelves darker and richer than the table, so more reds and purples for the shelves and duller browns for the table.

17

Window The window’s still bugging

me. I’ve gone in and put in some more reflection, but it’s not enough. So I created a new layer behind everything except the canvas, and used an Airbrush tool to make some vague dark shapes behind the window.

18 Final touches

The last thing I have to do is add some more shadows on the bookcase and the floor. I made another layer above the floor color and set it to Darken. I then picked a dark purple and used the Soft Airbrush at a low Opacity to knock back some of the space, and ground the girl and the table.

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Primer Focus

EFFECTS MENU

PRIMER

IMPRESSIONISTIC For more traditional painterly effects, the Impressionist variant makes a great choice. Again, make sure that in the Colors palette you have the Clone Color icon depressed, or your Auto Clone option will be greyed out in the menu. They key here is that this is automatic cloning, and the software will keep painting until you instruct it to stop.

Esoterica

Esoteric by name and by nature. Take a look at the weird world of Esoterica effects!

Fade away! Many of these effects can be a little overpowering if they are used straight out of the box, and the results are often improved if they are toned down a little. An ideal way of doing this is by using the Fade command. Once you’ve applied the effect to your image, go to Edit>Fade. By default, the Fade amount is set to 50%, but you can change this to any value you want.

he dictionary de�ines the word ‘esoteric’ as “understood by or meant for only the select few who have special knowledge or interest” – such a de�inition could easily apply to this particular category of effects and illustrates how these �ilters came to have such a title. However, it’s all too easy to dismiss a selection of seemingly obscure and strange effects without a second glance but as always with Corel Painter X, when applied with imagination and creativity, many of the effects within the Esoterica category can be used with some very interesting results. It’s true to say that there are a few effects within the category that are indeed obscure, there are as many that can raise your Corel Painter creativity to a whole new level. Here we’re going to examine each one individually, show you the best of them and look at exactly how to apply them to your Corel Painter art. We’re going to look at two of the most useful features – Auto Clone and Auto Van Gogh – in more detail. If you know just how to use them, these effects can create convincing paintings for you in just a couple of mouse clicks. Although you might not be entirely satis�ied with the ‘out of the box’ results, both of these effects can be a great shortcut to an effective under-painting, which you can then paint on top of. And if you feel like going a little wild and experiencing the more surreal side of Corel Painter effects, we’ll show you how you can adapt the other Esoterica effects to add the ‘wow’ factor to your images.

USING AUTO CLONE Using Effects>Esoterica> Auto Clone, you can use any Captured Dab type brush and Corel Painter will actually paint the picture for you. Start by going to File> Quick Clone. On the cloned copy, choose a Captured Dab type brush, click the Clone Color icon and simply watch Corel Painter paint. Click with your mouse to stop the painting process!

DAB BRUSHES Remember, you can use any Captured Dab type brush in conjunction with the Auto Clone effect. Here, we’ve used the Sargent brush from the Artists group of variants. Again, it’s worth experimenting with the settings for the brush. See the tips alongside for identifying Dab brushes.

Auto Marbling

Pop Art Fill Step back in time

Not just for kitchen surfaces… This is a great way to give your images a real Sixties feel, and make them much more graphic in nature. It can also create the effect of a very coarse newsprint image if used in a certain way. Within the dialog, the Scale slider controls the size of the actual dots that are applied, while you can choose the Dab Color and the Background from the two colour swatches. Image Luminance is the most useful mode: you can choose it from the Using box. Adjusting the Contrast slider allows you to use the luminance of your image to mix the fill with.

Auto Marbling creates an effect that simulates traditional decorative marbling, where a rake or fork is dragged across a wet surface, distorting the image in wave-like patterns. Within the effect’s dialog box there are a number of values that you can adjust to modify the appearance of the marbling. It’s a good idea to apply this effect numerous times, using a different direction each time. Essentially, this is a decorative effect. The Quality slider is important in that it allows you to increase the smoothness and visual quality of the finished effect.

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CHALK AUTO CLONE

Auto Van Gogh is similar to Auto Clone but creates automatic painting in the style of the great master himself. For this you need to choose the Auto Van Gogh brush from the Artists category. This brush has colour variability dialled into its settings so as well as creating those typical Van Gogh curved strokes, it will also introduce other colours for added effect.

Custom Tiles

Add some eccentricity to your images You’ll see by now that the Esoterica effects are many and various, and it must be said that some of them are most definitely more useful than others. Here we’re giving you the complete lineup of effects, so you can see the results of each.

Original photo

High Pass

Marbling

Maze

Blobs

Place Elements

Custom Tiles

Pop Art Fill

Grid Paper

Auto Clone

Growth

Auto Van Gogh

Esoterica

AUTO VAN GOGH

The Esoterica collection

Primer

Here we’ve used the Square Chalk variant in conjunction with Auto Clone. For a more realistic effect, make sure that your brush Opacity and Resat are both set fairly low so that the brush dabs build up quite slowly, giving you chance to hit that mouse button when you’re happy with the result.

Auto Clone

Mosaics made easy

Attack of the clones Using this effect allows you to split your image up into a mosaic-like pattern, where the image itself is made up of many small tessellating shapes. You can choose from many variety of shapes from the drop-down box, and adjust the size, angle and sharpness of the individual tiles with ease. By checking the Use Grout checkbox, you can create the effect of grouting between each tile. Choose the colour of the grout via the Color swatch, and modify the Thickness slider to control the width of the grout.

Choose Auto Clone and Painter will actually paint your picture for you. Start by cloning your image via File>Quick Clone. On this cloned copy, choose any Dab type brush. Adjust the brush size to suit. You must make sure that the Clone Color button is active in the Colors palette before Auto Clone will work. Once you go to Effects>Esoterica> Auto Clone, Painter will begin to paint. Watch the progress of your image and simply click your mouse button when you’re happy with the result.

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Tutorial Design a concept car

ion

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Tutorial Design a concept car

Tutorial info Artist

Erik Holmen Time needed

3 hours Skill level

Intermediate On the CD

Starter sketch

Design a concept car From sketch to final illustration, we walk you through how to sell a believable car design using just the tools in Corel Painter othing can excite the masses quite like a sexy and futuristic concept car. Everyone can relate to them, invoking pure passion in many. As fun as it is to look upon these rolling sculptures, it is even more exciting to create them. This tutorial will focus on the ‘hero’ rendering that is used to accurately explain the details and surfaces of the �inal design. This drawing usually follows a long design process �illed with pages of loose sketches and concept ideation. But nothing can sell your design to others like this kind of polished illustration.

As with most of my professional work, I draw the vehicle into a white studio setting. This means I won’t be spending much time and energy on a fancy background. This technique is fairly simple, and produces great results. Primarily sticking to the Digital Airbrush, most the tools I use are out-of-the-box Corel Painter defaults. These are automobile surface �inishes in a studio environment, so we won’t need to employ any wild texture techniques. The key is in the details and the design. So if you have ever dreamt of designing your own concept car, let’s go!

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Tutorial Design a concept car

Start with a sketch From pencil sketch to the start of a digital creation

02 Block in

01 The sketch

This could be the most important part of the entire rendering. And for a tight illustration, perspective is king. If there is a perspective problem, it could throw off the believability of even the most well-rendered vehicle. Spend the time here to get it right; flip the canvas horizontally to check the perspective. Even ask somebody to check your completed line art, or use the one supplied on the disc!

03 Defining form Many, many layers I only manage layers in the early sketch phase, when it’s important to keep everything under the lines. Once I start rendering the final illustration, layer management goes out the window. Every time I add a new highlight or shadow, it’s on a new layer so as to not disturb any previous work. By the end of the drawing, I will have made roughly 300 layers, and have had to flatten a dozen times. You might need to go back into previous layers for clean-up, so only flatten when you get to a good milestone.

Staying under the lines layer, use the standard Digital Airbrush to start shading those surfaces. This is where you determine a light source, placing the hotspot to show off an interesting part of the car. Right now all the paint should look matte, as if it has no clear coat. Don’t worry the number of layers you use, as long as they are under the lines.

Take your completed line art and copy it to a new layer. Set that layer to Multiply and name it ‘lines’. This is the only layer I ever keep track of. Create some new layers underneath and start to block in tone. Here I use a Digital Airbrush with the 1px Edge setting (Brush Controls>Size). This is a good time to decide what colour you want your car to be.

04 Nice sketch!

Start working on top of the lines layer to clean this up a little bit. Add some crisp highlights and reflections to make the paint look glossy. This ends at what I would consider a decent loose sketch. It should represent the intent of the final illustration. Use this opportunity to get some feedback before the time-consuming stuff starts.

05 Start rendering

Because it’s the backbone of the design, I will start the tight rendering with the bright silver parts that run the length of the car. Using the Pen tool, draw a shape around this part. Because it’s a continuous surface, it will save us some time down the road to have this part selected. Go to Shapes>Convert to Selection and Select>Feather (2px).

Clear 07 coat (reflections)

06 Car paint

It doesn’t hurt to illustrate car paint like it’s applied in real life. I start here with the base coat, a flat silver. With no hard reflections, it’s easier to draw, here shown with one major light source. Try not to jump around the rendering too much; this part is fairly complicated and should be focused on.

Because the vehicle is in a studio environment, it will reflect white from all directions. I will draw these with a large 1px Edge Airbrush tool at full opacity. This will give me a nice crisp edge on the highlights and reflections. Adjust the intensity through the Opacity slider in the Layers palette. Each reflection will get its own layer.

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Drawing tight highlights on a long edge is made super easy with the ability to snap to curves. Click the Align to Path box in the Properties bar, and your brush stroke will be snapped to that shape. This is a car designer’s best friend to hitting that perfect arc. If you go to the Properties menu and click Paint Hidden Shapes, you can snap to a hidden path.

09 Complex surfaces

Because these areas are much smaller and more complex than the bright silver surfaces, it won’t save too much time making selections of everything. I start by painting over the sketch to clean it up, and start fresh when it comes to the detailing. I roll over any small details like the headlight; it will be easier to draw these in later than to draw around them now.

Shiny bumpers and reflective surfaces Techniques to give the car a three-dimensional feel

11 Subtle reflections

10 Silky smooth shine

Try to use bold single brush strokes when building up highlights and shadow. The Digital Airbrush will create some muddy artefacts that won’t look very good on car paint. I will often make a highlight or shadow bigger than needed, and use the Eraser to bring that effect down to the desired location.

To give these surfaces a high-gloss finish, we add some hard reflections. As with the silver piece, I will draw them in as opaque white, and adjust the layer down to around 10% Opacity so they don’t draw too much attention. Give these reflection shapes some interesting form; this can give a boring surface some drama.

Photo reference

12 Headlight

Time to bring back the headlight; I draw a simple overall form, to which I will add projector beams, and a lens. All glass effects are drawn on last, so feel free to have some fun with those projectors. Draw one and duplicate it to save some time. Add some hard reflections to show off the clear lens over the entire piece.

A great resource for car design is CarDesignNews. com (www. cardesignnews.com), a site that I will check every day for the latest and greatest in the car industry. It’s a great source for inspiration, where you can find articles and galleries on huge auto shows or design school student shows. They have excellent design reviews, featuring sketches of concept cars directly from the studio. You can create and browse through portfolios of car design students and car design professionals. Also bookmark www. dieselstation.com as a great site for highres car photo galleries and car news.

Design a concept car

08 Pinpoint highlights

Tutorial

Online resources

13 Cool wheels

By now you can see that I am working on each part until it’s completed. With all the detail on this vehicle, you can burn up a lot of time by jumping around to the interesting parts. I want to finish up this corner of car, so the wheel is the next. Start cleaning it up by over-drawing the existing sketch.

Photo reference is an awesome tool when rendering an automobile in Corel Painter. It is important to understand how highlights will react to surface forms. Before you get started on a highly detailed rendering, look at photographs of similar settings and colour. You will see how the car reflects the light of the scene, and be able to sample colours directly off of the picture. If you are having trouble landing that initial sketch, grab a photograph, drop back the opacity, and overlay your sketch. This will greatly help with any proportion and perspective problems.

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Tutorial Design a concept car

Under the hood Adding those essential touches

15 Brake rotor

For a brake rotor, or anything with a brushed surface finish, I will use a Round Oils brush with the Feature setting cranked up. Apply a wash of dark streaks to a new layer, and drop back the opacity. Apply a wash of bright highlight, and drop back the opacity until everything looks correct.

