CorelPainCorel Painter - 12 - Magazine, Art, Digital Painting, Drawing, Draw, 2d

Official Corel® Painter TM Magazine

Create digital art today!

Official Magazine

Learn Corel Painter’s tools Advice for better drawings Quick start guide on the CD

Issue twelve

Essential guide

Working with Wacom tablets

Share your work online

Create your own Painter gallery on our website!

The fundamental rules for getting your Wacom tablet to sync with Corel Painter

Creative project

Japanese woodprints

Over

45

Learn how to give your line art the look of this traditional art form

pages of tutorials

Fresh ideas for better

portra portraits ri ra

PC an d Mac

Visit us online – www.paintermagazine.co.uk

Artists reveal their techniques for creating inspired portraits – from composition to sketch to final finish!

FREE CD

INSIDE

TEXTURES | STOCK PHOTOS | TUTORIAL RESOURCE FILES Sunlight rays Discover how to infuse your art with realistic-looking sun rays

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Brush primer See how the Conte brushes offer a good alternative to charcoal

Art Deco Re-create the stylish look of a Tamara de Lempicka painting

ISSUE TWELVE ISSN 1753-3155

£6.00 12

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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

Brush primer: Conte crayons

Find out how to use this brush, a favourite for textured effects

Pg 50 Create realistic rays of sunlight Let the sun burst through onto your painting

Pg 68 Drawing 101: Composition Pick up some tips on portrait composition to emphasise emotion

ISSUE TWELVE

Pg 32

Creating a portrait of someone else is hard enough, but creating a self-portrait must surely be one of the hardest tasks to embark upon. Being able to bring out your character in a painting is an incredibly awkward and challenging experience but once it’s done, you will have captured a part of yourself forever. We decided to take a closer look at what’s involved in creating a self-portrait by interviewing artists who have had a go themselves. This is followed by a tutorial following someone creating a selfportrait, so you can get �irst-hand experience on what’s involved. For those who don’t have a penchant for portraits, we have a lovely tutorial on creating a Japanese woodcut effect (pg 34), getting the effects of rays of sunlight (pg 50) and a guide to making buildings look 3D (pg 58). Our Paint Like takes on the decadent world of Tamara de Lempicka and the Brush Primer explains the Conte brushes. 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

pg 62 Airbrushed portraits

pg 20

Fea ture

Painting Pg 34 JAPANESE WOODPRINTS

DISCOVER THE MAJESTY AND HISTORY OF UKIYO, THE TRADITIONAL JAPANESE ART OF WOODPRINTING

Pg 68 PORTRAIT COMPOSITION

LEARN HOW TO EVOKE EMOTIONS IN YOUR PAINTINGS THROUGH CONTENT AND STYLISATION

Regulars in every issue 08 Subscriptions

Take out a subscription to the magazine and save money! For non-US subs, see page 89

10 Corel Painter community The best sites, services and resources for creatives

14 Interview

See how professionals are using Corel Painter. This issue, we look at Eric Tranchefeux

56 Painter showcase

The first of our special pages dedicated to outstanding art

74 Art class

Another merry gaggle of artistic problems sorted out

92 Readers’ gallery Discover more about what a fellow reader is getting up to

96 Website challenge

Haven’t entered one of our challenges yet? Turn to this page now!

98 On the disc

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

self-portraits Hold a mirror to yourself with this special feature

WIN!

A YEAR’S SUPPLY OF THE MAGAZINE!

pg 96

Original artwork by Giovanna Gazzalo

Original artwork by Robert Carter

Reviews 82 HP Photosmart C5280 We test this all-in-one to see if it has enough to keep the average digital creative happy

83 How to Paint from Photographs DVD Jeremy Sutton records how he uses Corel Painter X to paint vibrant portraits. We see what else the disc has to offer

84 Book reviews Learn new skills with these books. This issue you can discover how to use colour and how to create photography equipment

86 Embellish your artwork Enrich your printouts by using traditional media and applying it to the page

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by

pg 50 Rays of sunlight Original artwork by Jake Rolfe

pg 34 Woodcut prints

pg 14 Interview

Original artwork by Eric Tranchefeux

Interview Inspirational artists 14 Eric Tranchefeux Nick Spence comes face to face with Eric Tranchefeux, a Parisian artist with a fantastically varied style that’s getting him noticed by major players in the industry

Original artwork by Paul Richard James

tutorials

Create inspirational art 34 Japanese woodcut Learn how to turn a quick line sketch into a textured, delicate woodcut effect

40 Paint like: de Lempicka Take a journey into the Art Deco world of this impressive upper-class artist

50 Create realistic sunlight

Drawing 101 Traditional artist techniques 68 Portrait composition To help you get the most from your self-portraits, we have put together a helpful guide to composing your portraits. Just follow these guides for better artwork!

Add atmosphere to your landscape scenes with this guide to painting sunlight

58 Art study: 3D buildings Get your buildings in shape with these valuable tips to defining their shape

62 Improving backgrounds Paint a new background into an existing photo

Visit our website now!

www. painter magazine. co.uk

Primers

Get up and running… 32 Brushes: Conte With their ability to pick up texture and paper grain, the Conte brushes are a great alternative to charcoal or chalk

Feature focus

Get to know your tools 46 Wacom tablets If you have just got a Wacom graphics tablet, read this essential guide to setting them up to work with Corel Painter

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y t i n u m Com Tutorial xxxx

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

NEWS EVENTS RESOURCES LETTERS WEBSITES INFO FORUM

Free textures ready to download include wood, weave, textures, signs, plastic, plants, numbers, metallic, glass, food and electrical

Stockvault.net offers free stock photos for personal and educational use, and 100 per cent usersubmitted content. In recent years, Stockvault. net has had several makeovers to ensure selecting suitable stock images is painless

Small is beautiful

Free microscopic images reveal the finer details of the everyday world

STOCK PHOTOS

MicroShots.org offers free close-up, highresolution shots of surface textures to add some unusual qualities to your Painter work

lthough Corel Painter comes equipped with a great selection of brushes and paper textures, it’s always good to add to them in order to enhance and expand your resources. MicroShots.org is a new stock photography site that, unusually, specialises in close-up stock photography.

The site has already attracted recommendations from online bloggers, forums and websites like StumbleUpon and Uvouch. It has launched with almost 600 images, with available-to-download picture selections include wood, weave, textures, signs, plastic, plants, numbers, metallic, glass, food and electrical. The majority of the images are rich with colour and texture, and reveal the �iner details of the everyday world we often take for granted. All images are unique to this website and, unlike some user-generated resource images, have a uniform look and feeling of quality. You can study full-size images in your internet browser, ready to download, without signing up to be a member or actually downloading. All of the stock photography on the site is completely royalty-free, remarkably for both personal

and commercial use, although MicroShots. org retains copyright on all of the stock images hosted on the site, so you can’t pass the raw images off as your own. Once downloaded, you can use the images as backgrounds or to add some unusual textures to your artwork. To create your own paper textures in Corel Painter, simply open your downloaded JPEG, select all or a piece of your source image, click the menu arrow on the Papers palette and choose Capture Paper. Type the name of your new texture, and click OK. Your texture now appears in the Paper Selector and is added to the current library. You can also use this excellent source of close-up textures to create, load and save Nozzles for the Image Hose, again adding to your resource options. Visit www. microshots.org and take a look at the collection for yourself.

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

OneOddDude – one great resource Free stock photos and textures neOddDude.net (www. oneodddude.net) is an evergrowing collection of desktop backgrounds, nature and landscape photography, stock photos, computer artwork, downloads and high-resolution textures you can use in your Corel Painter work. All images are free for personal, non-commercial use and you don’t need to join to download high-resolution originals. You can search by a simple tagged system and browse categories such as nature, landscapes, �lowers and animals. Latest additions, highest rated and most popular are also highlighted. A gallery of computer-generated artwork, including otherworldly landscapes, can also be used freely or simply downloaded as stunning desktop backgrounds.

PORTFOLIO

Photo Sharing with 23 Organise, print and share your digital photos

In short Creative happenings from around the world

New tablets from Genius

OneOddDude.net offers original digital photography and free stock photos from all around the world

Genius produces a range of computer accessories, including graphic tablets and digital notepads. Two recent tablets, the G-Pen 560 at 4.5 x 6 inches and G-Pen 350 at 3 x 5 inches, have just been released for PC and Mac. Tablets can be customised by turning hotkeys at the top of the screen into preprogrammed short cuts. Compatible with Painter, visit www. geniusnet.co.uk to find out more.

Fantastic themed fonts

Free fun vectors with VectorMagic RESOURCES

ne of the great pluses of the internet is the ability to share your favourite images with friends and family without needing to print and post your pics. 23 is an easy way to organise, share and allow others to print photos. Your friends and family do not have to have an account to see your photos. 23 does not enforce quotas on storage, and you can upload up to 30 photos every month, or upgrade to 23 Plus for around a very modest £14 a year. More at www.23hq.com. VectorMagic allows you to share your vectorisation results with whoever you choose to

Online tool offers stunning vectors without the tears orel Painter fans will know the power of pixels, but vectors also produce some stunning results that, unlike pixels, can be scaled without lost of clarity. VectorMagic (http://vectormagic. stanford.edu) is a free online tool that converts bitmap images to vector art using a sophisticated online auto-tracer. Watch a short How To video guide, upload a photo or logo, and apart from tweaking the results, the process is painlessly automated. The work of a Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory research project, the site is continually being updated as the beta software is improved. The team behind the site are considering making a client-side version of VectorMagic, but there are no plans currently to open-source the project. A good comparison chart compares VectorMagic with other vector tools and a guide shows you how to get the best results from your photos. Simply click Share and you can send and download the results free of restrictions.

If you want to add themed fonts in the style of your favourite band or TV show, then TypeNow (www. typenow.net/themed.htm) is the place to visit. From Alien to Willy Wonka, AC/DC to Weezer, there are plenty of free fonts to download. Famous brands are included, as well as links to free and commercial fonts.

Digital camera reviews If you’re in the market for a new camera, Digital Photography Review (www.dpreview.com) is an excellent place to start. Edited and maintained by Philip and Joanna Askey, the site includes news, information, forums, links and particularly in-depth unbiased camera reviews. If that bargain camera seems too good to be true, check here first.

FEB

13 of OPM on sale! 01 Issue

Newly signed-up 23 users have an extra 300 photos to upload the first week

Make a date in your diary for the first of the month, as it herald another issue of this very magazine! At the time of going to press, we are planning a Klimt tutorial, a look at drawing horses and a special feature on getting photos ready for cloning.