14 Concept car wheels

I decided that the wheels I had going were not wild enough for the car. I wrap the tyre into the rim in true concept car fashion. Here you can see where I start to add a little surface texture to the tyre. I switch to the Simulated Woodgrain paper and use the Blunt Chalk brush to apply the texture.

Compare with others ConceptArt.org is another fantastic place to get inspired, but its greatest use for artists and designers are the honest and valuable critiques. If your design is not confidential, go ahead and post it in the Critique Centre forum when you hit step 4. Fresh eyes can see mistakes that you have grown used to. You might also get some good design tips along the way. Just be open to the ideas and suggestions, and never get too attached to a design. The It’s Finally Finished forum is a great place to see some hot concept art. If the work up there doesn’t inspire you to get drawing, nothing will.

16

Chrome engine! Exposed engines are usually the domain of rear

engine supercars. Here I want to show off a front engine GT with a chromed-out centrepiece of a motor. Start cleaning up the surfaces by washing in big fields of flat colour.

17 Rendering chrome

Chrome can be tough to render and depict form at the same time. Photo reference would be good here. Just remember that everything needs a lot of contrast with chrome, hard reflections, and that it reflects its environment. DO NOT render ‘desert chrome’ unless you draw the car in a desert.

19 Interior 18 Rough texture

To add some interest in the engine bay, let’s give this part some texture. Use the Fine Spray Airbrush and dust it with some dark sparkle. Do the same with white for a textured highlight. I use this brush all the time when showing textured plastic and cast metal.

My original grey interior is looking a little dull, with the rest of the car being fairly monochromatic. I clean it up and add some warm colour. It wouldn’t hurt to find some photo reference of car interiors. Use an image to find good colours, sampling highlights and shadows.

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Tutorial

Changing the colour Give your design a paint job I usually render vehicles in silver. It’s easy to draw, easy to read and prints well. But you might want to do some colour options in the end. Silver is relatively easy to turn into different paint finishes, but it doesn’t always work the other way around. Once again, it doesn’t hurt to look at some photo references for good colour samples.

Design a concept car

20 Render away

The process here is nothing new; add highlight and shadow over a base tone. I am paying the price for all this detail… this rendering is taking a while. If you want to speed things up, just make this a coupe! But I am having fun with the different materials, so it’s no big deal.

01 Make it red

21 Windshield

Automotive glass has a slightly green tint; on a Multiply layer, cover the windshield with a light pale green. Add some white reflections, and drop back the layer opacity until they look good. Keep the reflection edges sharp, as automotive glass is highly reflective. For all hard reflections, I use that same Digital Airbrush with the 1px Edge setting.

23 Final details

I saved these details until the end: side mirrors, front emblem, door cuts and shadow. They should support the overall design, and would be tough to draw around earlier. The shadow can be especially difficult; I usually save it until the end, so it works with the values of the car itself. Use the Pen tool to make a selection that excludes the car.

22 Oops, bad perspective

When I flip the canvas horizontally, something looks funky at the rear end of the car. I notice that the perspective is cranked with the headrests of the seats, and the passenger side rear fender is way too small. Flatten the image and duplicate these areas. Free Transform the pieces and move them into place.

On a Multiply layer, add your colour of choice in a single solid block. This will be shaded automatically by the silver tones underneath. Use this time to play around with different colours to see what looks best on the car.

02 Add warms and cools

On that same layer, click the Preserve Transparency option in the Layers menu. This will limit your paint to cover only the pixels you already have on that layer. Where the highlight is hitting the surfaces dead on, I put down some warmer red-orange hues. On the backside of the car, I brush in a very washed-out red, as reflected by the background.

03 Highlights Add some new highlights on top of the red base coat. Make a new layer and paint in opaque white fields for your highlight reflections. Drop back the layer opacity until they look good. Do the same thing for your ground reflection and you are done!

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Feature focus Get the most from our website

Get the most from our website

LATEST ISSUE

Read on and discover more about the new and improved features on the Official Corel Painter Magazine website

Don’t forget to rate When you are adding comments, don’t forget to give an image a rating. Simply select a rating from the pulldown menu and then click Rate!

ne of the biggest driving forces behind this magazine is to create a welcoming community for Corel Painter users. Obviously, the majority of this takes place with the actual magazine, but when we �irst sat down and came up with a masterplan, having a functional and inspirational website was always in the grand scheme of things. So when we launched the magazine, we also launched the magazine website and offered readers a place to upload their images, comment on other readers’ work and have a place to come and share ideas. However, as more and more of you started to upload artwork and create galleries, we noticed that there were certain tasks that could be improved and some that needed to be added. We set about working on an update to the site, using our experiences and also suggestions made by some of you on the forum. The result went live in May, as this issue was being put together. While the structure remains the same, users can now enjoy improved browsing capabilities in addition to extra options. We’re going to look at all the new features over these pages, as well as give a quick run through on how to actually use them. Hopefully, you’ll agree that these additions make the site better than ever.

The home page displays a brief outline of what’s in the current issue, plus there’s a link at the bottom that will take you to our online shop where you can order back issues.

BROWSING IMAGES There is a new Images section on the lefthand panel that allows you to view the images in various ways. The Galleries area also has a couple of new features, such as the Browse All Galleries link.

THE CRÈME DE LA CRÈME Check out the Picture of the Week and Feature Galleries links and see which members we think have produced some exceptional Corel Painter artwork.

New images

All the people

Get ‘em while they’re hot

Make friends with members

One aspect of the site that had to change was the Latest Images function. Previously, only the past six images were displayed. Obviously, if more than six people added images, or one person uploaded more than six images, these squares would quickly fill up. However, we now have a nifty Images pane to the side of the website. Click Latest Images and you will see a great big list of the latest images to have been uploaded. There are 20 displayed at any one time, and you can access earlier images by clicking the numbers at the top of the area.

FEATURE FOCUS

Sometimes it’s good to just browse through different galleries, maybe catching up with some people you have noted from previous visits, or just to see what everyone else is up to. With the Browse All Galleries function, you can open a page displaying each and every gallery on the site. Under each thumbnail is a summary of how many images that gallery holds, as well as how many comments and the average rating for that member’s images. Simply click the name to be taken to that person’s gallery and use the top arrows to navigate through them.

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MANY COMMENTS

BY CATEGORY If you’d rather search for images that follow a particular genre, use the new Category drop-down menu and submerge yourself in your favourite type of art.

Getting awards

Feature focus

Here you can see the Most Commented Images area, which lists all the artwork that other members have left comments for. It is accessible using the link on the left.

What the stars mean on the website You may have noticed a few stars appearing next to your name – these are to show members who have reached a certain number of posts. Here’s a guide to getting your awards

Get the most from our website

01 Number of images

If you have uploaded between 10 and 49 images, you get a bronze star. Between 50 and 99 will get you a silver, while over 100 gets the gold star.

IN ORDER

GO TO THE GALLERY

The images appear in the window according to how many comments they have received, going from the most commented through to the ones with least comments.

Each thumbnail has a link that will take you to that image, so you can read all of the comments. From here you can leave your own musings, or check out the other works by that particular artist.

02 Rate an image

The above parameters also applies to getting stars for number of comments you’ve posted, as well as the number of comments you’ve received. You can also get stars for your average rating. Between 3 and 3.9 gets you bronze, 4-4.7 gets you silver and 4.8-5 grabs the gold.

Talk of the town Generating interest To see which images or galleries have struck a chord with the rest of the members, click the Most Commented link on the left-hand side panel (there’s one under the Galleries section and the Images section). You’ll now see a list of returns that have received comments from other members, going from the most to the least. Even though the comments are obviously aimed at a specific image, this is a great way of getting some good ideas for your own work. Plus, it will hopefully inspire you to leave some of your own messages on images.

03 Pick up a trophy

In addition to the star ratings, you can also be awarded a virtual trophy if you get selected as Pic of the Week. There’s no limit to how many times you can be awarded this, and there’s no limitation on what you can do to get awarded one!

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Feature focus Get the most from our website

FEATURE FOCUS

Apply the new features Your guide to the new tools for managing your profile Want to get stuck in with the new features added to the site? Here’s a swift guide to applying them to your images, giving you better account management.

01 The first edit

Your first step in tweaking your account is to log in and then click the View Your Profile link at the top of the page. This is where you can edit the profile you’ve given, or scroll down the page to the Awards and Images area.

04

Text changes To begin with,

let’s change the text and title of the image. This involves nothing more than highlighting the text you want to alter and then typing in new words.

02

Start tweaking Now you are into

03 View to a change

05

Put in a box The other major edit

06 Out of the way

your profile, start adding goodies to your images. The easiest way of doing this is to click the image thumbnail to open the editing options.

you can make is to set a category for the image. This means that if people search using the Category menu, your image won’t get left behind. To set one, simply pick a suitable category. You can also add an Adult Rating and then click Update Image Info when you are done.

Not in front of the children

Search categories

Avoid offending anyone

Drop-down browsing

If your artistic endeavours see you indulging in images or subject matters some may take offence to, you can now give a little warning before people view the larger version. When uploading an image, there is the option to apply an ‘Adult Rating’, which will bring up a notice page when people click the thumbnail. And we promise that we are not doing this to deter any of you uploading life drawings or explicit images. We’ve done this to try and make sure people don’t get an unexpected surprise when they view images full screen!

You’ll see the information you’ve given, as well as the comments. Basically it’s what other member see when they view the image themselves. If you want to edit the text, click the Edit link.

When you have updated your image, a little message will appear to say if it’s been successful. You can then return to your profile to carry out other tasks. For example, you might click the Delete link to get rid of an image that has been updated or you’ve grown tired of. Click the Delete It button to remove it from the site.

You’ve always been able to search for other members on the site, but you can now also search according to specific genres. When you are in any of the Images areas, you will find a drop-down menu underneath the Search box. Use this to find images belonging to a specific category. And to add your images to a category, either choose one when you are uploading an image, or edit an existing image. These categories try to capture the most popular forms of artwork, and there’s a Work in Progress section to encourage people to post their current doodlings.

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Artwork by Sam Gilbey

Tutorial Create, load and save brushes

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Tutorial Create, load and save brushes

Create, load and save new brushes An in-depth look at the ways you can create, save, import and share brushes within Corel Painter X. Get ready to open up a whole new dimension to your digital art Tutorial info Artist

Chris Boba Time needed

30 minutes Skill level

Beginner

orel Painter X features over 450 unique brushes in over 30 different type of brush categories, but sometimes you may �ind that you still want to create your own custom brush or import into Corel Painter from a friend or website. One of the great things about Corel Painter is its �lexibility and power when it comes down to customising. Not only does it feature unique brushes, art materials and textures that mirror the look and feel of their traditional counterparts, but it also offers you the ability to customise and create your own. This article is going to provide you with a step-by-step guide to answer those common queries of how to create and save new brushes, and how to import new brushes.

So, you may now be wondering why you would want to create more brushes if you already have such a spectacular array within Corel Painter, and most people will certainly be able to create amazing art using the default brushes and variants, but sometimes you may want to adjust the default settings of a brush and save it. From creating a softer, broader stroke, to adjusting the Wind direction on a watercolour or creating your very own brush stroke or effect, brush customisation offers a world of possibilities that can really enhance your work. We are going to look at three different ways to change and create a brush within Corel Painter, along with saving, importing and sharing your creations.

Adjusting the preset options The easiest way to create a brush is to change an existing one

01 Changing and saving a variant

Choose a brush category and variant. You can adjust all or any of the settings. Opacity controls the degree to which a stroke covers or builds up. Resaturation can make your brush quite unique, as it determines how much of your chosen colour is used in the brush stroke.

02

Making the changes With Resaturation turned to 10 or below,

we can have a brushstroke that is more blending than painting and allows you to move existing paint off and around the canvas more. By moving the Jitter and Bleed, you can take a bristle brush stroke like this and make it more of a dab than a stroke, and also adjust the amount of colour pulled or applied in the stroke.

03 Making it your own

When you are happy with your brush, you just need to click the Tracker palette menu arrow and choose Save Variant. You have just created your new brush. You can also change the brush you used to make this one back to its default by choosing Restore Default Variant.

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Tutorial Create, load and save brushes

Creating a brush from scratch Get more creative with an entirely new brush

One-click wonders One good use of custom brushes is to create a shape so that you can just click this to make up an object. For example, you might be indulging in a bit of Chinese brush painting. Make a brush that looks like a branch and then you can load this and use it to create trees.