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

Natural textures

When I got issue ten of your magazine, I was inspired to try the tutorial on creating a wood grain texture from your Art class section. I am really happy with the results! I had no idea that you could do this using the Motion Blur and angles. I thought you might like to see what I came up with.

Lisa Peruchini You’re right – we would like to see what you have come up with! What’s particularly

pleasing about what you’ve done is how you have taken the technique and adapted it beautifully to your own needs. The differentcoloured woods work really well together and we love how you link the panels with the leaves and twigs. It’s a very simple image but it demands attention! If anyone else has tried out a technique in the Art Class, we’d love to see the results.

List of contents

Hello, I have been collecting your magazine on and off for a few months now and wondered if you have an index of all the tutorials? It would be helpful to know what was in the issues I missed and to see if it’s worth getting hold of a copy.

Chris Frost

Lisa’s application of the wood technique taught in issue ten has resulted in this gorgeous image

Excellent timing, Chris. Next issue we are going to be publishing an index of all the content that has appeared so far, detailing all the interviews, tutorials and features. This will be printed in the magazine and also appear on the CD in PDF format. You can then copy this to your desktop to refer to as and when you need, or print it out for future reference. In addition to the printed index, we will also

Make sure you buy next issue of the magazine, as it will contain a comprehensive guide to all the content that has appeared since issue one!

have a special section on the magazine forum. This will be a locked area (so no posting comments!) that is updated as each new issue goes on sale. That way you won’t have to wait for another 12 issues for an index! Be aware, though, that a lot of our back issues have sold out. At the time of writing, only issues 9, 10 and 11 were available, so if you see something in an earlier issue you like the look of, you might have difficulty getting hold of a copy. It’s worth checking on eBay to see if any have been posted, or even check on the Imagine eShop (www.imagineshop. co.uk) as occasionally we unearth some issues.

Featured gallery

Callas

Our favourite reader’s gallery this month

Kaylee Sketch Effect

Bev Langby

www www.paintermagazine. co.uk/user/Bev Langby Anyone who has appreciated Bev’s images before will know that she has a real knack for loose and expressive images. Open up one of her paintings and you’ll be treated to textured brush work, muted colour schemes and powerful portraits. The images seen here offer just a taste of what Bev has achieved, so make sure you visit her gallery and enjoy the rest of her work. If you want to see your images here, set your own gallery up at www.paintermagazine.com. www.paintermagazine.com

Karen’s Painter Goddess

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Interview Eric Tranchefeux

WEBSITE JOB TITLE CLIENTS

www.tranchefeux.com and http://tranchefeux.over-blog.com/ Freelance illustrator Disneyland Resort Paris, Renault, Peugeot, Kinder, Taschen

An interview with…

Eric Tranchefeux Nick Spence says bonjour to Paris-based Eric Tranchefeux who combines a love of the Louvre and fine-art painting with working digitally with Corel Painter

Tranchefeux’s awardwinning work has won great praise from online communities such as CGSociety, CGTalk and CGChallenge

orn in the French capital of Paris in 1969, Eric Tranchefeux started to draw around the age of 17, and by 19 was already working as a professional illustrator. Originally working traditionally, particularly in oil painting, Tranchefeux began experimenting with digital art in 1998, using Corel Painter, Adobe’s Photoshop and later, 3D programs. These days, Tranchefeux works for advertising agencies, packaging and publishing companies as well as continuing to paint for commissions and self-initiated projects.

How would you best describe your style of work? My main work lies in illustration, working in sectors as diverse as advertising, package design and publishing. I am versatile in my working styles, which include everything from hyperrealistic work to cartoon-style illustrations. The themes are equally varied depending upon the client, including food, animals, characters, concept design, heroic fantasy, etc. In my more traditional work, the styles are rather fantasy-orientated, surrealistic or even dreamlike, with realistic or hyperrealistic traits. I also use a free-form impressionist style. This is particularly true of my digital work, including working with Corel Painter. For me, there isn’t much difference between the two, since once the software is loaded, you can quickly and easily transpose traditional techniques using digital tools. How does working digitally compare to working traditionally with, say, oil paints? When I use Corel Painter for oil painting, I can paint on different types of canvas or paper, make brushstrokes, blend or paint with a Palette Knife and simulate effects digitally. The possibilities are immense since you can �ine-tune all of the brushes, �inding the required end result with practice. Above all, the work is faster and easier to complete. You make immediate modi�ications, and no time is wasted

Tranchefeux’s personal work is mainly oil paintings covering many of his great loves, inspired by visits to the Louvre

waiting for each layer of paint to dry. So with Corel Painter, the �inal result is very similar to a traditional painting. To what extent does Corel Painter play a role in your work? Corel Painter is, for me, a real studio that has all of the tools that I constantly use assembled together. I use it in the major phases of my creations, even if I do not fully utilise its potential. I use Corel Painter for my paintings when I wish to produce a precise piece of work, which requires great �inesse. The brushes that Corel Painter offers are excellent, and the

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All original artwork by Eric Tranchefeux

Tranchefeux takes inspiration from great art masters such as Van Eyck, Gerrit Dou, Miéris, Léonardo da Vinci, Jacques Poirier, Salvador Dali and many others, and is a regular at Paris galleries

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Interview Eric Tranchefeux

Corel Painter’s varied selection of papers are amongst Tranchefeux’s favourite digital tools. Both Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop are perfect partners for Tranchefeux, who often combines the two to stunning effect

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

mix of colours very subtle and soft. Also, a Wacom tablet reacts a lot better, offering a higher level of sensitivity. Whether you are an amateur or professional, Corel Painter is very user-friendly and it’s a great creative tool where all forms of creative talent are possible, even off-thewall or abstract work. What tools in Corel Painter do you use most often? My favourite tools are de�initely the different paper textures available in Painter, but also the Acrylic and Oil brushes, Oil Paints, Gouaches, Mixers, Pens, Airbrushes, Charcoals, Chalks, Crayons, Pencils and Eraser. These I �inetune and can then put into a customised palette to suit my needs. You work with both Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop. How do they complement each other? I use each of the two pieces of software for their strong points and the way that they complement each other. I start by using Photoshop, where I can

de�ine the format and the �irst traits and characteristics, and where the task of tracing and retouching shapes and colours are very high priorities. I then switch to Corel Painter to �inish the image and make use of the various tools available. Once the painting is completed, I return to Photoshop to make any �inal colour adjustments. You have been well-received on websites such as CGSociety and CGTalk, being a Featured Portfolios and Hot Portfolios newsletter pick. What is the appeal of CGSociety and other such sites? For several years now, forum sites have developed and grown on the internet, creating true art communities involving both professionals and amateurs. It allows us to expose our work and share our knowledge and techniques, but just as importantly, allows us to receive feedback on our progress while interacting with other artists. Sites like CGTalk give exposure to thousands of artists who post their creations on the forums, and there are

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Interview Eric Tranchefeux

Tranchefeux’s working style is varied depending on the client, and includes food, animals and characters, through to concept design and heroic fantasy

Tranchefeux’s work is featured in Illustration Now!, Taschen’s popular book, showcasing 150 of the best commercial and editorial illustrators in over 50 countries

sometimes awards for the best paintings. You might also be selected to feature in the art book they publish. When creating a new piece of artwork, do you have a typical workflow? If I have a fairly precise idea or theme or a subject that I wish to approach, I begin to think and let images enter my head. I start to draw on sheets of tracing paper in black and white, working on an idea until it’s re�ined and I have the �inal drawing. I then superimpose these successive colour sheets and once the tints are in place, I paint again on top in order to �inalise the painting. My other creative technique, which is much more free, consists of making shapes and colours

with haphazard brushstrokes. I then let my imagination look at these shapes and pick out objects or people until I discover something I can work with. What advice would you give to any traditional artists and illustrators thinking of trying Corel Painter? Trying new techniques and tools can do nothing but enrich an artist. For me, the potential of Corel Painter allows me to explore further into the art world since I can quickly try out the multitude of new things, mixing diverse techniques often impossible in traditional ways of working such as oil, watercolour and so on. Thanks to Clive Fullman for the translation

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Feature The art of painting self-portraits

The art of the

self-portrait

Artwork by Paul Richard James

The self-portrait is a subject that uniquely defines an artist. Nick Spence speaks with different artists who practice the form to see what’s involved

lthough we all share the same common features (eyes, nose, mouth, ears and hair), we are all uniquely different. Like it or not, our face helps de�ine who we are, our experiences and how others perceive us. In art, the self-portrait has always held a special place, revealing more than just brushstrokes on canvas. “A self-portrait is a very personal expression about the thing the artist knows best in the world, his or her own self,” explains Gini Spaziani (www. artiziani.deviantart.com). “It’s the only scenario where I think it’s possible to paint from both perspectives, the artist‘s view and the subject‘s view simultaneously, no other subject offers that. I think this has been and always will be irresistible to artists.” Candid and revealing, occasionally troubled, a picture paints a thousand words when it comes to the self-portrait. Artists including Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso have all created �ine self-portraits that continue to absorb and astonish now. In more recent times, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol, Gilbert and George, David Hockney and Cindy Sherman have continued the tradition, revealing much about themselves and their art in the process. The wider availability of glass mirrors in Europe in the 15th Century is thought to have helped stimulate the interest in self-portraits and artists making signi�icant cameos in their own larger works. Photography and the computer offered more potential ways of capturing the self, recording the passing of time and our own mortality. After all, your own face stays with you for life and is always

available for a sitting, day or night. Today, that irresistible urge has never been easier to document and yet the best self-portraits still retain the fundamentals of revealing something of the inner self and creative process that �irst attracted Albrecht Dürer and others. “With regard to creating your own self-portrait, I believe that there are three things that are more important than any other aspect,” insists Mike Rumbles (www. cerbercus.deviantart.com), “including your pro�iciency, and without these your self-portrait will be lacking energy and life, however well it is made. They are honesty, emotion and meaning.” Unless you’re perfection personi�ied, it’s best you don’t �latter yourself too much, after all, you want a portrait others will recognise as you. “It isn’t a true representation of yourself if you make yourself out to be slimmer, have a smaller nose or different coloured eyes,” suggests Rumbles. “Don’t be afraid to put your �laws across in your work, it will make you more comfortable with them in reality.” Creating an emotion will help the picture tell a story, convey how you are feeling and display something of what’s going on behind the eyes. Use different ways of working, colour palettes, brushstrokes and lighting to help convey and enhance a mood. Adding meaning will help engage the viewer, develop the portrait and give a strong sense of narrative. “It is vital to know what the portrait is meant to mean, as this will act as your autopilot throughout the production process. Without meaning, I always struggle to �igure out which direction my work is going in,” adds Rumbles.