04 Adding a new Brush Category

05 Create a new brush icon

06 Capture the brush

07 Making a new Brush Dab

You can add new brush categories to your default Corel Painter Brushes and populate the new brush categories with custom brushes. To create a brush category, you start by creating the icon that will represent your new brush category. You can create your custom brushes based on the available default brushes or create new ones.

With the picture selected, click the Tracker palette menu arrow, and choose Capture Brush Category and type a name in the Capture Dab dialog box. Click OK. A new brush category is created in your User folder and you are now ready to start adding brushes to your new brush category.

Start with a blank canvas and create a picture you want to use for the icon, using a brush or brushes of your choice or open a picture you already have. Choose the Rectangular Selection tool from the toolbox, and drag to select an image area around your picture.

Select black as your colour and choose a brush variant to create your design. We chose the Pen tool to draw a teardrop splodge; create a design and make a square selection over your dab shape. Choose your new brush category and then Capture Dab and Capture Variant from the Tracker palette menu arrow.

09 Brush Controls

08 Adjusting the brush

Make sure you no longer have anything selected on the page (Ctrl/Cmd+D). Now you can adjust your new dab to behave the way you want it and you need to select Window>Brush Controls. Don’t be overawed by the amount of controls, as this example just takes you through the top few.

With the Brush Controls and a blank canvas open, you can experiment depending on the type of brush you want. Start with General and try: Dab Type = Circular, Stroke = Single, Method = Drip, SubCategory = Hard Drip and Expression = Velocity.

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10 Brush Controls 2

11 Ready to save

Once you are happy with your efforts, it’s ready to save. From the Tracker palette menu arrow, select Save Variant and overwrite the default one on creating the dab. Feel free to experiment further and set a default variant for this brush that you can restore to on further customisation.

If you create brush variants that you are particularly pleased with, don’t be shy – share them with us. We’re hoping to set up a readers’ section on the disc each issue that has various Corel Painter extras to help other readers’ creativity. If you have something you’d like us to include, drop us a line on OPM@ imagine-publishing. co.uk.

Create, load and save brushes

Choose a brush head such as Watercolor Profile along with a size and Expression = Velocity and Size Step of 22%. Angle allows you to play with the start angle of the brush head and the Squeeze slider controls the shape of the brush dab. Squeezing a brush changes it from round to elliptical. You use Squeeze controls with Circular and Captured Dab Types.

Tutorial

Share your creations

Importing brushes Find a great brush online, then follow these steps

13 Brush location 12 Importing brushes

With Corel Painter X, you can easily load custom brushes without having to create a new workspace. This lets you add single brushes to your default Corel Painter X workspace by simply copying the files associated with a custom brush into the Painter Brushes library.

14

All brushes available in Corel Painter X are stored in the default Painter Brushes library, which is located in the Brushes folder of the Corel Painter system folder. Such as: Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Corel\Painter X\Default\Brushes\ Painter Brushes.

The files The Painter Brushes library is organised into brush

categories, such as Acrylics, Airbrushes, etc. Each brush category may consist of the following components: an XML file, as well as NIB and STK files, for each brush variant and a JPEG file, which contains the icon representing the brush category on the Brush Selector bar.

15 Copying the files

First, ensure that you have the necessary files for the custom brush (XML, NIB, and STK) to make sure your imported brush will work. Copy the files associated with the custom brush into the appropriate brush category in the Painter Brushes library. You can add a custom brush to any brush category you choose, or follow the previous steps to create a new one.

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showcase YAP KUN RONG TITLE WEBSITE JOB TITLE

Warrior of Light http://krypt.gfxartist.com Digital artist

We fell in love with this artist’s use of light and brush strokes, and couldn’t resist including him in the magazine. Although a relative newcomer to Corel Painter, he incorporates its functionality perfectly, creating works of high standard, such as this one.

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Tutorial Combine resources to create art

READERIA’SL TUTOR

Use free resources to create art

Using simple techniques and free resources, we will show you how to create a mermaidinhabited underwater scene with the power of Corel Painter Tutorial info Artist

Pat Brennan Time needed

2 hours Skill level

Intermediate

f all the fantasy �igures, the mermaid surely has to be one of the most enduring and appealing. Creating the illusion of an underwater scene inhabited by one of these gorgeous creatures may seem like a lot of work, but if you try to photograph one for reference, you will be in for a long wait! The blending of 3D �igures into a fantasy scene is quick, easy and great fun to do. The construction of a believable underwater environment is just a matter of choosing the right elements and textures to work with,

and with so many free resources available, you will never have a problem doing this. It is possible to create the image entirely from scratch in Corel Painter. To create a scene quickly and easily, however, I propose to use two programs. Those of you who use Corel Painter probably already use Adobe Photoshop as well, just as I do, and �lip back and forth between the two to produce your �inished piece. I shall also be pointing you in the direction of some of the best free resources available throughout the

tutorial. It takes a little effort to search for the right image if you have something particular in mind, but it is worth your time. You could, of course, purchase stock images from some of the excellent online libraries. Our aim here, though, is to complete the task as quickly as possible, with no money changing hands. Throughout, I have deliberately avoided using complex procedures and too many brushes wherever possible, and used only the minimum amount of layers. So without bene�it of an aqualung, let’s go diving for a mermaid!

Water world Use colour and texture to create your backdrop

01 The first texture

After deciding on a texture from my own freebies at http:// lunartex.deviantart.com (an account I created to supply my own free textures and photos), I copy, paste and stretch to fit a new canvas in Photoshop (307mm high by 240mm wide). I could have painted a texture the right shade to start with, but I thought it might be of more interest to show how easy it is to re-colour an existing one.

02

Re-colouring Next, I go to Image>Adjustments>Channel Mixer.

In the Red channel, I push the Green slider left to -138 %. In the Blue channel, I move the Blue slider right to 112%. In Image>Adjustments>Color Balance, I ensure Midtones is selected and adjust the Green slider to 20%. There are literally dozens of ways to re-colour an image using Photoshop or Corel Painter, but this is my preferred ‘quick fix’ method.

03 Apply the second texture

Searching around, I discovered a nice swirly pattern from http://enchantedgal-stock. deviantart.com, another free use stock provider. I copy and paste it into the newly re-coloured layer; I then grab the re-sizing handles and stretch the pattern to fit the canvas.

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Tutorial Combine resources to create art 59

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Tutorial Combine resources to create art

Adding the mermaid It’s time to bring some life into your work

by 05 Drop drop

04 Integrating and merging

Working on the second layer, I set it to Soft Light at 33% Opacity. This simple action gives the look I’m after. I could, of course, carry on tweaking all sorts of things at this point such as Hue/Saturation, Levels, etc, but sometimes less is more!

This is a fun bit: not exactly bubbles as you would expect in a scene like the one I intend, but water drops created in the Alien Skin Eye Candy plug-in. You could alternatively overlay a photo of water droplets over the background (with the later set to Overlay).

the 07 Colour mermaid

06 Now capture your mermaid

I have obtained a beautiful PNG mermaid from http://jlstock.deviantart.com. There is a JPEG available in the same file if you require it, as Corel Painter does not support PNG (Portable Network Graphics). A PNG can be ten times the size of a JPEG, but preserves all the sharp edges, so I am going to use the PNG and stay in Photoshop.

After dragging and dropping the PNG of the mermaid into the background, I resize and position her. To re-colour her, I click on the mermaid’s layer and go to Image> Adjustments>Channel Mixer. In the Red channel, I move the Green slider to -94%. Then, under Image> Adjustments>Color Balance, I move the Green slider to 24 with Highlights checked.

Finding mermaids JLStock, aka Jenny’s 3D Stock (http://jlstock. deviantart.com), provides stock, with most of the images in both PNG and JPEG formats. Jenny has many 3D items, including fairies and mermaids, plus photographs, high-resolution backgrounds and brushes. She provides all of these resources free for starving artists. Jenny is an accomplished web designer and much more. After I subscribed to the online community at www.deviantart.com, I quickly became aware of the astonishing generosity of the stock providers on there. I had never thought of integrating 3D objects with painting and manipulation before seeing Jenny’s images on this site. I first met her when she hosted a competition to encourage members to use her stock items, which I am so pleased to say I won using one of her PNG mermaids as the focal point.

08 Something fishy!

I found a fish I liked at www.sxc.hu/photo/776995, kindly donated by ‘alexbruda’. Unfortunately, some of the details had been cut off. This is a perfect opportunity to use Corel Painter and paint back in the missing bits. I open the fish in Corel Painter, roughly cut it out and apply to a dark blue background. I needed the background to be large enough to accommodate the new fins.

09 Reviving the fish

Next I zoom in, chose Block Eraser 20 at full opacity, with Expression set to Pressure. I select Layer 1 and erase the unwanted background, making the eraser size smaller the closer I get.

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I create a new transparent layer over my fish. Working at 100 per cent, I colour-pick the image, and with the Fine Detail Air 3 Airbrush, at a Size of 2.8 and with Expression set to Pressure, I paint in the missing fins. Then, using the Round Blender Brush 10, at a Size of 5.9 and with Expression set to Pressure, I smooth the painted areas into the original image. I flatten the image and save as a TIFF file.

Light and colour Add subtle touches to your mermaid for a realistic finish

13 Getting greener

12 Back to our mermaid

I decided that the mermaid’s side fins were too large for what I had in mind. I zoom in and use a soft edge basic round Eraser at a Size of 35 and at 100% Opacity. I have now removed the top third of all the fins, including the shoulder fins.

14 It’s brightening up time

I want the tail and fins to be much greener and shinier. On the mermaid layer only, I grab a basic soft-edged round Brush tool and set the Opacity to 56% and the Flow to 56%. I gently go over the parts in question – this is where the pen pressure on your tablet comes into its own. The harder you press, the more colour that is applied. I coloured the hair with the same brush while I was at it, although I do intend to repaint it completely in Corel Painter.

On the mermaid layer, I go to Image> Adjustments>Selective Color. I move the Cyan slider to 100% and the Black slider to -51%. Next, I colour-pick the image. The area on the mermaid’s left shoulder has the colour I want. I use a soft-edged basic round Brush tool with the Mode set to Color Dodge, the Opacity at 10% and the Flow at 56%. I zoom in and gently stroke the brush over the fins.

Fishing around for freebies Obviously, the best way to go fishing is with a net… or in this case the internet. There are so many inspirational sites, but I can only point you in the direction of some of my own personal favourites. The best place to look for stock images is www. deviantart.com, but there are many, many others. For instance, for free stock photos and textures I generally use www. sxc.hu/index.phtml and www.imageafter. com. Be careful of the terms of use if you intend to use the images for gain. Some are free and some require permission before you use them.

Combine resources to create art

10 The missing bits

I open my fish in Photoshop. Using the Magic Wand tool, I click on the blue background and up pops the marching ants around the fish. I invert, cut, and paste the fish into a new document with a transparent background. The fish should be cleanly cut out at this point, but a little attention with a soft-edged basic Eraser tool may be necessary. Save as a TIFF.

Tutorial

the 11 Extract fish

I can see clearly now

15 Let there be light

With the background selected and the whole image in view, I open the Dodge tool, with Range set to Midtones and Exposure at 36%. I use a soft edged basic round Brush tool at 445px. I pull the brush down from top left to bottom right three times. I had several goes at this before it looked right; I was aiming for a vague look of light coming down from the surface of water.

When you are working on an image fully zoomed in, you can’t see how what you have just done affects the whole image until you zoom out again. Fortunately, Adobe Photoshop is capable of allowing you to have two windows open of the same image at the same time. While you work close-up on the one screen, the effects will be seen immediately in the zoomed out second image. To do this, go to Windows>Documents> New Window. This will open a duplicate of your main painting. It even gives it the same name.

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Tutorial Combine resources to create art

Perfect details Put everything together and add in the details Let’s go 17 fishing again!

Linking layers Select a layer or layer set in the Layers palette. Click in the column immediately to the left of any layers you want to link to the selected layer. A link icon appears in the column. I did this with all the fish in my image. This way I could move them as a group – up, down, sideways, stretched, etc– without it affecting anything underneath. When I was happy with the positioning, I just unchecked the icon.

Addressing hairdressing I feel confident enough to paint ‘hair’ in an image, but not everyone does. There is help available in the form of purpose-made brushes, which make the job easier. There are sites on the web where these brushes are downloadable; some are free and some have a nominal charge attached. Google ‘digital brushes’ and you will be amazed at how many sites there are. Alternatively, find a willing long-haired maiden and persuade her to lay her tresses across a scanner to make your own brush. Making brushes is a skill easily learnt.