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Artwork by Robert Carter

“I don’t have a standard palette, although I never use black. I’ll typically use titanium white, cerulean and cobalt blue, cadmium red and orange and yellow, yellow ochre and burnt sienna,” explains Robert Carter

“Awareness of what is going on beneath the surface will help your painting feel more than skin-deep” 21

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Feature The art of painting self-portraits Ryan Cole’s top tip

If you’re working from photographs, ensure the image is of good quality. “Your drawing will only be as good as your reference material. If you’re using a photo, try to use a sharp, high-quality image with lots of detail,” insists Cole. “A grainy webcam picture can only be frustrating to work with. Also, be mindful of the lighting. Most cameras have an automatic flash that washes out all the shadow detail. Turn off the flash and use natural lighting, or set up your own lighting scheme with a lamp or two. The clearer and more defined the shadows are, the better.” Even with the best reference materials, starting the portrait can still be a daunting task. It’s always a good idea to develop some working practices and workflow to avoid stalling and starting your selfportrait over again. “I usually begin by doing a quick sketch of what I have in mind. After I get the composition basically worked out, I take reference photos or find reference material of all the elements needed,” explains Robert Carter (www. crackedhat.com). “After which it’s put all together and a more detailed drawing is done, which then gets transferred onto a gessoed board or canvas.” Again, preparation and pulling together source material and reference points before you begin will save time for creativity

all the resources available to you. The internet is a great source for learning and inspiration, offering advice and tutorials on everything from basic anatomy and the golden section to painting techniques and colour theory. Online forums and blogs also provide a way of gaining valuable feedback and critique for your portraits, particularly if you are working in isolation or experimenting with new ideas or mediums. Reference too, both physical and in cyberspace, will help you create better portraits. “Always, keep anatomy in mind. If something looks off, examine your reference,” suggests Ryan Cole (www. ryancoleart.com). “I have a model of the skull. It’s useful in the sketch phase to draw not what you see in the reference, but what the underlying structure would look like if you could see it.”

later. “Generally, I start with a faint sketch depicting where the mid-line of the face is on a basic skull shape. I try to mark up all the important underlying structure before actually getting into working the surface of the face,” adds Zandria Ann Sturgill, aka Zas (www.zasio.deviantart. com). Awareness of what is going on beneath the surface will help your painting feel more than skin-deep. “When you know someone very well, you can usually recognise them at a distance before you even see their facial features. I think there’s a lot to learn from this. That if your goal is getting a recognisable face, then start with the overall shape and feel of the face, jaw line, cheekbones and hairline, then move towards the specifics, lips, nose and eyes, then lip lines, freckles, nostrils and eyeballs. Let the face come to you.”

Artwork by Ryan Cole

Right Ryan Cole maintains an excellent website and blog where he displays his latest drawings and work in progress. This conté charcoal selfportrait was created in Corel Painter

Beyond the basics of portraying yourself and adding mood and meaning, you’ll need to consider how you will work. Many artists have used mirrors to create portraits, while more widely, photographs have been a useful source for portrait painting when the subject has not always been available. “I use photographs virtually every time,” explains Paul Richard James (www.klprojects. ca/paulrichardjames). “It is difficult to find a subject with the time or the stamina to sit, and of course, you are already beginning with a flat image, so there’s no need to translate.” Taking your own photographs for reference will also allow you to experiment with composition and pose before making your mark on canvas, paper or screen. Even if you decide to work traditionally, the benefits of using a computer shouldn’t be dismissed. As well as a useful tool for research, experimenting without the physical costs of real pens, papers, paints and canvas, all work will eventually go through some digital process anyway when reproduced. “Sometimes I play around with colour and value with the original image on the computer,” explains James, who paints traditionally. “I use the computer more as a means of sketching out an idea, coming up with different interpretations or compositions before going on to painting. Picasso would be delighted with the computer and I do believe that the computer can be just as organic a medium as oils.” It‘s clear that whatever your way of working, traditionally, digitally or combining the two, you should embrace

“Instead of drawing outlines and filling them in, start by doing a very loose contour drawing of the face, neck, and shoulders, then build up areas of shadow from the inside out. Working this way will result in a better likeness, because it’s easier to adjust proportions and positioning as you go.”

“I was very self-conscious when I created this. I had just been transferred to a new college where I felt intimidated by all the new, attractive people. I wanted to express the ugliness that I felt at this time by making it a dirty, gritty image.”

Tainted by Mike Rumbles

“Set up your own lighting scheme. The clearer and more defined the shadows are, the better”

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“The internet is a great source for learning and inspiration, offering advice and tutorials on everything” Renowned illustrator Robert Carter mostly works traditionally. “I usually work traditionally, on Masonite mostly but sometimes canvas, but with digital postproduction. With my monochrome work, I add touches of colour afterwards digitally.”

The fundamentals of creating a self-portrait Traditional painter Paul Richard James

Artwork by Robert Carter

www.klprojects.ca/paulrichardjames “I start with form, virtually ignoring the content. The technique I usually use is related to the academic realist style of painting, and is very traditional. I use oils on canvas. When I am working on a portrait, the first thing I do is break the image down into two tones, one for the darks and one for the lights. As in a high-contrast image, the mid-tones fall into either dark or light. This could be also be done on the computer. It is always best to have a dominant shadow to create depth, with a triangle of light on the cheek within the shadow, known as the Rembrandt Triangle. This is the best way to light a portrait. I then use straight lines, in a sort of drafting style, to draw the image separating the darks from the lights. This becomes a ‘cartoon’, which is transferred to the canvas using a grid, or if rushed, a projector. This ‘cartoon’ becomes a road map for the actual painting. I then create an imprimatura, a monochromatic painting in burnt umber, still keeping the families of darks and lights separate. Then I start applying the colour, matching the colours to the photo. Of course the real art occurs with the blending of the shapes at the edges and with the brushstrokes to create form, but without shadow, your image is fairly flat to begin with. In addition, the skin tones are then all mixed with greys of the same value.”

Robert Carter’s top tip

“I consciously try and keep fairly loose while I paint, maintaining the energy of the brushstrokes. Although I find it’s difficult at times to keep that looseness, especially when you’re really focused on something very detailed like an eye. To help fight the instinct, a lot of times I quickly paint in a very loose background before I go into the figure.”

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Feature

The art of painting self-portraits

Work in progress Zandria Ann Sturgill aka Zas www.zasio.deviantart.com “I usually start with one rough sketch, doing the mid-line and basic skull marks. Over that, I do a brighter, more simplified sketch, then add background colours by airbrushing them in. I try to rely less and less on the sketch, so I decrease the opacity of the sketch layers. I use the smaller Detail Airbrushes to mark important areas and just to shade. I’ve also started blending in some areas, like the cheekbone. I flip the canvas horizontal to check how it’s looking, as you get used to what you’ve been staring at after a while. I add more lines and shading, with different brush sizes, then more shading and blending, mingling colours with figure and background for more harmony. I draw out lines and shade, then blend. The blending comes to be just as important as adding colours. The head and hair are big shapes so the neck area looked a little weak to me, so I made the area in front of the neck more weighted with darker colours. I’ve also moved one of the eyes to a better place. I increase some highlights and blend out the top of the background as well. I also flip it so it is a representation of me, as opposed to me as a mirror reflection. That’s one other benefit of working digitally that you don’t have traditionally.”

Zandria Ann Sturgill’s top tip

“If you’re looking at yourself in the mirror, your eyes are jumping back and forth from various places. So when you want to actually draw your eyes on the painting, it’s best to not look at the mirror, and just lay down the location of them so that they look even and natural.”

When working digitally and from a mirror, it’s good to turn your screen off from time to time if you don’t want your monitor to be included as a light source, suggests Zandria Ann Sturgill

Zandria Ann Sturgill’s self-portrait as a work in progress. “Start with your skull and stay aware of it to help keep the illusion of depth, and get the layout of your face down before getting to the features.”

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Artwork by Jake Rolfe Above and Right Self-taught Jake Rolfe uses a mirror for reference when drawing his own image. “For self-portraits, or portraits in general, I usually use either a mirror or some photo references to understand the light.”

Jake Rolfe’s top tip

Colour also plays a vital role in your portrait; helping to define shape, form and detail, you can see and set the tone and mood of the painting. “It really helps if you see every part of the face as shapes, and try not to draw them exactly as you see them from the start,” suggests Ericka Lugo (www.erilu.deviantart.com and www. erickalugo.blogspot.com). “When I’m pretty much satisfied with my line art, I colour the canvas with the lightest colour I see in the reference, usually a light pink or beige depending on the light, and then identify a darker colour within the face and start colouring the shades.” When Lugo has all the basic lights and shades in place, she applies mid-tones. “I try to use different colours like green, blue, dark red, purple

portraits are great because, well, you’re always around yourself,” insists Jake Rolfe (www.jakerolfe.com). Drawing and painting yourself also allows you to make mistakes away from the observation of others, giving you confidence to paint others when the opportunity arises. “Usually when doing a self-portrait, for some reason I always tend to begin with the nose and eyes,” explains Rolfe. “Maybe it’s just because I like those features, but I generally feel more comfortable if I can get those right from the beginning and build

and even yellow, they give the skin a more fleshy look. After I have all those colours, I blend them in, but not too much because I like to see brushstrokes. Then I tweak the picture a bit, adding some lights in aqua or bright yellow here and there, and voilà!” Practice makes perfect, no more so than when creating a self-portrait. Having the luxury of an always-available sitter will give you, time-permitting, opportunities to practice and develop your skills. “Self-

some confidence. However, I do put down a general face outline and light map of what I’m working on first.” Confidence will come with practice, but it’s important you never stop learning and developing even when you have refined your skills. Generally, your powers of observation also need to be fine-tuned. Having a good eye for detail and everything around you will serve you well. Observe the bigger picture, visualise everything

Artwork by Zas

“It’s important you never stop learning even when you have refined your skills”

“As far as creating a self-portrait goes, the most important part of the process is making sure the proportions are correct and that the defining features of the person are right. This type of thing allows recognition. When doing a self-portrait, I try and make it as interesting as possible by adding colour variation and playing with skin tones.”

and it will help you see more clearly the finer detail. “Don’t just practice painting yourself – practice drawing everything you see, whether it is a shoe or a soda can,” adds Lugo. “To some it can be boring and frustrating at first, but it is the only way you can get not only drawing but visual skills, which are the key to painting portraits and even abstract paintings. Get to really see the things around you.” Working on your self-portrait digitally with Corel Painter allows not only for endless variation and experimentation, but offers you numerous rich natural media tools to create realistic painterly portraits. “It blows me away to see works that look so well painted that I discover are done on a computer, and for illustration it is a fantastic medium,” enthuses James. You can also work on hand-drawn and painted images scanned into the computer to add effects and colour variants difficult to reproduce traditionally. The tracing ability in Painter will provide a good guide although it’s best not to rely on this solely as the results will often lack depth and emotion. “If you are starting off, tracing is a good way to get familiar with shapes and face composition,” suggests Lugo.

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Feature The art of painting self-portraits

Ericka Lugo’s top tip

“To me, the face is what really matters – it tells the story. I proceed to draw the eyes, eyebrows, nose and lastly the mouth, trying every time to look at my reference as much as I can to get an accurate resemblance.”

Corel Painter can also play an important part in your work�low when creating your portrait. Gini Spaziani starts by taking a photograph, working in Photoshop on cropping, colour balance, saturation and cleaning up any minor digital debris before switching to Corel Painter. “Moving to Painter with a brush set to clone, I �irst block in the overhaul shapes quite large and rough on the canvas, which makes the light and dark balance clearer to me,” says Spaziani. “Then on a second layer, I go over facial areas in more (but not photographic) detail. On a third layer, I switch to regular brushes and with the original photo open in another window as a reference, I add details, emphasise or alter lines, add highlights, etc.” Working with layers particularly allows you to work on features and colouring in isolation, which is useful if you need to adjust detail. “Capturing the relationships between features is often more important than capturing the features themselves,”

Artist Ericka Lugo usually starts with the overall shape of the face when creating a self-portrait

Artwork by Ericka Lugo

“Don’t just practice painting yourself - draw everything you see, whether it is a shoe or a can”

Above Having heard all the advice given from the artists featured in this article, Nick Spence decided to have a go himself. It worked for him – now it’s your turn

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Live painting – no photos used! Jeremy Sutton www.jeremysutton.com

Artwork by Gini Spaziani

adds Zas. “In a program like Painter, it’s a little easier to �ix related issues that arise because you can cut and paste a straying eye to the position it needs to be in.” Adjusting your digital paper in Corel Painter will signi�icantly change mood and further your options when creating selfportraits digitally. “To gain more control over the appearance of your paper texture, go to Window>Library Palettes>Show Papers,” suggests Cole. “Here you can adjust the sliders to affect the size, brightness and contrast of the paper, and invert it.” Creating and saving your own textures along with brushes will ensure your portrait has some unique qualities and adds to the tone and mood you are trying to portray. “I like to create my own brushes, play around with ideas and colours a lot. The different brushes in Painter allow for an awesome range of effects and �inishes,” adds Rolfe. With no need for digital paints and inks to dry, Painter also allows you to work spontaneously on your portrait, mixing up media and painting over sketches, for example, without altering the original image. You can combine ways of working that would be dif�icult, expensive and messy in the real world and save work in progress for later appraisal and development. With a bit of careful editing, you can take the best bits and combine

them in one. “With Painter, instead of saving a �ile called ‘self’ and resaving each time that I’ve made signi�icant progress, I save as ‘self1’, then ‘self2’, then ‘self3’. That way, if I decide I don’t like where the image has gone, I can go back further than the history has recorded,” concludes Zas. “Ultimately, it’s always good with any image to know your goal. If you’re trying to capture an emotion or concept, you’re going to need to work on more than just getting your features correct – you have to consider what your brushstrokes and colour scheme are saying.”

Above “First, think a little about how want to put yourself across in the self-portrait. Your expression, the colours, light and your surroundings all have a part to play just as much as your choice of style and media does,” explains Gini Spaziani

“Capturing the relationships between features is often more important than capturing the features themselves” Top tips from the professionals

01

Hair

“Painting hair strand by strand can be very laborious and time-consuming, but the end result speaks for itself. Start by defining the shape of the hair with a base colour, and work on top of it using smaller brushes each time to define individual strands and colours.” Mike Rumbles

02

Experiment

“If you are working from a photograph as I do, whether you use it as a clone source or as straight visual reference, try experimenting with it in a digital photo editor. Look at different crops, play with the contrast, play with different saturation and hues, try out various filters and distortions. You might just see something in your experimenting that gives you some new ideas of how to approach your self-portrait.” Gini Spaziani

03

Reflect your emotions

“Consider how you are feeling at the time of working on your self-portrait. Are

you angry? Work with harsher brushstrokes and sharper colours. Confused? Perhaps a collage would help express the different things going round in your mind. If it lacks emotion, then it doesn’t stand out.” Mike Rumbles

04

Invert your digital paper

“When switching between black and white for shading in Corel Painter, try inverting your paper. Since you are using white to erase or to soften, you don’t want the subtractive marks to take on the same pattern as the additive marks – you want them to be opposites so it looks like you didn’t actually erase at all. But make sure you still use the original, non-inverted paper for your highlights.” Ryan Cole

05

Adjust brush grain

“In Corel Painter, depending on which grainy brush you use, you may want to adjust it. If you look at the Property bar along the top of your screen, you’ll see a setting called Grain. The closer this value is

to zero, the grainier a mark the brush will make; a value of 100 per cent means no grain. Resaturation controls how much paint the brush applies to the canvas, and Bleed controls how much your strokes will blend with what’s already on the canvas. If you pull the Resaturation slider all the way to zero and push the Bleed up higher, you’ve just turned your grainy brush into a grainy blender. If you want to keep the version you’ve made, choose Save Variant and give it a new name.” Ryan Cole

06

Use a mirror

“If you’re trying to get a sense of depth, then I feel that you really need to work from a mirror. Photographs often flatten out the face and many times you can tell that someone worked from a photograph, which may or may not cheapen the image, depending on who you ask. I prefer to always do a self-portrait in the mirror because I want to try and capture the liveliness as I see it, instead of trying to capture it through an additional lens.” Zandria Ann Sturgill aka Zas

“This is painted from life with a mirror and computer only. It makes a huge difference to paint a self-portrait from life as opposed to from a photo. A selfportrait is one situation where there is no excuse for using photography, as the model is always available!”

Non-symmetric composition “I chose a square canvas for the aesthetic beauty of a square. I also chose to place my portrait off-centre. This composition creates interesting proportions of positive and negative space and shapes.”

No Undo – complete commitment to process “This self-portrait was painted in a single painting session of about one hour, without ever using one Undo command. The importance of not using the Undo cannot be emphasised enough! It is a freeing choice that involves complete commitment to the evolution of the process. As soon as you do an Undo, you block your flow, you lose history and rich organic texture and get precious about your marks. Not Undoing doesn’t mean not correcting. Just the opposite! My whole process of painting is continual correction and adjustment, redoing elements in the composition and working into the tones and colours to correct what isn’t working. I am continually painting over my marks. That is the painting process.”

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Feature

The art of painting self-portraits

Paint a self-portrait Anne Pogoda shows how you can have plenty of fun with only Corel Painter, yourself and a mirror ow that you’ve seen how some artists approach the self-portrait, it’s my turn to walk you through how I attempted the task. When �irst asked to do this commission, I found myself asking questions such as ‘What if I paint myself too pretty?’ Or the other way around, what if I portray myself like something distorted, even like a monster because I feel bad in some way and it becomes re�lected in my portrait – will that scare people off? But then is it even worth thinking about people’s reactions? A self-portrait should not be a perfect copy of yourself. It’s more important to transport a feeling; of which you would say is you. So the portrait should be a way for you to say, “this is me”. It’s about picking out the features that make you who you are, and using different art tools and techniques to enhance your personality. Using your favourite colours in a piece is an obvious place to start, but you can also use mediums

to give a sense of character. Dark and brooding personalities suit oil, while delicate souls could plump for watercolour or pastel. I set a mirror up next to my computer to refer to my face while making the portrait. I also decided to include it in the �inal painting to not only give a sense for how the image was created, but to also give the viewer a feeling of my personality being re�lected back to them. So read on, as I explain how I created my self-portrait, from sketches, to a change in direction midway through, to the �inal result. Once you see how I did it, try it for yourself and send the results in to the magazine!

This is my beloved mirror, which was a present from my father. I included this because it’s a valued object, and allows me to see myself as I paint

I wanted to use my favourite colours in this portrait, to give a sense of ‘me’. I love to put red and blue in contrast, as well as an azure kind of blue – that’s where I got my name, Azurelle, from – and pink

Here you can see my big PC, which I use for painting because it is plugged to my old monitor. The mirror was set up next to it, so I could keep referring to my reflection while painting

01 The first sketch

I was actually asked to set my portrait up in some kind of Mona Lisa composition, so I experimented with a setting that seems very classic, with me sitting in front of some kind of landscape or other beautiful background. Of course, painting this would take much time and seems a bit stiff, so it would have to include a perfect technique or beautiful accessories to keep it interesting.

The 02 final sketch

While sketching a bit more to find something that seemed interesting, it popped back into my mind that I could include the mirror somehow in my portrait, and so I set another sketch up, referring a bit to Vermeer’s Girl With the Pearl Earring.

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03 Colour blocking

I really like working with the Artists’ Oils and the normal Oils when it comes to blocking colours in. When you are preparing a face that has to be recognisable, stick to the things that give this person his or her special characteristic, like a huge nose or thin lips.

rid of the blocked-in 04 Getting look

Next it was time to get rid of the blocked-in look and to blend some parts of the face. I think working with the Airbrush is best for that task when its Opacity is set to eight per cent, while the brush itself is set to a rather big size.

First 06 error correction

05 Giving the face more definition

When working at low Opacity, the Airbrush is great for getting all the definition into the face that you desire. I highly recommend this working technique when you want to achieve a traditional look for your finished painting.

I then flipped the image to see if the face needed to be corrected in any way. When working on a painting, try and flip it every hour or so to give it a fresh feeling, and to avoid becoming bind to errors blind, because you have seen one and the same thing for too long.

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Feature

The art of painting self-portraits

Change is good Accessorise and have a bit of fun for a slightly different self-portrait

work 08 First on the body

07

Correcting the errors This may not

be easy to see, but I was a bit unhappy with the position of the eye nearest to the viewer, and decided to rotate it a bit. I also sketched some more hair and added some more highlights to the cheekbones to make them stand out more, which gives the face a more three-dimensional feeling.

Next, I flipped the image back and started to work on the body and hair with the Airbrush for refinement. I also sketched some kind of bandana because I actually wanted to give some hint to the Girl with the Pearl Earring.

09 A case of painter’s block

At this point, I felt stuck with my painting, even though I had been so nicely inspired by Vermeer at first. But it didn’t work, and I became bored because I had no idea how to proceed. I made some funny faces in front of the mirror and decided to randomly rampage what I already had, to see if this could push me towards a good result.