16 Making her sparkle

Working on the mermaid layer again, go to the Dodge tool and set the Range to Highlights. With a soft edged basic Brush tool at 61px, I gently stroke in some highlights where appropriate on the bottom third of her tail, her left hip and the top of her lovely swishy tailfin. She is beginning to look part of her environment at last. I save the changes here.

I open the cutout fish document and I drag it onto the main image. On the fish layer, I open the Channel Mixer and, under the Red channel, I move the Green slider to -68%. Now, under Image>Adjustments> Selective Color, I go to Cyan and push the Magenta slider to -73%, and to Green and push the Magenta slider to 73%. I then resize it until I’m happy with the way it looks.

18 Circling and skewing

I could have used many different types of fish, but I’ve grown rather fond of this one. For perspective I go to Edit>Free Transform, grab the bottom-right handle and pull down, then scale as required sideways. I do this with every fish as I place it in the image. I always use the original fish, which should be Layer 2, transforming them and varying the opacity appropriately, as I place them in an ellipse around the mermaid.

20 Fishier and fishier 19 Darkening the background

The background looked a little too light now for my liking. I select it, then go to Layer>New Fill Layer> Gradient, with Mode set to Multiply and at 41% Opacity. I colour-pick the image for a very light and a fairly dark tone to use.

I now think that the fish looks a little boring, so I bring on a little blue fish free from Stock.XCHNG (www.sxc. hu/photo/783733). This one was supplied by Richerman. I cut it out in exactly the same way as before. I work in an intuitive way, and sometimes it takes a while before I realise that something needs adding to make an image look ‘right’ I dot the little blue fish here and there around the circle. I have 24 layers at this point, so I flatten the whole image and save as a TIFF.

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Tutorial

eyes 22 The have it

I open the flattened and saved image in Corel Painter. On a new transparent layer, I take the Fine Tip Soft Air 20 brush, with Size set to 8.5 and Expression set to Pressure and start blocking in the hair again using the colour-pick method. Corel Painter has so many brushes to choose from, but for continuity of style, I only use three or four. For the blending, I use my favourite Grainy Water 30 with a Size of 9.4 and an Opacity of 26%.

Combine resources to create art

21 Painting the hair

As you can see in closeup, the mermaid is already very pretty, but I decide to give her a little makeover around the eyes. This is simply achieved by using the Fine Detail Air 3 Airbrush with varying degrees of opacity and several colours, dotted to simulate a little sparkle. I gently stroke in a few more eyelashes at this point too.

23 Rippling

This is a great method for creating a simulation of movement underwater. I don’t want to destroy the whole image with it. I just want to give the impression that the fish are moving. I went to the Distortion Marbling Rake tool (with a Size of 16.4 and an Opacity of 12%) and made light passes left to right over the fish. I actually don’t do this to all the fish, but just a few.

24 Blurring and checking

I blur the fish in the background a little using Blenders>Blur at an Opacity of 35%. At this point, I zoom in to actual size and examine every square inch. I am looking for anything that shouldn’t be there, or perhaps needs blurring a little to make it look better. I would normally blend using the Just Add Water Blender tool for the edges of a figure, but this PNG was so good to start with it hardly needed any work in this respect.

Check it out Create shadows and make your final checks

Here’s one 26 I made earlier!

25 Shadows

I look at the whole image and think the light underneath her arm looks wrong – it suggested light coming from below. With a new layer open, I grab a trusty airbrush – Fine Tip Soft Air 20 – with the Opacity at 19%. Using the existing shadow in the middle of the arm as a colour reference, I gently cover it. Now I save the image.

Flip the image horizontally, as this is the best way to check the image ‘works’ visually. What jumps out at me is the fact that the lips are the only pink in the image. I decide to add some to her cheekbones, fingertips and elbows. Using a soft-edged round Brush tool, with Opacity set to 17% and Flow set to 50%, I make a few strokes.

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Primer Art Pens

BRUSH CATEGORY

Art Pens

USING GRAIN

For a new level of intuitive, natural drawing, take a look at the Art Pen brush category in Corel Painter X

PRIMER

hen it comes to simulating natural media digitally, two manufacturers stand head and shoulders above any others, namely Corel and Wacom. Of course, as a Corel Painter user you’ll know of the strength and jaw-dropping capabilities of Corel Painter and if you use a graphics tablet, then it’s more than likely made by Wacom. So imagine the creative possibilities that could be born from the collaboration of these two creative giants! Well, here’s some great news! The new Art Pen brushes in Corel Painter X are the direct product of this. These Art Pens, which range from markers, through to pastel brushes and even include oil and gouache variants, can be used either with your normal graphics-tablet pen, or in conjunction with the new Wacom 6D Pen. The great strength of these variants comes from the way they respond to your drawing stylus in such a way that they allow you to enjoy a much more natural and intuitive drawing experience. Using these pens really is an absolute dream, and before you know it, you’ll feel as if the ink or colour is quite literally �lowing from your pen as you draw. If you don’t have a 6D pen, don’t worry, these variants will still knock your socks off. The humble pen has come of age!

The Square Grainy Pastel Art Pen, as its title suggests, responds very well to the surface of the paper currently selected in the Papers library palette. Use a low Grain setting in the Properties bar to achieve very visible grain, and higher values to make it more subtle.

FELT ART MARKER

The Felt Art Marker is ideal for making bold, spontaneous strokes that really pile on the ink. This Art Pen is best used for reinforcing your drawing with bold, dynamic lines. Being chisel-shaped, this pen can be used for both thick and thin lines.

Use your layers!

WORN OIL PASTEL

The Worn Oil Pastel Art Pen is great for general shading, and for blocking in general tones. Use this variant at low Opacity and low Resat values to have more control over the tones you lay down. This Art Pen is quite smudgy due to its high Bleed value.

6D capabilities

Keep things separate

Tailored to your requirements If you’re using lots of different Art Pens within the same image, it’s a good idea to isolate each of them on a separate layer. This way, you can experiment with different variants for shading, without affecting any line work which you’re already happy with. If you don’t like some of the marks you’ve made, either just bin the layer or erase on it.

The Wacom 6D Pen adds another dimension to these Art Pen variants. If you normally use a pressuresensitive tablet and stylus, you’ll be used to the variants within Corel Painter making use of pressure, tilt and velocity to control aspects of the brush, such as Opacity, Grain and Size. The new 6D Pen, however, adds Rotation sensitivity to these Art Pens, where the brush itself can be rotated through 360 degrees, adding even more versatility to your strokes. It’s worth taking a look at the 6D Pen at www. wacom.com. It could add a whole new dimension to your Painter art.

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SOFT FLAT OILS PEN

The Soft Flat Oils Art Pen was used here to add some soft, broad background shading. By changing the Feature setting for this variant in the Properties bar, you can make the bristle lines within the brush either more or less visible.

Primer

Explore the Art Pens Graphic design in an instant

Felt Art Marker

Grainy Calligraphy

Grainy Edge Calligraphy

Soft Cover Brush

Soft Flat Oils

Square Grainy Pastel

Tapered Camel

Tapered Gouache

Thin Smooth Calligraphy

Worn Oil Pastel

Art Pens

If you have Corel Painter X, you may have missed the Art Pen brush category – what with the excitement of the RealBristle brushes – but we assure you they are definitely worth exploring. Here’s a handy look at what each of the variants looks like.

ART PEN BRUSHES It may not be the biggest brush category in the world, but there’s plenty of potential in the variants. Try your hand at very graphic images with them.

WACOM ART PEN For the perfect accompaniment to the new Art Pen brush category, treat yourself to Wacom’s 6D Art Pen. This looks and behaves just like a real art marker, from its shape to the felt feel of the nib.

Brush tracking

Varied effects

Set your stylus correctly

The joy of Art Pens

The Art Pen brushes are especially reliant on interpreting the input from your drawing stylus accurately, so it’s even more vital that you set up your Brush Tracking before you begin drawing. To do this, simply go to Edit>Preferences>Brush Tracking. Within the dialog, make a stroke on the scratchpad as you normally would, and Corel Painter will set up the Brush Tracking to suit your style with the minimum of effort.

You can get an impressive amount of effects with the Art Pen category, whether you have the 6D Art Pen or not. Even if you use a mouse or a plain old stylus, you can build up great texture and style with the correct variant. Get great outlines with the Thin Smooth Calligraphy or Grainy Edge Calligraphy. Go for a more washy look with Soft Cover Brush, or Tapered Camel. And for the traditional art marker look, you need to go a long way to beat the Felt Art Marker.

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Drawing 101 Still life drawing

The skills of

Still life drawing Fine-tune your drawing skills with the age-old tradition of still life Try following our tutorial using the still life photo on the disc

SOURCE FILE ON THE CD!

he still life genre is one of the most popular vehicles artists use to �lagrantly show off. This formula for painting arrangements of everyday, inanimate objects dates from the 17th century. One of the seminal still life artists is Juan Sanchez Cotan. Cotan’s work exempli�ies the prevailing taste at the time for all things real and somewhat grubby. The movement at the time was Baroque. Its famously stark lighting and dramatic shadows were a reaction to the previous beautifying period of the High Renaissance, glorifying the dirt and

no-frills ugliness of real life. 17th century Spanish painter Velazquez painted An Old Woman Cooking Eggs when he was 18. The dark shadows and unforgiving lighting sets off the copper, ceramic and metal objects beautifully. This style of lighting has been hugely in�luential throughout the centuries, and can be seen in the Godfather trilogy to create a sense of dark, brooding despair. We are going to use this dramatic tone to enhance and enrich our still life setup. In contrast to this oppressive style, Audrey Flack is a contemporary American artist whose body of work

includes some equally stunning work, yet are in total contrast to the Baroque themes of darkness. However, they too have prodigious ‘wow’ factor qualities. This artist uses air brushing as part of her technique, and creates impossibly colourful, textural and glossy still lifes. Her work is worth examining to illustrate two points about still life. First, her innovative use of composition and unusual viewpoints gives great results. In Chanel, her use of a cramped and close-up viewpoint and the mirror re�lecting the scene enriches the detail and intricacy of the composition.

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Drawing 101

Still life scenarios Accuracy and balance This shot exemplifies a poorly balanced pyramidal composition. All the interesting, differently shaped objects are positioned on the left, and the white shirt takes up the majority of the right. Aim to compose your objects evenly throughout the setup

Still life drawing

Contrast and definition Emphasise the visual qualities of your objects. Spotlights create more highlights and shadows than fluorescent light. Make sure your objects show off their best features. Use a good quality image and avoid pixellation and blurring

What works and what doesn’t in this genre

Ellipses and foreshortening This unusual shot is not in keeping with Baroque Realism. The scissors and pens loom bizarrely towards you and the circular tape appears flat. The stapler is also disguised by the foreshortening and the brush tips are lost Chosen composition All the objects can be clea rly seen and are positioned so they enhance each other – larg e with small, plain with intricat e. This provides a fun and challen ging set of tasks

Poor composition The aim of composition is to show everything off and to really give the illusion of casual placement, but to actually arrange things pleasingly with a sense of togetherness. This attempt misses the point, like the scissors

Second, Flack illustrates another purpose of still life, which is worth mentioning here because it may in�luence your choice of objects. In her piece, Marilyn Vanitas, she refers to the 17th century theme of still life known as Vanitas paintings. Objects are chosen and arranged because of their meaning. These paintings were composed speci�ically so as to subtly remind people that life and beauty is �leeting. Typically, a small or partially hidden symbol would lurk within a stunningly beautiful setup. For example, in Cornelis de Heem’s Vanitas

Still Life With Musical Instruments, the jam-packed virtuoso performance by this Dutch artist is a picture of disarray and excess, and at the very bottom, if you look carefully, a snail hungrily eyes the fruit. So now it is our turn to rise to the formidable challenge of still life. Over the next few pages we will break the task down into steps, troubleshoot potential mistakes and list important tips to help you on your way. This tradition allows you to explore the elements of art – line, form, shape, tone, texture and composition – and enhance your skills of observation. We will go through several

different ways to help you ‘see’ what is really there rather than ‘look/glance’ at what appears to be there. The next few exercises will help build your con�idence to enjoy drawing successfully. When it comes to setting up your own still life, there are alphabetical pointers to consider: accuracy, balance, contrast, de�inition, ellipses and foreshortening. The images above illustrate how these principles can affect a still life setup, so try them all and get a good grounding in the principles. We’re concentrating on traditional pencils here, but you can apply the principles to any format.