Decide on the light Defining a light source is essential in creating a convincing painting. When you are not using a reference for work, but want to create a lighting situation that makes sense, imagine the background or surrounding colours taking influence on the light, which falls on the painted subject. This makes sense because in nature, everything that has a colour reflects that colour to its surrounding objects once it is hit by light. In my example, the background colour is blue, while the light that falls on the body seems a bit yellowish. So first I applied yellow, which is close to white, and then applied a whiteish blue after that.

10 Craziness!

Let’s say that I really liked the new sketch, even though it seemed very crazy, almost like madness, to have this kind of selfperception expressed. But on the other hand, it is a bit like a parody, and since I am a funny person, this perfectly resembles a part I very much like about myself. Thus, I decided to stick with this new theme and started to work it out more with the Airbrush.

12 RealBristle brushes

The only time I worked with one of the RealBristle brushes was when I sketched the blue background for the mirror. I love the RealBristle brushes because they look so ‘brushy’. This means that they show a very natural feeling, which is especially fantastic when you love the more traditional look.

13

11 The brush

The reason why I have pink hair on my ‘crazy’ sketch is not just to show its craziness, but also because I had just dyed my hair pink right before I came up with the idea to make funny faces in front of my mirror. Next, I took a photo of a brush and placed it into my mouth to see if the idea of having a brush somewhere near my head would work for the painting.

Look into my eyes I decided to zoom

in and work on the hair and eyes more closely. I used the Airbrush again, set to around 40 per cent Opacity, but setting it to a small size so that I could achieve several brushstrokes for tiny little hairs and separated eyelashes.

14 Painting a new top

Next up was the top and the ‘me’ looking into the mirror. To the top, I randomly applied a white dot pattern from the Artists’ Oils, while I worked on the hair of the other figure. When working on hair, I usually start with mid-tones, to which I add highlights and darker tones later.

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Personalise your self-portrait Express yourself by letting your traits shine through

Finally, some 16 work on the mirror

15 Where to put the brush?

Next, I activated the brush’s photo layer again and duplicated it several times to be able to put the brush in different positions of the painting. After some thought, I finally decided to stick to the first screenshot, because on the second it looks as if I have some kind of cigarette in my mouth, while on the third one you can barely see that the brush is placed in my cleavage!

I wasn’t worried about too much detail on the brush, so I traced the shape of the photo. However, I did want to define the mirror a bit more (since it is an important object to me). This was done using the Artists’ Oils.

Realistic hair

17 More hair

Even though I did most of the work with the Airbrush, it was time to give the hair some sharper definition. I picked the Oils>Glazing Round 10 to add in more clearly defined strands. I also carefully added some pinkish tone to the brush in my mouth and adjusted the white dots pattern on my top.

18 Going nuts with a brush

To make the brush look like it was convincingly used to spread colour everywhere, it was necessary to give it a dirtier look by spreading pink colour randomly on its surface.

19 Pink, everything pink!

I went a bit crazy and painted everything pink, including the mirror and myself! To get the painterly look on the skin, I set the Artists’ Oils Blender Bristle to a rather large size and painted slightly bent strokes, which I then carefully pulled some parts back using the Eraser tool.

When hair is dark, it will absorb most of the light and will appear dark even in strong light. You can’t apply bright highlights otherwise it will look wrong. So you need to bring in other highlight colours (which would be shadows in other situations). A reddish tone works best to make black or dark brown hair seem that much lighter.

Getting 20 close to the final touches

I decided to add more highlights to the overall painting, especially to my cheeks and forehead and to some parts of the hair, because this would make the lighting situation even clearer than it already was, and help once again to create and add depth to the whole painting.

21 Final thoughts

I’d say the final portrait is a good representation of my personality rather than a photo-realistic copy of what I look like. Of course I kept my recognisable features (nose and lips etc) but other than that, it is a portrait of how I currently feel. I’m having a pretty good time in my life and I like being a funny person who has fun with her friends!

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Primer Conte ERASER HIGHLIGHTS

BRUSH CATEGORY

Use the Eraser to brings subtle changes and highlights to the Conte tones. This technique can add some very interesting effects. Erase with the Opacity low to lighten the Conte crayon or at 100 per cent to open areas back to the paper

Conte

Conte crayons are excellent for sketching and drawing in the style of the Old Masters or your own 21st Century technique

PRIMER

onté crayons were developed in the 18th Century by a French scientist, Nicolas-Jacques Conté. During a graphite shortage, he was commissioned to design a pencil to avoid having to import graphite from abroad. Conté created his pencil with a mixture of clay and graphite powder, which was kiln-�ired to achieve a hard texture. This was then inserted between two half-cylinders of wood and led to Conté being credited for inventing the modern pencil. The traditional colours used were black, red and brown. The reddish brown sepia tone, often called sanguine, was a favourite of the Old Masters used in drawings and sketches. Today, Conte crayons are long and square and come in a variety of colours. They provide a sharper line than chalk and pastels for drawing and sketching. In Corel Painter, we have many digital advantages with the Conte crayons. We have the Dull variant, which is like a wellworn Conte stick, rounded at the edges; the Square Conte, which at a large size can be used to create sweeps of tone, just like you would with the traditional crayon, used lengthwise across the page. And last but not least, the Tapered Conte, easily used to create beautiful expressive line work… the heart of the Conte medium.

SHARP STROKES Use the Tapered brush to create expressive line work. Whether it is a fluid, curving stroke or angular cross-hatching you’re looking for, this brush provides a nice sharp edge for detail

WHITE FOR HIGHLIGHTS White Conte is used quite often to create highlights in a drawing. Use it in subtle shading or bold strokes to add some punch and volume to the piece

Blending

Papers Different textures will yield different results Traditionally, Conte is used on coarse paper, which holds the pigment in place. You need to take this into consideration when using this brush. Experiment with different textured papers to see what appeals to you. Via Window>Library Palettes>Show Papers, you can explore all the different options. Either set your paper before you begin or go to Effects>Apply Surface Texture when you’re finished to set the texture across the entire image.

Use the Soft Blender Stump You’ll find one of the best tools for blending the Conte crayons in the Blenders category. The Soft Blender Stump is a beautiful way to soften edges in a painting, to vignette perfectly from one tone to the next. Start by creating a new layer to do all the blending on. This way, you have the opportunity to experiment and discard creations if necessary. Keep the Opacity of the brush low and you’ll have excellent results.

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Primer

Conte selection Your available brushes

Dull Conte default

BROAD STROKES

Conte

Unlike some of the brush categories, the list of variants for the Conte brushes are a bit thin on the ground. In fact you only have three true variant, with an additional choice of set size. Despite the lack of different choices, you can still do an awful lot with the available variants, from detailed work requiring a thin brush tip, to more expressive paintings that are made from dramatic sweeps of the brush.

Square Conte 20% Opacity, 100% Grain

Dull Conte 55% Opacity, 12% Grain

Tapered Conte default

Dull Conte 20% Opacity, 100% Grain

Tapered Conte 55% Opacity, 12% Grain

Square Conte default

Tapered Conte 20% Opacity, 100% Grain

The Square or Dull brushes work well for large areas of tone. With the Opacity set between 20 to 50 per cent, you can achieve nice depth and build soft-layered finishes

Square Conte 55% Opacity, 12% Grain

Layering

Tinted paper

Choose what to blend and what not to blend One of the real treasures of Corel Painter that sets it out from the crowd is the ability to shift your layers around as you build a painting or drawing. You can easily place your blending layer on top of the tone areas and underneath the outlines. This way, the lines remain sharp and the blending only affects the underlying layers. You can choose to sketch the lines in first and simply work under these layers to sketch in broader areas of tone.

Add another tone and colour Tinting the paper is a great way to add a whole different colour and tone to your Conte drawings. When using white as a highlight and sepia or black as the dark tones, the paper becomes the mid-tone range throughout. This is a fantastic way to keep a sketchy look to the piece by not having to fill in the whole surface to achieve multiple tonal ranges, and it gives the artwork a distinctive twist that draws the eye.

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Tutorial Create a Japanese woodprint

Create a Japanese woodprint Use the principles of an ancient technique to turn your Corel Painter canvas into a tool for making woodprints Tutorial info Artist

Charlene Chua Time needed

Two hours Skill level

Intermediate On the CD

ukiyo-sketch.jpg, woodcut.grd

If you can’t get enough of Ukiyo, check out ‘for a great collection of links to superb Ukiyo collections online

rintmaking enjoys a long history with culture and civilisation. In Japan, the art of printmaking is most apparent in its famous woodblock prints, also know as Ukiyo (or Ukiyo-e). Japanese woodblock prints typically feature expert craftsmanship, apparent from the �ine, intricate line work and masterful application of colour. The art form began in the 17th Century, and by the 18th Century it had become a discipline involving highly specialised artists and artisans. Traditionally, the art form required a team of experts. The artist created a sketch on thin paper, which was glued to a carving block, whereupon the carver meticulously stripped away portions of the cherry wood, creating the black key block. Separate blocks were then carved, one for each additional colour. Colour was applied by the printer and then dampened, handmade paper was laid onto the blocks. Printing was done by hand with a baren (a �lat, disc-like burnishing tool), under the supervision of the artist.

The themes found in Ukiyo artwork, although rather broad, are also fairly consistent. Popular themes include Japanese landscapes, animals and plants. Depictions of beautiful women (often courtesans) and kabuki actors were also hugely popular, to the extent that they were subject to censorship approvals for possible violations of good conduct. However, the most controversial were the highly explicit shunga, or erotic prints. For this tutorial, we will tackle something a lot less controversial, yet no less interesting. The artwork we’ll be creating is adapted from a piece by one of the most famous woodblock artists, Utagawa Hiroshige. Hiroshige is remembered for his landscape compositions, where he usually weaves together rural backdrops with buildings and people from everyday life. We will show you what brushes to use to re-create the �ine black outlines of the artwork, and explore how to apply some interesting texture effects to make your artwork look closer to a real print.

Brush marks All the black outlines in a traditional woodblock print reside on the key block. The non-printing areas were carved away. Despite this, master carvers were able to produce hair-thin lines by skilful cutting. In Corel Painter, lines and line effects can be replicated with these brushes:

Calligraphy brush

Scratchboard tool

Leaky Pen

COLOUR PALETTE

Colour swatches Colour in woodblock prints was applied by preparing a separate carved block for every colour. The arduous process meant most prints usually had no more than two or three colours. Gradients were archived by inking a block, then wiping off some of the paint to produce a toning effect. Originally, most of these colours were bright and vivid. Many old prints appear desaturated due to the fading of their colours over the years. The aging of the paper also gives old prints a yellowish tint.

The chart here demonstrates some common colours in Ukiyo prints. The swatches at the bottom suggest how the colour might look in an aged print; the swatches at the top suggest how the colour may have originally looked.