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Drawing 101 Still life drawing

Drawing the scene Drawing normally ow you have a still life photo, it’s important to consider some of the common hurdles and traps that can occur during this task. There is nothing more daunting than a blank page, so drawing a grid over the photo and then one on the paper will help you position objects accurately. Another way to begin is to choose an object near the centre of your composition and use it to relate to shape, size and spaces taken up by other objects. This measurement can be used to ensure that everything is drawn in proportion to that measurement. Keep checking the

relationships between the objects and correct them if it goes wrong – don’t keep blindly trudging forward. A really clear line drawing can be sketchy at the outset. Pencil in shapes, but go over the top of this once again to draw a bold con�ident line for clear de�inition. With an accurate line comes accurate tone. Shading needs layering, subtly and an appropriate choice of pencil. But, just as much, it needs really keen observation. When drawing ellipses, draw the bottom curve then turn your paper upside down and re-draw it; it is a much more natural, controlled and even method.

The mantra ‘less is more’ is always worth keeping in mind. In art, it essentially means that some lines and shades that you think need to be included don’t. The paintbrushes best exemplify this. The delicate texture of their bristles can be lost if you outline them heavily; let the background do the work for you, leave the line out, and draw the background solidly but a bit randomly. When you are making the marks, bear in mind the subject you are drawing. For example, drapery loves curvy, more circular lines to accentuate the contours, but use dots and scribbles for sponge.

SQUARING UP

ACCURATE PROPORTIONS

Work outwards from the middle using a cross in the centre to start the measurements. The spoon fits about three times into the top half of the picture and one of the brush tips can be spotted two ‘spoons’ up. Now you know you are not going to run out of space at the top.

LINE DRAWING

This really lets you map out your image without thinking about the relationships, and is excellent for building your confidence. There is no shame in using grids, so don’t feel like you are cheating. It’s a great starting point and used by many more people than would care to admit it.

SHADING

REDUNDANCY

MARK MAKING

With a solid foundation of drawing, use 2H, H and HB pencils for the midtones and greys, and 4B and 6B pencils for the darkest background areas. Check you have a really broad range of contrast from black to white. Circular rather than stripy shading can really improve the smoothness of your shadows.

Look closely at the still life and, where there is a meeting of intense darks and lights, consider how you could use the shadow to make the outline redundant. This really tests your powers of observation, so if at first you don’t succeed…

Once you are happy with your sketchy 2H workings that quietly outline your objects, use a H pencil to produce a clear and confident shape that sorts out any complex areas you may have secretly put off tackling, for example, the scissor blades or the brushes.

Experiment with the marks to show what you and your pencil can really do. The metal sheen is achieved with a rubber, but nothing is impossible. Smudging, scribble, rulers, rubbers and grids all are acceptable in the name of the still life ‘wow’ factor!

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Upside-down drawing

NEGATIVE ADVICE

By looking at what’s not in the composition, you’re forced to look at the shapes objects make, rather than what they actually look like and focusing on the details.

Still life drawing

Negative space

Drawing 101

f you can feel yourself bridling at the idea of having a go at the ‘serious’ high-brow challenge we have just rattled off, here is a welcome break! This is a really entertaining and quite mind-boggling exercise. It is often far more effective at helping you actually lay out a picture than squaring up or �iguring out proportion measurements. We are enchanted by the optical and psychological magic of it, and it once again helps to dispel that age-old procrastinatory myth of ‘I can’t draw’! So prepare to suspend your disbelief and roll up your sleeves to pull off the best trick in town! We have included the still life photo on the disc. Turn this upside-down and, starting at either the left or right side, draw what is in front of you. This can be on a larger piece of paper, but it must be approximately the same landscape shape as the drawing. Keep referring to your drawing and then the photo. Hold your nerve and don’t turn it up the right way until you’ve �inished! Then, with a �lourish, amaze your audience with the accuracy of your work.

WRONG WAY UP

Try sketching your still life upside-down. This can help you with perspective, as you are concentrating on the shapes, rather than the objects.

ne exercise that will de�initely increase your understanding of the still life genre and allow you to express yourself a bit more freely is to look at the negative space of your image. Our brain often fools us into taking the easy option and only recording objects as we expect them to be shown. Think of how easy it is to draw from your imagination as a child. The brain stores its own little visual vocabulary based on past experiences and previous versions, and it’s much easier to churn out these than to really apply it. Children’s formulaic drawings of houses are intrinsically recognisable as houses. In the room, the objects themselves occupy positive space and the space around them is negative. For this task, draw lines and shapes to represent the space that the still life does not take up. The best example of this is the space between the handle and jug; it helps you look at the shape of the handle not just take it in and jot it down without thought. Draw as if you have never seen them.

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Drawing 101 Still life drawing

A still life step-by-step Break an image down into sections for triumphant results o, armed with some helpful tips, some interesting ways to test your powers of drawing, and a con�ident can-do attitude, it’s time to try showing off some of your own ‘wow’ factor. The following steps show a systematic, logical approach to tackling the task, bit by methodical bit. The setup we have used is a randomly but pleasingly arranged collection of artroom paraphernalia. They have been chosen for their variety of textures, forms and shapes, but are in keeping with the muted colours of the Baroque artists we have looked at. Working from a photograph is a great way to begin; it’s convenient for many reasons, especially because it is �lat already, and takes up much less space. When you are con�ident using photographs, push the limits of your comfort zone and rise to the challenge of drawing a real still life that is right in front of you. Enjoy the experience of �luctuating light conditions and mysterious shifting of objects, knowledge of which will be denied by other members of your household, and the unstoppable passage of time on objects that are perishable! But seriously, the sense of achievement, enjoyment and relaxation is worth it so do have a go.

Tackling the still life Go from photo to a piece of art STAGE 1

STARTING POINT

Use a ruler to mark the centre of each side and draw a very light or dotted cross with a ‘x’ at the centre. Draw the same (if possible) on your picture. Measure with your finger the times your spoon fits along the top line (about three times) from the centre; divide this line into about three equally. Draw the shape of the spoon.

STAGE 2

TOP HALF PROPORTIONS

Using your standard measurement of the spoon, work out where the rest of the objects sit in the top half. For example, the top lip of the jug may be two spoons wide with half a spoon on one side and one and a half on the other. Think join-the-dots at this stage.

STAGE 3

BOTTOM LEFT QUARTER PROPORTIONS Pay special attention to the foreshortening of the scissors; rely on your standard spoon and be reassured that it will not try and fox you – yes those scissors really are that short! Concentrate on making sure the outlines are clear and confident – there is no need for tone at the moment.

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STAGE 4

STAGE 5

STAGE 6

Drawing 101

There is much more detail in these two bottom quarters, so it’s important to feel confident that they are accurate. Take pride in providing yourself with a concrete foundation to work with. It’s not a myth that you should look more at the still life than your drawing. Keep looking, checking and tweaking it until you are absolutely happy.

STAGE 7

BASE COAT OF TONE

Shade in the areas you have drawn as shadows. This just needs to be a general shading; don’t worry or overwork it, it’s simply to give you an idea of how the shadows are going to look so that you can correct their shape and position, but not their intensity.

STAGE 10

MODELLING THE TONES ON THE RIGHT Work up the right side, using the flattest part of the tip of your pencil to avoid scratchy marks, correcting where necessary with a rubber. Enjoy the subtler tones in the shirt and enhance the folds with curved lines. The modelling should really take a while, with lots of checking and correcting.

MAPPING TONES ON THE RIGHT SIDE.

Now you have outlined and positioned the shapes, it is time to do the same for the shadows. With a light, unlikely-tosmudge, H pencil lightly draw the shapes of the shadows. Don’t worry too much if you don’t get them all, the general catchment area will do fine.

STAGE 8

AND SOME MORE

Once again, shade the areas you have designated as shadow. Assess the shading in comparison to the photograph; if you are totally happy, move on. Now comes the hopefully foolproof non-smudge tip. I have done this as a righthander; sway the sides around if you are left-handed.

Still life drawing

BOTTOM RIGHT

MAPPING TONES ON THE LEFT SIDE.

At the moment you are using a light, hard pencil that can been shiny and difficult to work into if it’s used very firmly, so use it lightly and it’s very easy to correct, as well hardly leaving any marks. Draw the outlines of the shadows lightly on the left hand side.

STAGE 9

MODELLING THE TONES ON THE LEFT

Aim to include the breadth of contrast from black to white in your image, but this stage is all about the full range of greys. Work from left to right to prevent your hand smudging previous shading and really enjoy exploring the marks, shadows and shapes created by overworking with the HB pencil. Use the pencil and pressure to its fullest advantage.

STAGE 11

THE BACKGROUND LINES AND REDUNDANCY

Look very carefully at the top of the stapler and you will see a thin graceful highlight. Capture this when you fill in your background, and remember the sketch but bold bristle effect too. Solidly colour in the stark background and show off the skill of the foreground. Now treat yourself!

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ZHUZHU TITLE WEBSITE JOB TITLE

Malena http://zhuzhu.deviantart.com Digital artist Zhuzhu has a portfolio that covers pretty much every style and discipline you could think of. From humorous illustrations through to ‘serious’ artwork like the image above, his site displays a very impressive body of work. Visit it today!

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showcase

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Your

questions answered Colour choice

I’ve not long been using Corel Painter and am a bit confused as to how to pick colour. What do you think it the best way?

T�� N���

Your experts Stewart McKissick

Stewart is a long-time user of Corel Painter and is a big fan of the airbrush and illustration potential offered by the program. Here he answers your questions on creating cartoons and character design.

Daniel Cox

Daniel is an extremely accomplished artist that has worked for various clients, including Weta Digital. Here he tackles your artistic problems, giving advice on getting paint effects and improving your style.

What you’ll find in this section Software

Don’t get bogged down in a Corel Painter black hole – write to us and we’ll help you work harmoniously

Richard Schmid wrote in his excellent book, Alla Prima: Everything I Know About Painting, that there is no wrong colour – just a colour in the wrong place! Which is so true. Like any painting, your palette is very important to organise. Before I started using Corel Painter, I would set up little squares in the top-right corner. But no more. The Color Mixer Pad is a fabulous way of organising your colours and making sure your hues all work together. In the example below, I’ve mixed my colours, choosing a rich blue for the water, a little bit of red for the trees in the background and skintones, and also mix in white for the snowy area, which I know will be covering most surfaces. Out of these colours, I by find an appropriate cool midtone, which I fill in the background and get rid of that daunting white canvas (nothing scares me more than a blank

01

Fine art

When it comes to creating art, you often find little niggles that ruin your masterpiece. We sort them out

Illustration

Make sure your illustrations are in top form by following our advice

Send in your queries to… Official Painter Magazine Q&A, Imagine Publishing Ltd, Richmond House, 33 Richmond Hill, Bournemouth, Dorset BH2 6EZ. Alternatively you can email us at [email protected].

canvas). After blocking in colour, I’ll start to work in the details, which is where I will ‘find’ the painting. This is where Alt/Option clicking to select colour and value is so useful. Working in the midtones, I only need two-three values, so I just select those from the areas I’ve already filled in. This allows me to continue working fast.

Crazy cars

I love the cars that appeared in the Wacky Races cartoons. How can I make my own?

J���� B����

The Wacky Races featured cars that were based on themes. To start, you’ll need to choose a subject to base your racer on. I decided on a ‘play on words’ for mine. One thing that helps is to have research, so I gathered photos of cars and objects that I pasted together in Corel Painter. Using selection tools, such as the Lasso and Magic Wand, I put parts together on layers to make a rough version of our final design. You can resize and distort things using Orientation commands from the Edit menu. Some things I roughly painted out, then I drew my version. Don’t try to copy your reference too closely – remember to be cartoony and have fun! Try twisting perspective a bit – notice the motion lines on the wheels and the shadow under the car to help give a sense of action.

Top: Using Painter’s Layers, Selection tools and Orientation commands, a composite version of various photos is made to help guide our drawing. Bottom: The final cartoon, based on our photo collage, but not copied too literally

02

SHARE YOUR PROBLEMS!