Scratchboard Rake

Hard Charcoal Pencil

Croquil Pen

Sharp Charcoal Pencil

Soft Pastel Pencil

Tapered Conte

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Tutorial Create a Japanese woodprint

Let’s begin Arm yourself with the files from the CD and get stuck in!

the 03 Drawing border

01 Getting started

Many Japanese woodcut prints feature traditional scenes from Japanese culture. You can easily create your own composition by referencing popular themes on the internet, like Japanese castles, cherry blossoms and, of course, Mount Fuji. We decided to borrow from a piece by Hiroshige, with the addition of the castle on the left.

02 Importing artwork

Create a new file and choose a light tan for the paper colour. Hit File>Place and locate ukiyo-sketch.jpg on the CD. Enter a suitable number in the Scaling boxes to scale the file appropriately. In the Layers palette, change Composite Method to Gel. Select Pastel>Soft Pastel Pencil 3 as your brush of choice.

Set the brush size to 21.5, and choose Straight Line strokes. Use the Colors palette to choose a dark brown for your Main colour. Create a new layer above your sketch called ‘Border’. Next, use the brush to draw a rectangular border around your artwork. Now select Freehand Strokes in top menu, and draw in the rounded corners of the border.

The floating world for sale Japanese woodblock prints are commonly referred to as Ukiyo-e, literally ‘pictures of the floating world’. Many pieces by woodcut masters survive in varying conditions. The best are reserved as museum treasures, but many other reproductions of lower quality can still be found for a reasonable amount at speciality dealers. Some dealerships can be found online:

04

Touching up the border Select the Eraser>Tapered Eraser 20

06

Drawing the bridge Reduce the

brush. Use this to erase away the unwanted corner edges. Tidy up any protruding strokes. You can lock the border layer by clicking the lock icon in the Layers palette to prevent further changes. Create a new layer and name it ‘Outline’. Move this new layer above the sketch but under the border layer.

05 Drawing in the outline

Set the Outline layer’s composite method to Gel and select your brush via Calligraphy>Calligraphy Brush 10. You can choose another shade of dark brown or grey for some subtle variety. Next, carefully outline the castle and the hills in the background. Use the Size slider in the top Property bar to vary the size of your brushstroke for effect.

Ukiyo-e Gallery (www. ukiyoe-gallery.com) Stuart Jackson Gallery (http://jacksonarts. com) Degener Japanese Fine prints (www.degener.com) Japanese Gallery (www. japanesegallery. co.uk) Japan Print Gallery (www. japaneseprints.net) (Galleries frequently deal with ‘Shunga’ erotic woodblock prints, which are meant for adults only.)

size of your brush to about seven or eight and draw in the curved arches on the bridge. Tilting the canvas may help facilitate the natural curve of your arm – hit E or use the Rotate Page tool. Draw in the pegs in the bridge, and use an Eraser to tidy up flyaway and intersecting lines.

07

Trees To draw the trees on the right,

use the same brush but try using more angular strokes to simulate the shape of the tree trunk. Since this picture was intended to be a winter landscape, avoid drawing in an outline for the crowns of the trees. The negative space treatment will help give the trees a softer look.

08 Leaves and grass

Master carvers were able to carve out the extremely fine details that are the hallmark of Ukiyo prints. You can simulate some of this artistry by using different brushes to complete the finer details of the outline. Choose the brush Pens>Scratchboard Tool to draw in the grass and leaves in the bushes near the bridge with short, sharp strokes.

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Switch over to Pens>Leaky Pen. Use this brush to paint in the stone texture on the castle walls and the bridge, varying the pressure with your tablet. You can use the Pens>Croquil Pen to draw in the fine stem on the lower bush, and the Pens>Scratchboard Rake brush to create some additional texture on the tree trunks.

10 Make some snow

Create a new layer named ‘White’ and move it between the sketch and the Outline layer. Select the brush from Gouache>Broad Cover Brush 40. Use this to paint in patches of snow on the castle, bridge and background. Also, paint in the outlines for the trees and bushes. Lastly, paint in the thin strip of forest in the far background.

Bringing it to life Insert some colour and texture to the image

12 Adding Texture

Create a new layer, name it ‘Light Blue’ and move it below the White layer. Select a light, dull blue for your Main colour. With the Gouache brush from before, paint in the bridge, background and small mounds in the foreground. When you’re done, use the Paper Selector in your Toolbox to choose the Retro Fabric swatch.

Hit Effects>Surface Control>Dye Concentration. Select Paper from the Using drop-down. This will apply the Retro Fabric paper texture to the Light Blue layer. You can make the paper texture or less apparent by adjusting the Minimum and Maximum sliders in the Dye Concentration pop-up window. When you are done, hit OK.

13 Creating more texture

14 Apply a gradient

11 Light Blue

Right/Ctrlclick on the Light Blue layer and choose Select Layer Transparency. Create a new layer, change its composite method to Gel and position it above the Light Blue layer. Select the Lasso tool and set it to Subtract from Selection. Use this to deselect the blue mounds in the foreground. Set your Additional colour to white.

Select the Paint Bucket tool and choose Fill: Gradient. In the Gradients palette (Ctrl/Cmd+8), select Two-Point from the drop-down menu, and set the gradient type to Circular. Click within the selection boundaries to apply the fill. Select the Artists’ Rough Paper swatch from the Paper Selector, and apply the Dye Concentration effect as before.

Traditional Japanese woodcut prints were not signed. Instead, they were embossed with several seals. These were carved letters or logos that indicated various bits of information, including, among other things, the artist, the title, the publisher and on some prints, the censor. At the turn of the 19th Century in Japan, in an effort to control public sentiments, books and prints were subject to approval from authorities before they could be sold. In the later half of the century, publishers were required to include their names and addresses as well, which they usually inscribed on the side of a print.

Create a Japanese woodprint

09 Stone texture

Tutorial

Signatures and seals

Get your own Japanese name!

15 Colouring the castle

Create a new layer called Light Grey for the castle. Paint the castle a dull blue-grey with the Gouache brush, then apply the Dye Concentration effect (change your paper swatch back to Retro Fabric). Create another layer above this and call it ‘Dark Grey’, and repeat the process to create the darker portions of the castle’s roof and stone walls.

Here’s how we made our own ‘seals’ for the artwork. First, we went to this very cool website, www. japanese-nametranslation.com, and converted the names ‘Charlene Chua’ and ‘John Smith’ into Japanese characters. We then wrote them down with a brush pen (you can get these at art stores, or you can use Painter’s Calligraphy or Sumi-e brushes as an alternative), and scanned in the calligraphy. After importing them into Painter, we changed their mode to Gel and created a red rectangle on a new layer below behind the words. We grouped the two together and reduced their Layer opacities slightly.

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Tutorial Create a Japanese woodprint

Finishing touches Gradients are the order of the day for completing your masterpiece

17 Loading and applying custom gradients

16 Foreground gradient

Create a new layer and move it below the Light Blue one. Name it ‘Foreground’. Select the Lasso tool and set it to Add to Selection. Carefully select the area in the foreground between the bridge and the trees. Open up the Gradients palette and select Gradient Mover from the top-right menu.

In the pop-up window, hit Open and search for ‘woodcut.grd’ on the CD. Click on the three swatches and drag them to the left pane, then click Done. Select the new swatch called Ukiyo Ground, and have its angle set to 90 degrees. Use the Paint Bucket (Fill: Gradient) to fill in the gradient, then apply the Dye Concentration effect. If you haven’t got Painter X, you will need to create your gradients from scratch, using these screenshots as reference for how they should look.

Importing paper textures Scanned papers are a great way to quickly add an air of realism to digital artwork. Because many of these prints are one or two hundred years old, they tend to have a slightly yellow tone from age. To simulate this, you can scan or download paper textures and then use the Edit>Place command to import them into your artwork. You can then use the Free Transform command to scale the paper to the right size. Check out the following sites for some free paper textures:

18 Adding the sky

Choose Select>None. Create a new layer below Foreground and name it ‘Sky’. Select the sky area with the Rectangular Marquee tool, choose the Ukiyo Sky swatch from the Gradients palette, use the Paint Bucket tool to fill in the gradient, then apply the Dye Concentration effect. Hit Select>None.

www.imageafter. com (search Textures>Fabrics)

www.texturearchive. com (search Paper) www.texturextras. com/ (click Free Texture Paper)

Delete the protruding corners with an Eraser. Create a new layer called ‘Water; and move it below Sky. Use the Lasso tool to select the water under the bridge on the left. Select the Ukiyo Water swatch from the Gradients palette. Use the Paint Bucket tool to fill in the gradient. Hit Select>None.

20 Completing the water

Use the Lasso tool to select the water area on the other side of the bridge. Use the Paint Bucket tool to fill this in with the Ukiyo Water gradient. Hit Select>None, then apply the Dye Concentration effect to the layer. Hide the original sketch by clicking the eye icon in the Layers palette.

22 Final touches

www.mayang.com/ textures/Manmade/ html/Paper/

http://veredgf. fredfarm.com/ textura/index.html

19 Adding the water

21 Falling snow

Create a new layer called ‘Snow’. Move it below the Border layer. Select the Gouache>Fine Bristle 10 brush, white for your Main colour, then paint in the falling snow against the dark sky. Use the Size slider in the Property bar to vary the size of the snowflakes. Avoid painting in the upper-right section though.

Select your Canvas layer, and hit Select>All. With the Paint Bucket tool set to Current Color, change your canvas to white. Import in a paper texture (see far left) and resize it to fill the entire canvas. Make your paper the topmost layer and set it to Gel. Add a couple of personalised signature seals in red boxes to complete your artwork!