Send in your questions for our experts to answer at [email protected]

Use the Mixer Pad in Corel Painter to keep your colours under control

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Pencil art

A��� S������

A good example to answer this question is a chiaroscuro painting. (Chiaroscuro is an Italian term referring to the modelling of volume by depicting light and shade by contrasting them boldly.) As you can see in the image below, the model’s face is heavily shadowed on her right side and a minimal amount of light is reflecting up into her eyes. After I blocked in the shapes around her eyes and hairline, I used the Palette Knife (at around 15% Opacity) to vertically blend the tones into each other. The Oily Palette Knife is really great for this type of blending and I was also able to lose the edges around her jaw-line. From out of this, I pulled a singular highlight that is reflecting light from her eye and cheek, using the Conte brush and Acrylic brushes at about 50% Opacity. As long as the placement is accurate, the viewer’s eye fills in the missing detail and it reads as a face, even though there is no detail and the eyes are essentially just black marks.

01

Dark portraits can be a fantastic way of creating mood and drama to an image, but you need to avoid going overboard!

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Art class

I want to create a dramatic portrait where the face is mainly in shadow. How do I give the impression of features and not end up with a black mess in Corel Painter?

The secret lies in the Selections and Layers options within Painter. By isolating your scanned-in pencil line drawing on its own layer, you can colour it without affecting the quality of the line or the painting around it. Painter has tools to make this easy.

Q&A

Shady behaviour

I like the quality of my pencil drawings and wish to keep them in my paintings, but I’d also like them to be in colours as well as black. How can I do this?

in and select 01 Scan your drawing

I scanned my line drawing and chose Auto Select from the Select Menu. Since my drawing is black and white, I used the Image Luminance option, which is based on values. With the line selected, I then chose Float from the Select Menu – this puts the selected line on its own layer with no background white.

02 Colour the lines

I checked the Preserve Transparency box on the Layers palette – this automatically masks your pixels so you can only paint where there already is information on the layer. This allows you to colour in your line quickly and easily – I varied the colours to work with the natural tones of the subject matter.

03 Paint on the canvas

I then went back to the canvas layer to paint – I used lots of textures to create an Impressionist feel. You can go back and forth between the line layer and the canvas to adjust the colours as your work progresses.

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Q&A Art class

Here you can see how to go from normal proportions to the stuff comic books are made of!

Think strong highlights when it comes to painting your shiny metal objects

We could be heroes

Is it possible to get the look of vector illustration in Corel Painter? I’ve only ever used the brushes, so am a bit clueless when it comes to the other capabilities!

T�� S����

I love the traditional comic book superheroes and want to draw my own. Can you break down the body proportions to help my drawing?

As always, liberties can and should be taken in creating your own dynamic characters, and all these tips can be modified as needed, but it’s usually best to start with a good grounding in basic anatomy.

The sketches here show a so-called average human male figure and a superhero for comparison. The traditional unit of measure for the body is the size of the head. The average figure is usually drawn from six and a half to seven heads tall. Our superhero, on the other hand, is nearly eight heads tall. The additional height is gained by lengthening the hips and legs. Our average guy’s knees are at the five head line, while our hero’s are nearly at the six. All the hero’s proportions are bigger, with the muscles (especially in the chest and arms) more defined. The shoulders are broader and the waist narrower: the classic V-shape torso. Otherwise, the standard measurements should be followed, at least if your hero is still somewhat human. The nipple line of the chest is at the two head line, for instance. The navel falls at the three head line, and the fingers of the relaxed arms fall roughly mid-thigh.

Metal works

T��� P�������

Creating vectors

Absolutely. Corel Painter has long had the ability to draw its own version of vectors, called Shapes. Since I draw a lot of cartoon and graphic illustrations, I like this feature a lot. You can use the Oval and Rectangular Shape tools to draw basic geometric forms, the Quick Curve for freehand lines, and the Pen tool to make less regular shapes using the point and Bézier curve method that other vector-drawing programs also employ. Corel

I want to paint a robot, but am a bit stumped as to the best way of getting the really gleaming metal. Do you have any advice?

D����� M���

Essentially, the metal is going to reflect the light, so you’ll have strong highlights in a very high key. Metal also has a lot of shadow in it, so use your darkest shadow colour for this and place it next to the highlight. In the space scene above, it’s a very warm palette of mainly yellow and reds. So the red would also be reflected, which helps accentuate the reflective properties of the material. If it’s highly polished, then you’ll also get singular highlights but for a more realistic look I’d only recommend using one or two, or it can start to look like Eighties airbrushed van art.

In this example, I’ve made a graphic cartoon illustration of a beaver using just the Shapes feature. It’s possible to mix Painter’s regular pixel-based layers with the vector ones for varied effects

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In the background

02 Define a mood

Instead of thinking of the background as something that draws attention away from the picture, why not think of it as a way to focus attention ON your picture? Using a form of spotlighting and using subtle textures in the background with soft ambient light you can do just that.

03

03 Refine

Now that the background textures and colours are in place you can refine main picture. I would recommend painting on a new layer so you can change the picture without changing the background.

Starting point The

background colour should be decided early on in the painting process. Either way, do not go into too much detail on the periphery because they are subject to being painted over.

Painter lists each shape on its own special layer in the Layers palette. It is identified by a triangle over a circle instead of the stack of three rectangles on a pixel layer. Here it’s easy to rearrange their order and even edit their transparency. These shapes each have a stroke and a fill that can be changed over and over while they are in the Shape mode using the Set Shape Attributes Dialog menu. Even though they are vector-based, they are displayed in an anti-aliased form, meaning the edges can appear more smooth and photographic than some vector programs appear.

Art class

Using a large opaque brush, colour in the background. To create the spotlight effect, work dark around the edges and lighter towards your main focus. The edges of the character or object will pick up and reflect the background colours.

C���� L��

01

Q&A

What’s the best way of making a background that doesn’t draw attention away from the picture, but that isn’t just �lat?

02

01

When painting a mass of objects, such as flowers, always simplify to avoid having to paint each and ever detail. Your image will look better for it

Floral tribute

What’s a quick way of painting a collection of �lowers? I’d like to try for a traditional �loral still life, but don’t want to spend hours on it!

S���� G����

Painting flowers is a great exercise in simplifying complex shapes. Right is a crop of the Victorian portrait I did a tutorial on last issue, but I didn’t go into specifics about the flowers in the hat. As you can see, I did a drawing first. The best way to simplify the shapes in the reference is to squint when you look at it. When you do this, you’ll immediately see the edges that suggest the form of each flower. Painting each petal would be accurate, but it wouldn’t have any life. So,

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Q&A Art class

Out of this world

I want to paint a planet scene for a friend who loves space, but can’t seem to get it right. Have you any advice for painting a simple planet?

01 Using shadows

In this setup, the light being reflected most directly is bright white, and then there’s a regular transition to dark grey. Here there is a more sudden transition to the darker values in the core shadow, and then a small amount of reflected light on the opposite side. The cast shadows are usually divided up into separate transitional values as well, getting lighter as they more away from the sphere.

E��� �������� Painting a planet is a good exercise in remembering our basic painting fundamentals. As we know, just about everything is made up of basic geometric shapes: the cone, cube, cylinder and sphere. Obviously, our focus here is the sphere and we just need to be accurate with the light source for it to read as a planet.

02

Onto the planets I’ve rotated around the primary light source

so the planet looks more dramatic. As you can see, it’s exactly the same principle, from light source to core shadow. The reflective light would be minimal in space, but for artistic licence I’ve included it to ‘pop’ the planet shape off the background.

here I block in the basic yellows and pinks of the flowers very quickly, and them blend them together with the Palette Knife. Then, I paint the petal’s hard edges, using the Conte brush at low opacity. I also paint very small, which further forces me to paint just those edges that describe the form and keep looking at the painting until they read as flowers.

All made up

Any guidelines for painting realistic makeup? I’m a bit worried about turning my lovely portrait into a painting of a clown!

G����� F����

03 Glowing report

As we see, even the cast shadow can be included here, blocking the light from the sun, which creates further drama. I pulled some of the sun flare out using a Textured Blender, and then blended and softened the edges using the Wet Oily Palette Knife over the top at low opacity to create a soft glow.

When attempting makeup, I start by painting the face as you would normally – sans makeup – focusing the planes of the face, the light etc. When happy, I use the Conte brush to block in a very strong red at very low opacity, making sure I don’t go below the nose line. I did the eyeliner the same way, but on a separate layer so I could colour-adjust it separately. As I shifted the hues around, I found the green gave it the ‘oomph’ I was looking for. To simulate a lot of lipstick, I find several highlights are needed. On plain lips, the highlight isn’t as bright and also softer. As lipstick has essentially the same reflective qualities as plastic, I use a very sharp, unblended mark, using the Acrylic brush.

You don’t have to have a degree in cosmetics to apply a realistic touch of mascara!

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Speed demon

There seems to be a little confusion about what speed painting actually is. I’m a long time member of Sijun (a digital painting community, which can be found at http://forums.sijun.com) and there’s a speed painting thread on there that would probably give the wrong idea to most

Art class

S���� B�����

This is a speed painting I did based on a trip to the gorgeous Huka Falls in New Zealand What I focused on here was . just the basic shapes and ligh t. As you can see, there’s no det ail at all. It’s all about the valu es and how the light affects the ma in forms of the girl, trees and path. The decision-making is mo stly done at this stage.

Q&A

I’ve heard a lot of people talk about speed painting and gush over the virtues of it, but no one has really said what it is. Is it literally just painting quickly? Why would anyone do that and what are the effects of applying a technique like this in Corel Painter?

beginners. A lot of the large community art sites will have a speed painting thread where digital artists will show off work that they have created, along with the time that it took them to complete their work. There’s also a lot of skill involved in the process. You need to be able to work with colour and brushstrokes to create recognisable subjects, without actually having to add a great deal of detail. In my opinion, speed painting is only a benefit if you limit yourself to no more than an hour per painting, which forces you to focus on the bigger shapes and values, which is the point of speed painting: to be as accurate as you can be in your art, while working quickly.

01 The first draft

02 Moving on

From here, as I developed it, I focused on edges, creating soft edges in the shadows and sharper edges in the light. I knew from the speed painting that I wanted the viewer’s eye to be lead from the girl to the path, which meant sharper edges where the light would be reflecting off the sand and the shrubs around the path.

03 More detail

The main change from the previous image to this final painting is really just rendering. Alluding to detail in the trees and the texture on the path, etc… But, as you can see, the decision-making was done earlier, so this is where the brain shuts off and you can just have fun.

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Using the produ, ctaketsn on

Our seascape D, was the Pentax K10 of e given a new leas stel Pa e th to ks life than l Painter brushes in Core

The creative products on test this issue…

Pentax camera In the market for a shiny new digital SLR? Check out the review of the Pentax K10D, and see if its features and capabilities will persuade you to buy it

Wacom Cintiq 21UX It’s expensive, it’s big and it’s jaw droppingly gorgeous! Find out what else the Cintiq can do apart from making us excited!

book reviews Looking for some brain content? Inject yourself with a mighty dose of inspiration, thanks to this collection of artistic and ideainducing books

japanese fibre paper We take a look at some exquisite Japanese Fibre paper that gives a beautiful texture to your delicate watercolours or ink drawings

Reviews

Use this section to discover what creative products can boost your use of Corel Painter, learn about the best artistic books and discover ideas for displaying your artwork

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Reviews Pentax K10D

Pentax K10D

£750 | Take your photography to new heights with this superb model

Menu systems The K10D’s menus are really easy to navigate and let you control pretty much every aspect of your photography

nyone who has been researching the market for a quality digital SLR may notice that this particular model looks very similar to the Samsung GX-10, but there are differences that make this a Pentax model through and through. The K10D sits very comfortably in the hand, and the extra weight of the camera in comparison to its competitors doesn’t present much of a problem. All of the buttons and switches can be reached easily and are comfortable to operate, and the Info button, which calls up the current settings on the 2.5-inch LCD, is a great feature, particularly for visually impaired photographers. The 2.5-inch TFT monitor has a wide angle of view, making it easier to chimp without taking your camera off its tripod. In playback mode, the rear e-dial functions as a zoom wheel, while the d-pad can be used to pan around images. With the ability to magnify your images up to 16x, checking for sharpness and clarity is really simple too. Users can also apply digital �ilters in-camera and then send their images to PictBridgecompatible printers. Selecting Digital Filter from the Fn menu in playback mode takes users to the Filter submenu, where they can choose from B & W, Sepia, Color, Soft, Slim, or Brightness. Each �ilter can be adjusted, with the Color �ilter offering 18 �ilters, for example. Additionally, the softness of the Soft �ilter can be set, as can the brightness of the your images, which can be adjusted in a range of +/-8 levels.

RAW images can also be edited via this Fn menu in playback mode. Users can adjust everything: image quality, white balance, ISO, image tone, saturation, sharpness and contrast, before saving the RAW �ile in JPEG format under a new name – all without even going near a computer. Although this is a handy feature for those who prefer to print directly from their cameras, computer users are unlikely to want to do all of their processing in-camera. The TFT monitor is pretty good, but still no substitute for checking your images on a computer screen. One much-talked-about feature is the Shake Reduction system, which, according to Pentax, “shifts the position of the CCD image sensor vertically and horizontally at high speed using magnetic force, while adjusting the shifting speed in proportion to the amount of camera shake detected by a built-in sensor”. The big advantage of this is that users don’t need expensive antishake lenses and all of their pre-existing lenses that are compatible with the K10D can bene�it. Pentax claims that its SR system offers “an outstanding compensation effect equivalent to two to four shutter-speed steps”. Although we were unable to perform a scienti�ic experiment to test this theory ourselves, we did �ind the Shake Reduction system to be pretty good. In short, the K10D is an innovative, easy-touse DSLR, which will suit advanced amateurs perfectly. A few of the advanced settings and �ine-tuning features may be a little too

Exposure bracket button

Lens The lightweight kit lens is quick to respond. It’s a little noisy when focusing, but it does yield decent images considering the price. A wide choice of lenses is also available

Screen The 2.5-inch LCD is brightnessadjustable and offers a wide angle of view, making it easy to navigate menus and review images at awkward angles

OK button

Memory card The door protecting the memory card is robust and the switchoperated system means you’ll never knock it open by accident, protecting your images

Record Mode

Custom Setting

Info button

Connections Shake reduction switch FN menu

Card cover unlock lever

The door concealing the connections panel clicks firmly shut and sits flush to the camera body, providing reassurance. All cables connect cleanly and easily

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Pentax K10D SP+AP, M, X speed, £750 Bulb, User (with 18-55mm lens) Flash modes Megapixels (effective) A, A+RE, 10.2 Fon, Fon+RE, Max resolution SS, SS+RE 3,872 x 2,592 Connectivity Lens data USB, NTSC, By lens PAL, PictBridge Price

Front e-dial

Zoom

RAW button

camera specs

Flash button

Weight

By lens 710g (excl. batteries)

Focus/Macro

Dimensions

By lens 141.5 x 101 x 70mm

Self-timer lamp/remote control sensor

Shutter speeds

Focus mode lever

Batteries

30-1/4,000 sec, bulb Rechargeable ISO sensitivity D-LI50 li-ion A, 100, 200, 400, Storage 800, 1600 SD, SDHC Metering options

LCD

MS, CW, S 2.5”

Exposure modes

Green, P, Sensitivity Priority, SP, AP, Build design The K10D is solidly constructed, has a reassuring weight to it and feels like a professional piece of kit. Ergonomics are good too

Mode dial

on the top

bits and pieces that will inevitably help to guide photographers in the right direction, easing them into the world of professional DSLRs rather than throwing them in at the deep end. The price and resolution of this camera mean that it’s up against stiff competition. All of the cameras in this price bracket have a lot going for them and the K10D is no exception. This camera faithfully reproduces colour and records detailed textures across the board. In terms of sharpness and overall image quality, the K10D isn’t quite up to the same standard as some of its competitors, but it is certainly worthy of consideration. If you’re searching for an innovative DSLR with some really unique attributes, the K10D represents fantastic value for money.

Main switch

Metering Mode lever

What we like

What we don’t like

A DSLR that’s a bit more technical than an entry-level model – you can grow with the K10D

Features

Shake Reduction feature good for low-light shots Robust feel Excellent results

A bit rattly when focusing Can be noisy at higher ISOs

10

Ease of use

we say

technical for some users, but armed with the comprehensive manual provided, K10D users are offered an excellent opportunity to learn more about the technical side of photography. The assumption that this camera is aimed at the more experienced amateur is echoed by the absence of the usual preset modes that we’ve come to expect from low- to mid-range DSLRs. Users are expected to rely on their pre-existing knowledge of camera settings when using the K10D, although the manual provided is an excellent source of information. The K10D is not a dedicated professional DSLR, rather a bridge between an entry-level and a pro camera – think of it as your very �irst proper mountain bike with the stabilisers removed. There are all kinds of

Built-in flash

verdict

“If you’re searching for an innovative DSLR with some really unique attributes, the K10D represents fantastic value for money”

9.0

Quality of results

8.0

Value for money

9.0

D-pad control The four-way switch and the OK button make menu navigation simple and they emit an audible ‘click’ when depressed, so users know that they’ve hit the right key

Test shot The colours are rich and accurate, and the anti-shake technology can really help out, especially when you use the kit zoom lens to its full extension

Overall score

9.0 83

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Reviews Wacom Cintiq 21UX

Wacom Cintiq 21UX £2,016 | In an ideal world you’d be able to paint directly on your screen… well, now you can! Wacom brings the dream into reality with the Cintiq 21UX igital art, and the equipment to help you create it, has come a long way in the last few years. But if you’ve been used to painting and drawing directly on canvas or paper in the past, there still seems to be a kind of no man’s land between your hand and the drawing surface. Drawing and painting via a graphics tablet is indeed far superior to trying to draw with a mouse the size of a small brick, but it’s still not like drawing directly on a surface. In an ideal world you’d be able to paint directly on the screen. Well, thanks to the Wacom Cintiq 21UX interactive display, you can do exactly that! Just an initial word of warning here. Before reading this review, get a close friend to hide all of your bankcards and entrust your wallet to someone not tempted by jaw-dropping digital gadgetry, unless you want a rather large hole in your �inances very soon. Put simply, if you’re into digital art, and particularly if you’re a Corel Painter addict, the Wacom Cintiq is sheer brilliance. First of all, the Wacom Cintiq 21UX is a fabulously large, crisp and sleek 21.3-inch TFT display. The quality and clarity of this screen are second to none, and it displays even the most subtle shifts in tone and colour faithfully and �lawlessly. The response times of the display are amazingly fast, and the screen shows no sign of the ghosting often exhibited by cheaper �lat-panel displays when moving a brush, pointer or palette across your canvas. If you were to use the Cintiq purely as your primary computer monitor, and disregard its other wizardry, you’d not be disappointed in its screen. It can cope with resolutions up to 1,600 x 1,200, so you’ll not want for lack of visible detail and de�inition as you work, whether on

ExpressKeys

Work area

creative projects or day-to-day administration. But, of course, the Cintiq is about much more than a great display. Its real strength lies in the fact that you can draw and paint directly on it with great results. The Cintiq arrives very well packed and protected, but just prepare yourself for a big box, as this is one big beast. Once

you’ve unpacked the thing, there is a little physical setting up to do. The Cintiq has a very substantial adjustable stand attached to it, which enables you to tilt and rotate the screen. You have to �it this yourself after you’ve unpacked, but it’s a simple case of tightening a couple of screws. All cables are attached, so once the stand is �itted you’re ready to roll.

Grand designs The screen real estate is big, but you’re going to need a lot of desk space to home this beast with a large stand on the back

Room to breathe

The Cintiq stylus

One of the great things about the size of the screen itself is that it encourages you to draw naturally

The stylus supplied is exactly the same as those supplied with the Intuos 3 range

ExpressKeys The ExpressKeys and Touch Strips are conveniently placed on either side of the Cintiq screen

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higher, graphics card with VGA or DVI (recommended) connection, USB 2.0

Price

£2,016 (Internet prices can be a lot less) Website

Mac requirements

www.wacom.com

Mac OS X 10.2.6 or higher, graphics card with VGA or DVI (recommended) connection, USB 2.0

Operating systems

PC and Mac

Touch Strip

Cintiq specs

Wacom Cintiq 21UX

PC requirements

Windows 98SE, 2000, ME, XP or

Grip Pen

“You’ll be hard pressed to beat the Cintiq 21UX… it will take your digital painting and image manipulation to a new level” start using it to draw and paint with. Although the actual surface of the display looks fairly smooth and glossy, it’s got an almost-invisible texture to it that grips the tip of the drawing stylus very nicely indeed, giving you the same sort of control as you’d have when drawing on paper with a pencil. Remember, just as with Wacom’s Intuos range of graphics tablets, once you’re painting you have pressure and tilt sensitivity built-in, so if you’re using pencil or charcoal within Corel Painter, for instance, you can control the opacity and size of your brush simply by varying the pressure you apply with your stylus. You can also use this sensitivity in other ways.

size, rather than using the bracket keys on the keyboard. There are ten of these keys in total, so once you con�igured their functions via the Cintiq Control Panel, you really needn’t touch your keyboard at all as you work. You also have two touch-sensitive strips that respond to your �inger being dragged over them. These are ideal for controlling things like zooming in and out of your images. So, in conclusion, as digital gadgetry goes, you’ll be hard pressed to beat the Cintiq 21UX. It will take your digital painting and image manipulation to a whole new level of interactivity and real world ‘feel’. Use one for a few minutes and you’ll be a Cintiq devotee.

Cintiq Control Panel From the Control Panel, you can control every aspect of the Cintiq’s functionality, including pressure sensitivity, doubleclick speed, tilt sensitivity and, of course, the assignment of functions to the buttons, ExpressKeys and Touch Strips.

What we like

Super-bright, huge 21-inch display The ability to dramatically tilt and rotate the display ExpressKeys that render the keyboard virtually redundant in Corel Painter

If you don’t mind the price, then this will take your digital work to the next level

What we don’t like

The price tag! It’s heavy and large Rear-mounted setup controls are a bit fiddly in use

Features

10.0

Ease of use

we say

And this is where the warning comes in. From the �irst moment you sit down and try the Cintiq, you will be hooked. Drawing on-screen is so intuitive that it makes even graphics tablets seem clunky and awkward. Not only is it a dream to draw onto, but the bracket makes things even better. You can turn and tilt the Cintiq to get in the perfect drawing position, just as you would with a piece of paper or canvas. If all of the above is not enough for you, there’s more! On both edges of the Cintiq, you have a cluster of ExpressKeys. Essentially, you can con�igure these keys to perform any function that you’d normally use the keyboard for. For instance, you could con�igure one of them to increase brush size, and another to decrease the

verdict

The unit itself is powered by a small mains transformer, and the video signal is transferred by either a VGA or DVI cable. The entire graphics tablet bit is done via a USB connection. Driver installation is a breeze, performed directly from a CD. As soon as you’re plugged in and you’ve installed the driver, you’ll be up and running. You can now not only draw and paint across this huge screen in programs such as Corel Painter, but you can even use the stylus itself as a replacement for your mouse, controlling all of the computer’s functions as you normally would. With the stylus, you can double-click as you would with the mouse, and you even have left and right buttons on the stylus itself. The Cintiq really starts to sing when you actually

10.0

Quality of results

10.0

Value for money

8.0

Overall score

9.5 85

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Reviews Books

New Fashion Illustration £17.99 | Become a dedicated follower of inspirational fashion art t may be that the idea of buying a fashion book for artistic inspiration seems weird to you, but fashion has a rich history of illustration that doesn’t depend upon interest in needle and thread. Author Martin Dawber more than proves this point, with his collection of the best fashion illustrators from around the world. But we should really stop talking of this as a fashion book. What we really enjoyed about this title was the varied styles of art on display, created in a whole range of mediums (and, yes, Corel Painter does appear!). Just a quick �lick through reveals anything from collage images to traditional oils to digital ink sketches, and they can range from serious

“We enjoyed the varied styles of art on display… Just a quick flick through reveals anything from collage images to traditional oils to digital ink sketches” Artist profile Each artist featured has a small profile where they speak about their work and influences. This is a great way to see who’s behind the art, and you can also find contact information in the back of the book

compositions through to more cartoon, graphic representations. Rather than bunch a group of images together, Dawber has instead arranged the art according to different artists. This results in a series of pro�iles on talented (fashion) illustrators, beginning with some words from each artist about their work, background, inspirations and working practices. Once the introductions

are made, you then move into examples of that artist’s work, along with details of what medium was used to create it. The print quality of the book is topnotch, with bright and vivid colours. The printing also captures texture and subtle brush marks exceptionally well, so you don’t feel as if you’re missing out by just seeing the painting in a book as opposed to in the �lesh. We love �inding books like this – the ones where the subject matter isn’t instantly appealing, but after a bit of further investigation it turns out to hold a treasure trove of interesting goodies. There are some really engaging pieces of art here and the production qualities of the book are very high. The paper quality is nice and thick, but isn’t so glossy that you leave lots of �ingerprints on it, or it suffers from lots of glare. If you are a fan of fashion design and illustration, buying this book should be a no-brainer. But even if you aren’t, we’d de�initely still recommend buying it.