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Tutorial Paint like Tamara de Lempicka

Paint like:Tamara de Lempicka

Tamara De Lempicka’s sleek, high-society style is the epitome of the Art Deco movement. Use Corel Painter’s tools to replicate Jeune Fille En Vert Tutorial info Artist

Hannah Gal Time needed

Eight hours Skill level

Intermediate On the CD

Line drawing and final art

The look of the original’s oil is created here with Acrylics. The medium comes with a selection of ready-to-use brush variants and a unique glazing effect to simulate real-life oil painting

e Lempicka’s sleek paintings are a re�lection of her lavish lifestyle. Born into a privileged, upper-class background, she was never a struggling artist. This one mingled with the jet-setting elite her entire life. As a child, she attended boarding school in her native Poland, and spent time in Italy and the French Riviera. De Lempicka did not discover her artistic capability as a child or even in her youth. It was only after marriage and the birth of her daughter that she studied art in Paris, leading to immediate and long-lasting commercial success. She showed her work in major galleries and sold art for considerable amounts of money, all the while climbing up the Parisian social ladder. She soon became a highly sought-after portraitist for royalty and socialites, who paid handsomely for her artistic interpretation. Her subjects were of the circles she mingled in, and her work is therefore seen by many as a record of the upper classes of the day. As an artist, de Lempicka is best remembered for introducing a kind of cleanliness to the Cubic period, with bold shapes and great elegance. In doing so, she created a style like no other, with instantly recognised graphic features and simplistic form. This very particular elegance remained her trademark. She befriended the great artists of her time, and adopted a style that would hardly change throughout her career. The artist’s �irst major solo show took place in Milan in 1925, in the same year she painted the iconic Tamara in the

The image is made of many layers, hosting the different elements making the image. Fabric, Hair, Skin and others help maintain control over the painting process

“Her work is regarded as many as providing a record of the upper classes of the day” Green Bugatti. In it, she is seen as the independent, free-living person that she was in real life. Even her own daughter failed to slow her socially vibrant life, and the little girl was raised in boarding schools and also by her grandmother. She has, however, managed to become the subject of some of de Lempicka’s bestknown pieces. The year 1939 marked a move to the US, away from wartime Europe. There, de Lempicka continued her privileged life, moving to New York in 1943. Through these years, she secured her daughter’s escape from Nazi Europe, and continued to be in demand. The period leading up to her 1962 show saw her expanding her artistic horizons and venturing into new subjects, including abstracts and still life. The show was not well-received, and marked an end to de Lempicka’s steady professional practice as an artist. In the same year, which marked the death of her husband and an amazing three resulting round trips around the world, she settled in Texas where she

resided for a time with her now-married daughter’s family. Her travels didn’t end there, and in 1978 she moved yet again, this time to Mexico. During this time she is said to have mingled yet again with the international upper-class players of her younger days. Tamara de Lempicka sadly died in 1980, but has left behind a legacy of iconic and well-loved work.

The trademark de Lempicka sleek finish is timeconsuming. It requires patience, a slow build-up of detail and a great number of brushstrokes

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Tutorial Paint like Tamara de Lempicka 41

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Tutorial Paint like Tamara de Lempicka

A smooth operation Picka up-a your brush, and let’s begin!

01 Get ready

Open a new file, and set the size dimensions to 30cm high by 24cm wide. In the Layers palette, create a new layer. Name it ‘Original’ and place a reference copy of the original in it. This is an optional step, as you might instead prefer to occasionally glance at a separate image of the original.

Airbrush The sleek de Lempicka-look calls for a very smooth finish. The Airbrush is a superb smoothing tool with two main controls. Spread controls the amount of paint spreading out as it is applied and Flow controls the amount of paint actually applied. Be sure to use a minimum of 30-40 per cent. Use the Spread setting for maximum effect. The trick here is to cover the painting with a unifying stroke that creates the illusion of a smooth surface. Hold down Alt+Shift and you can reverse the spray direction as you paint.

02 Drawing guide

Create a new layer and name it ‘Drawing’. Copy and paste the provided de Lempicka pencil drawing from this issue’s CD. For its creation, we split the screen into sections, which remained useful throughout the painting process. In the main menu, go to Show Layout Grid>Enable Layout Grid. Then under Type, select 5 x 5 Grid.

04 Block colour

In the Toolbox, choose the Lasso tool and create a selection around the area of the dress, and to the left of woman’s face. Select an olive green as your colour. Go to Effects>Fill in the main menu and select Current Color. Set Opacity to 30-40 per cent. Now select the skin and fill with a peachy colour.

03 Drawing

Drawing the image helps to familiarise yourself with its characteristics, and is highly recommended. It is a relatively easy process, especially if you take advantage of the previously created guides. If you choose to draw this yourself, go to the Toolbox and choose Pencil>Thick and Thin Pencil.

05 Paint and Mixer

Repeat this process with other areas in the image until you have filled all the greens, browns, blacks and whites with colour. You should now have faint colour over your drawing. In the Layers palette, create a new layer and name it ‘Paint’. Now open the Mixer palette.

07 Fabric 06 Hat and paint

Go to the main menu and under Window, click on Show Selector Bar. Choose Oils and with a low Opacity, select the Smeary Bristle Spray. Now loosely cover the previously blocked areas.

Create a new layer and name it ‘Fabric’. Open the Colors palette and try to match the green of the dress. Alternatively, sample the green colour off of the original. Observe the original to see how the fabric falls, and where curves and shadows are. Start to paint the shadows.

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Create a new layer for the skin and with the same brush, cover areas of the face and arms. Change the brush size as you progress and vary Opacity at this stage to between one and five per cent. Look at the original to observe where shaded areas are, and use the guides to place them accurately.

09 Acrylics

We will build the colour up with the Thick Acrylic 10 brush. Stay in the Fabric layer and continue with the dress. Pick the highlight, midtone and shadow areas and follow the drawing lines to apply the colour. Use a careful and light stroke, keeping with low opacity and slowly building up the layers of colour.

We chose the Canvas paper texture from the Paper Selector in the Toolbox. You can also access it going to Window>Library Palettes>Show Papers. You can also see your original texture. To do that, on the Papers palette, choose Make Paper. Choose a pattern from the pop-up menu and adjust the Spacing slider. Once you keep the new texture, its name is added to the main Papers list and can now be accessed at any point.

Paint like Tamara de Lempicka

08 Skin

Tutorial

Make Paper, not war…

11 Skin and hat 10 Fabric build-up

Continue to apply colour to the dress. The strokes here are medium to long, and the Stylus Pressure is set to None. Work with one shade and cover areas with it, before moving to a lighter or darker shade and repeating the process.

Stay with the Thick Acrylic Bristle 10 brush and select the Skin layer. Use sampled colour to apply paint to the skin using medium-to-long strokes. We will refine the transitions between shades at a later stage. Repeat this painting process for the woman’s hat. Use a brush at low Opacity and build up colour gradually.

Patience will pay dividends There’s no quick way to get the best results

12 Drop

Save a copy of your image as a layered RIFF file. Select all layers except for Original, then click on the little triangle on the top-right of the Layers palette to launch the menu and select Drop. The image should now be made of one layer (or two layers if you opted for having Original as a reference layer in the first step).

13 Thick Acrylic

At this stage, it is important to refer to the original for getting the fabric folds, shade and overall detail nuances right. As before, be sure to follow the detail that exists, and continuously vary the brush size and Opacity. Strokes remain medium to long, and lightly applied. Now that the image is flat, you can just use the Hand (Grab) tool to move around.

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Tutorial Paint like Tamara de Lempicka

Don’t forget about Fade An oft-forgotten feature is Fade, which lets you reduce the effect of a freshly applied stroke. To do so, go to Menu>Fade. Set the Undo amount to the Opacity level you wish to apply, and drag the image in the Preview window to the stroke area within the painting. This is useful when you are happy with the look of a stroke but wish to reduce the effect.

14 Wet Acrylic

Under Acrylic, choose the Wet Acrylic 20 variant. Under Bristle, set Thickness and Clumpiness to 0 per cent, Hair Scale to 250 per cent and Scale to 55 per cent. Run the brush smoothly and lightly over the canvas. As previously recommended, it is best to use a very low Opacity of two to four per cent and build up colour gradually.

16 Dry Brush

Under Acrylics, choose Dry Brush 20 and set Opacity to 20 per cent. Adjust the brush size as you progress using the handy Property bar. To further test and develop your brush, use the Brush Creator. Follow the process described in the previous step, concentrating on one shade, covering relevant area, adjusting shade and moving on.

17 Dry Brush 2

15 Wet Acrylic build

This is a time-consuming process that requires patience. The colour builds up slowly as you add one stroke on top of another. Start with one shade; when you have finished covering all relevant areas, open the Color Wheel, move the slide up lightly for a lighter shade or down for a darker one, and continue.

At this advanced stage, it is important to apply colour accurately. Follow the drawing lines showing underneath for guidance. Most crucial for the de Lempicka effect is the smooth transition from one shade to the next. For that, you will need to slightly adjust the shade a great number of times as you paint.

18 Wet Acrylic 30

Use the Wet Acrylic 30 brush at 20 per cent to add some depth of colour. Be brave as you commit to darker shades. Under Impasto in the Brush Controls, choose Color and Depth, and set Depth to three per cent. Work with a size 20 brush, again, adjusting the size as you progress.

Lady in green Smooth the colours to re-create de Lempicka’s style

ne 20 Refi browns

19 Refine green

The image should now be fully covered by several layers of paint, but still needs smoothing and refining. Start with the dress, zoom to 75 per cent and go over previously applied paint. Use long-tomedium strokes, adjusting the brush size according to need.

Work systematically to ensure all areas are fully covered. When you have finished the first round of refining the green areas, move to the browns found all over the image. Observe the original and carefully enhance the painting by increasing Opacity, so adding contrast and depth to the piece.

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21 Zoom in

Once the lighter areas are fully covered, move to darker tones around them until you reach the very dark browns and blacks. The darkest blacks give contrast and add a spark to the hair. Build the blacks up gradually, layer upon layer. Use a small brush for areas bordering the hair and in-between curls.

Bask in the glory of your finished piece Adding the canvas texture

Once you choose your brush, you need to set a Method and Subcategory among others. Most Method and Subcategories are covered by Soft, Flat, Hard and Grainy. Choose the right one to refine the brush and achieve the effect you are after. If you familiarise yourself with the Subcategories, you will get better painting results. You can move from Soft with its feathered edges to Grainy brushstrokes that react to paper texture.

Paint like Tamara de Lempicka

22 Blacks

Tutorial

Subcategory and Method

Zoom in to 83 per cent or more, and concentrate on the hair. This is a demanding subject that requires careful observation and repeat applications. Start with lightest shade and use brisk, curvy shortto-medium length strokes. You may want to increase your Undo levels to between 1015. Your stroke should follow the shape of the hair curls.

24 Airbrush

23 The glove

The glove is relatively easy to paint. Place the fold lines accurately and you achieve great effects. Use long strokes to apply the lightest areas first and move on to the dark folds. Cover shades in-between the two by moving the slider slightly up or down within the Color palette.

25 Canvas

For a smoothing effect, select the Fine Tip Soft Air 40 from the Airbrushes. Set Opacity to eight per cent, Method to Cover and Subcategory to Soft Cover. Under Expression, choose Pressure and gently go over the painting underneath. Sample a colour and run the low Opacity brush over the entire area to give it a smooth appearance. Be careful not to run over areas that are of a different shade. Move between areas until the whole painting is smooth.