Traditional touch In addition to all the digital goodness, you can also enjoy examples of traditional techniques, such as this artist who uses oil on canvas

Inspirational illustration One aspect of the book that we really enjoyed was the examples of illustration, such as this one above. Again, it’s a great source of inspiration

Edited by

Martin Dawber Price

£17.99 Publisher

Batsford ISBN

0-7134-8961-8

Great ideas Take advantage of the range of ideas in the book. For example, why not try scanning in pieces of fabric and using them in your next Corel Painter creation?

Many mediums A lot of the artwork in the book is created using a few different mediums, all of which have their digital counterpart in Corel Painter, so you can emulate the styles yourself quite easily

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Colour £14.99 | Enter the world of colour harmony Author

Gavin Ambrose and Paul Harris

Price

£14.95

Publisher

AVA Publishing

ISBN

2-88479-066-7

ny artist knows that colour is of prime importance and most people have some basic semblance of what constitutes a good use of colour and what should be avoided at all costs. But there’s no harm in boosting instinctual action with a bit of theory, and this book has lots of information regarding colour usage. Bursting with examples of different colour relationships, this book moves from colour theory to colour printing processes through to looking at the ‘mood’ of colour. This is a really nice little book. There’s a perfect mixture of theory mixed with interesting little nuggets of information that makes you think about colour and how you use it in your work. Granted, most of the examples are based in illustration or graphic design, but there’s plenty to give you a solid grounding in using colour to the best effect in your art.

The founding principles The book begins with some fundamental colour theory points, such as understanding the colour wheel and the relationship between colours

Colour treatments There are plenty of examples in the book about the different methods of applying colour in images, which you can use in your artwork

Moody moments One of the best parts of the book is the pages that deal with different colours and what kind of moods they evoke, which is essential knowledge for all digital artists

Pattern and Palette Sourcebook 2 £19.99 | A great compendium of patterns and designs Authors

Heidi Arrizabalaga Price

£19.99

Publisher

Rockport Publishers Inc

ISBN

1-59253-317-5

here’s a growing number of titles appearing whose main use is as a one-stop resource for design elements. This book is one such example, and its title explains what it offers perfectly: patterns! There are two elements to this book. The �irst is, erm, the actual book. This provides a visual guide to nearly 1,000 patterns and colour combinations, and serves as a fantastic way of getting ideas for patterns and colours that work well together. The second part of the book is an interactive CD. On here you can �ind all of the patterns in the book, but you can use a Flash player to alter the colour combinations of the patterns. If you like what you see, you can also print the pattern out, maybe to create you own wrapping paper or art borders. This book is a lot of fun that does a good job of teaching you about colour relationships and design, which also works as a great creative tool.

Pattern collections The patterns are divided into categories, which kicks off with a small bit of text about what the patterns evoke

Patterns galore Enjoy flicking through the book and drink in the various patterns and colour combinations, which can all be incorporated into your work

Make your own Load up the included Flash player from the book’s CD and you can have a go at different colour treatments – you can even print them out

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Reviews Output

Visit www.on-linepaper.co.uk to order the Japanese Fibre paper

Create textured prints and artwork

You can order products directly from the site on a secure server

Use special media paper from On-line Paper.co.uk to print out your artwork or use as the basis for some exquisite Corel Painter paper Tutorial info Artist

Jo Cole Time needed

10 minutes Skill level

Beginner

ast issue we looked at three different companies that offer customers a wide range of special inkjet papers. Some of these were obvious choices for the digital artist – such as canvas or watercolour paper, but some were a little bit unusual. On-line Paper was one of the companies featured last issue and we decided to have a look at a brand of its paper in a little bit more depth. The Hahnemuhle Japan Fibres paper is an excellent product that looks just like traditional Japanese tissue. Available in white, you can see little strands of �ibres in the paper, giving a wonderfully textured appearance. One thing that’s really nice about the paper is that it has a very delicate feel and appearance, yet it is still robust and

doesn’t tear easily. It can be used in any inkjet printer and holds the ink extremely well. This means that you can indulge yourself in delicate ink and watercolour creations, safe in the knowledge that when you print it out, everything will look like it should. This paper obviously lends itself well to any Asian art you may be working on, but its uses doesn’t stop there. Because the paper is so textured, you can scan it in and then use it as a basis for creating your

own papers in Corel Painter. It’s very easy to do and means you can incorporate the lovely �ibre texture into each brushstroke. You can pick up a pack of the Japan Fibres paper by going to www.on-linepaper. co.uk and heading to the Hahnemuhle Art Line Papers section. A pack of 20 A4 sheets will set you back £15 (excluding VAT) and you can order from the site even if you live outside of the UK. So pay a visit to www.on-linepaper. co.uk and order some today!

“One thing that’s really nice about the paper, is that it has a very delicate feel and appearance, yet it is still robust and doesn’t tear easily”

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Get creative with fibre paper One product with two uses!

Ink coverage Although this paper does handle ink very well, it’s still best if you use it with images that are very loose and sketchy. Since the beauty of the paper is in the fibres, it seems a shame to then drown them in a sea of ink, especially if it’s dark colours.

01 Feed into the printer

Your type of printer will determine just how you load the paper. If your printer has an ‘accept all’ policy on paper, just feed it in as normal. However, if you are using a printer with special settings for fine art paper, such as this HP Photosmart Pro B9180, then follow the instructions. The paper isn’t as thick as canvas or card, but it is thicker than normal print paper.

02 Dry and enjoy

The printout is pretty dry as soon as it’s finished but it’s an idea to not touch any of the printed area and just let it sit in the air for a few minutes. Then you are free to enjoy your artwork! Try to pick a frame that enhances the work and don’t cover over the lovely texture!

04 Papers palette 03 Use as a paper

Before you print on all the paper, take a moment to scan a piece onto your desktop. Do this at a nice high resolution so you can see all of the lovely fibres and load the scan into Corel Painter. Pick the selection tool and then draw around an area you think is most interesting.

Open up your Papers palette and click on the right-pointing arrow. Choose Capture Paper and then enter a name. We called ours Japanese Paper. Make sure that Crossfade is on 100%, otherwise your paper won’t be smooth. Click OK and the paper will be made.

or 06 Inallbits at once

05 Different options

The Papers palette also has various other options that allow you to change how brush strokes will interact with it. You can use the top slider to zoom in and out of the paper, or adjust its brightness and contrast to bring out the detail.

Now you have turned the Japanese Fibre paper into one of Corel Painter’s Papers, you can set it to work with each brush stroke or use it with the Surface Texture effect to apply all over an image.

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Readers’ gallery issue five

Gallery

A successful painting doesn’t have to be super-sharp and focused – Cheryl’s Blanchard loose style is a joy to behold. We find out more about the artist and take a look at how her images are created he reader’s gallery this issue comes courtesy of Cheryl Blanchard. Her expressive, loose gallery caught our eye on the magazine website, and we very much wanted to �ind out more about her work and painting practices. To see more of Cheryl’s work, pay a visit to www.pbase.com/cherylblanchard or comment on her gallery by going to www.paintermagazine.co.uk/user/ Cheryl Blanchard. When did you first start using Painter? Two years ago I met a photographer who showed me Corel Painter. I was immediately entranced by this medium. I’ve been a �ine artist for 35 years, working in oils and pastels, and a commercial artist in the wall-covering and textile industries for 27 years. With the experience of a traditional painter and ten years of Photoshop, this was the perfect opportunity for me to combine the two. By that evening I had purchased the software, and I haven’t been back to traditional medium. What are your favourite tools? I’ve spent the last two years experimenting and �inding my way, and have come to love the Artists’ Oils and the Pastels. These mediums afford me a similar experience to which I’m accustomed, with many more luxuries. The Artists’ Oils have a creamy feel to them and the Pastels are rich and chalky. I paint hard and fast, and enjoy the fact that I can sit down at any moment and get right to it! And no brushes to clean when I’m done – no fumes, no dust. Who are your favourite Corel Painter artists? My favourite artists are two whom I’ve met at Marilyn Sholin’s Digital Painting Forum. Jordan S Dill is an artist who paints a cast of characters that may seem unsettling at �irst glance, but with a closer look, re�lect a great deal of our human experience. Jordan brings a �ine-art perspective to this medium and a unique point of view. His palette is rich and deep,

Cheryl Blanchard This self-portrait was created using Hard Pastels and was done in the Chiaroscuro style

and enticing. He goes on to illustrate his paintings with thought-provoking prose that adds yet another dimension to his art. David Cole is another artist who has impressed me with his skilful use of brushes, colour and space. David’s portraiture and landscapes are always exciting and masterfully executed. His paintings are a pleasure to behold each and every time. Have you got a favourite painting, either yours or someone else’s? A favourite painting of mine has to be

Our Little Broadway. This represents a bridge to a different form of expression, more abstract and intense. The Artists’ Oils worked perfectly for me here. There is nothing that compares to painting with pixels and light! Another favourite is Jordan Dill’s painting titled Madness Not, Court Of Leaves. This striking image leaves one feeling a bit unsettled, but at the same time offers a glimpse into our own secret, dark corners. He’s created a superbly painted image, with a palette and technique all his own.

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01

Title: 36th St Rush Hour Created using Oils and Pastels, this image shows Cheryl’s typical style, full of life and loose strokes. We really like how the image changes according to where you view it from – up close it is a haze of colour, but forms appear when you stand back.

02

Title: Night Vision I and II

Created with the Hard Pastels, these capture that feeling of driving around late at night, with the lights of the city passing you by. There’s a great photographic quality to these images and the colours are lovely.

03

Title: He’s Seen Enough Art For One Day In this humorous piece, Cheryl has used the Artists’ Oils to great effect. The composition is what makes this piece so great – you don’t instantly see the man, but when you do, the whole joke comes together beautifully.

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Gallery

Readers’ gallery issue five

04

Title: Our Little Broadway Created with the Artists’ Oils. This image should give hope to anyone who is scared to tackle a freehand painting because they can’t draw photo-realistic shapes. Even though there are no clearly defined forms, it’s easy to see that this image is depicting a bustling scene.

05

Title: Looking In Created with the Artists’ Oils. The expression on the man’s face is what makes this image and, once again, Cheryl has used composition to add character to the painting. Her brush strokes are nice and clear, and the near framing of the subject makes him look like a cheeky pixie!

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06

Title: Waiting For The Night A wonderfully textured piece, created with the Artists’ Oils. You can almost feel the thick splodges of paints with this, and once again Cheryl’s loose brush movements have made a common scene something very evocative and intriguing. The colours are also excellent.

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Readers’ gallery issue five

Challenge ondering how the previous challenges have been coming along? Look to the right where you can see the winners from issues 1-3. If you feel inspired, load up the images you see below from this issue’s disc and try applying your own creative

style to them. Do whatever you like to them – clone, composite or use as a reference sketch. It’s completely up to you how it works! There’s no set deadline, but we will judge the best images that come through for the on-sale period of a magazine. So be as quick or relaxed as you like!

This challenge’s materials

THE WINNER

WILL GET THEIR PAINTING PROFESSIONALLY

PRINTED ONTO CANVAS!

How to enter the challenge… To share your work with others, send your pictures in to us and you could be featured on these pages. Just pop your images onto a CD and send it to: Creative Challenge, Official Corel Painter Magazine, Imagine Publishing, Richmond House, 33 Richmond Hill, Bournemouth, Dorset BH2 6EZ, UK Alas, we can’t return any CDs. If your entry is under 2MB, you can email it to [email protected]

Remember! You can email your entries to [email protected] 96

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Cha llen ge

winners

Check out the winners from the �irst three competitions hanks to all of you who have sent in your entries to our regular Readers’ Challenge. It’s been really interesting to see how you have taken the supplied images and then twisted them to �it in with your own artistic vision. We’ve got the winners here from the �irst three issues, but don’t worry if you haven’t made it this time – you can enter as many times as you like. And it doesn’t even matter if you take your time over your entry. There are no deadlines – we simply pick the best one that came in during the magazine’s on-sale period. Congratulations to these winners – your canvas is being made as we speak!

ISSUE 2 Winner: Kobi McKenzie

ISSUE 1

Winner: Lydia Price

ISSUE 3 Winner: Ata Alishahi

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