At the bottom of the Toolbox, click on the Paper Selector. From the long list, choose Artists Canvas. Click on the little triangle top-right of the drop-down menu and select Launch Palette. The settings seen at this stage will be reassessed after we judge the effect of the texture applied in the next step.

26 Canvas settings

Go to Effects>Surface Control>Apply Surface Texture. Under Using, select Paper and set Softness to 0. Set Picture between 70-80 per cent and Amount to five to ten per cent. Look at the effect and adjust the settings according to how textured you wish the painting to be.

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Feature focus Using a Wacom tablet

Using a Wacom tablet If you’re serious about getting to grips with Corel Painter, a graphics tablet such as those offered by Wacom is a must-have nce you start working in Corel Painter, it takes no time at all to realise that one of the most vital aspects of creating stunning paintings is to have absolute and precise control over every aspect of the brushes you use. A pressure-sensitive graphics tablet is vital and Wacom manufactures some of the best, with models to suit all pockets. So we wanted to offer a guide to using them to control Painter brushes. A graphics tablet, complete with the supplied pen-like stylus, essentially helps brush variants within Painter to behave in pretty much the same way as brushes and would in the real world, giving you the ultimate in painting and drawing control and versatility. In Painter, every feature of your chosen brush, such as Opacity, Size, Grain and Angle, has an Expression control in the Brush Controls palette that can be set to respond to the way you draw with the stylus on the tablet. This could mean that your brush draws less opaquely when you apply a little pressure to the stylus and more opaquely as you increase your drawing pressure. But there’s a whole range of brush controls that react directly to the way you draw with the stylus, as you’ll see below.

FEATURE FOCUS

EXPRESSION CONTROLS As you work, you’ll see that each category of Brush Features has an Expression option. From here, you can choose which dynamic of your pressure-sensitive graphics tablet should control this particular Brush Feature.

Pressure

Tilt

Pressure-sensitive input

Making the most of stylus tilt

The Pressure Expression setting is one that you will use most often. Just as you would imagine, the Pressure option varies the chosen characteristic of the brush depending on how much pressure you apply to the stylus as you paint. Typically, you would use Pressure to control the Size or Opacity of your chosen brush variant in Painter, so you would choose Pressure as the Expression option in these categories of the brush properties. Choosing Pressure as the Expression setting for one of the Pencil variants, for instance, would give you a pencil that draws darker lines as you increase your drawing pressure on the tablet, just as it would in the real world.

The ability to use tilt sensitivity is a feature of both the impressive Intuos and Cintiq models of the Wacom range, and is yet another Expression option available to you for any of Painter’s brush variants. Again, you can choose any aspect of the brush to be controlled by this Expression option. Tilt Expression is determined directly by the angle of the drawing stylus in relation to the tablet’s surface. So, for instance, by choosing Tilt as the Expression control in the size category of your brush, you would find yourself with a handy variant that draws a very thin line when the stylus is at 90 degrees to the tablet, and in direct contrast, a broad, thick line when it is tilted over.

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JUST PAINT!

Which Wacom for you?

Feature focus

When you’re using a graphics tablet, think of your entire canvas as a real painting surface, and all of your brushes as real brushes, with all of the pressure, tilt and grain capabilities that you would expect.

Our guide will help you choose No matter where you are on your Painter learning curve, there is a Wacom tablet suitable for you. Graphics tablets come in three distinct price ranges, in line with how advanced you need them to be.

Tablets for beginners Price

Bamboo One: €49.90 Bamboo : €79.90 Bamboo Fun: €99.90

Features:

Using a Wacom tablet

Although the Bamboo range is designed as entry-level models, they are certainly not short on performance or features. All of the models feature pressure sensitivity and ExpressKeys, although you won’t find the tilt sensitivity featured in the Intuos3 range. OS Required:

512 levels pressure-sensitive pen, Apple Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later, Microsoft Windows 2000, XP 360-degree Touch Ring and or Vista customisable ExpressKeys

NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON’T Suddenly, constantly changing the Opacity of your brush becomes a thing of the past as the opacity of your strokes is determined simply by the amount of pressure you apply to your stylus.

SIGNING ON THE DOTTED… With a graphics tablet, adding a signature to your image is as simple as writing it as you normally would. Assign the Size Expression to Pressure and you’ll even get all the calligraphic nuances of your signature included!

Direction and Bearing Pointing this way and that! The Direction Expression option can again be used to control any brush feature, simply by choosing it from the Expression setting for the category of your brushes’ attributes. Direction Expression is controlled by the direction your stylus is travelling in as you paint a stroke, whereas Bearing controls any aspect of your brush based on the relative direction your stylus is pointing. These two Expression settings could be used to great effect to create calligraphic lines with a brush which has a bigger width than thickness. These Expression controls are often best-used with the Angle characteristic of your Painter brushes.

Tablets for advanced home users Price

Intuos 3 A6: €239.90 Intuos 3 A5: €359.90 If you’re short of desk space but want all the features of an Intuos3 tablet, then one of these could be the choice for you. You have all the ExpressKeys (although only one set on the A6 version), and accurate pressure sensitivity. You also get the tilt response that you won’t get from the Bamboo range. Features:

OS Required:

Programmable buttons, 1,024 levels pressure-sensitive pen, scrolling wheel

Apple Mac OS X 10.2.6 or later, Microsoft Windows 98SE/2000/ ME/XP

Tablets for professionals Price

Intuos 3 A4: €499.90 Intuos 3 A3: €869.90 Cintiq 12 WX: €1,189.90 Cintiq 21 UX: €2,979.90 If you like a lot of space to create flowing, gestural paintings, go for the Cintiq range where you are actually painting directly on a highquality TFT display rather than on a blank surface. The Cintiq is available in either a 12 or 21-inch version, and although both these models take up lots of space, you can easily use either in place of your standard monitor. Features:

OS Required:

Programmable buttons, 1,024 levels pressure-sensitive pen

Apple Mac OS X 10.2.6 or later, Microsoft Windows 2000/XP

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Feature focus Using a Wacom tablet

FEATURE FOCUS

Be inspired and get creative Put the Wacom tablet to work There are so many more advantages to using a graphics tablet than just controlling Opacity via pressure – take a look at one in use!

01 Graphics tablets in action

So, you’ve got that shiny new tablet and stylus out of its box and all set up. Now it’s time to get down to the wonderful business of actually making marks with it. Here’s a quick runthrough of the Expression-based adjustments we made through the process of creating the main image.

02 Responsive charcoal

03 Size control via Tilt

04 Minimum Size setting

For the initial sketch, using one of the Charcoal variants and setting Opacity, Grain and Size Expression to Pressure allowed the sketch to be made with a tool which felt and responded exactly like the real-world charcoal equivalent would.

Make the tablet talk to Painter! For Painter to work in harmony with your particular style of drawing on your tablet, set the Brush Tracking so that the software knows how to respond to your pressure and drawing speed. To do this, go to Edit>Preferences> Brush Tracking. Simply make a few representative marks within the scratch pad, drawing as you normally would, and the software will calibrate itself to suit your technique.

With Opacity Expression still set to Pressure, but Size Expression set to Tilt, it was easy to start blocking in the main shadow and mid-tones in the image. With the Tilt Expression set to Size, broad areas can be added simply by angling the stylus.

To get the most from this size response, it’s important to set your Minimum brush size correctly so that you can make very fine lines with the stylus upright, but still achieve broad shading with it held at an angle.

Control Panel settings

Using Grain with Pressure

Adjusting tablet sensitivity

Creating realistic grain via Pressure

Via the Wacom Control Panel (Start>Control Panel>Wacom Tablet Properties), you can set up how sensitively your stylus reacts to pressure and tilt. In the Tool section, click on the icon for your pen, in this case an Intuos3 Grip pen, and then click on the Pen tab. You’ll see a slider for Tip Feel which ranges from Soft to Firm. To test the current feel, simply press with your pen over the Current Pressure bar. Use the slider to alter the amount of pressure needed to move the bar to its maximum. If you click on Details, you can test the pen’s pressure by scribbling on the small scratch pad. You can also change the Tilt Sensitivity between Normal and High.

Normally, when you’re working with a drawing or painting medium which makes use of the grain of the paper, the more pressure you apply the more the colour will fill the grain of the paper. Let’s say you are using a pastel. If you apply a little pressure, the pastel will just skip over the very top of the grain, making it very evident in the stroke made. If you use a lot of pressure, the colour will be pushed into the grain, making it far less evident. The same effect can be achieved with your graphics tablet in Painter. Head over to Brush Controls, and under the Grain section, set Expression to Pressure.

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For the lighter areas, where it’s important to control the grain effect, the Grain Expression was set to Tilt, while Opacity and Size were set to Pressure. This allows the amount of grain to be controlled simply by tilting the stylus.

06 Velocity equals spontaneity!

The finer highlight work was added in a fast, sketchy way, so Size Expression was set to Velocity. This makes it easy to draw both fine and broad strokes, depending on the speed your stylus moves across the tablet.

When you first install your Wacom tablet, make sure you go to the System Preferences and set the tablet area to map to your screen. This will mean that every millimetre of your tablet will correspond to your monitor. This is vital in a harmonious workflow. It also means that you can get away with a smaller tablet, as you will still be able to reach every part of your digital canvas.

Using a Wacom tablet

05 Grain via Tilt

Feature focus

Map to your monitor

Painting made easy Control the flow of paint

07 Color Expression

You can control colour with your stylus too! Setting the Color Expression controller to Tilt meant that the two yellows in the flower centre could be added easily by making them the Foreground and Background swatch colours, and then tilting the stylus to move gradually between the two.

08 Last but not least!

One of the greatest things about using the stylus to paint with is that simply by turning it upside down, you’ll find that the other end becomes an eraser! This is a great bonus, quicker than having to choose the Eraser tool, and a great time-saver for making small corrections.

Controlling Size

ExpressKey setup

Minimum size proportions

Use ExpressKeys to save mouse work!

Obviously, you can use any input from the stylus and tablet, for example, Pressure, Tilt or Bearing to control the size of your brush, via the Expression control in the Size category. However, you don’t only need to set the maximum size of the brush, but also you need to specify the Minimum Size via the second slider. If you set Pressure as the Expression for Size for instance, then the Minimum Size determines how big your brush will be when you apply the least pressure to your stylus. You’ll need to judge this depending on the particular area you are working on, but remember the minimum size is a proportion of the maximum size.

All Wacom tablets now feature ExpressKeys, and you can customise what each of these are used for. Set the Function of these keys via Start>Control Panel>Wacom Tablet Properties. Click on the Functions icon. Now, from the key map below, you can choose a function for each key. For instance, you could choose two of the keys to perform keystrokes, such as one of the Bracket keys for each so that the keys will have the function of increasing or decreasing the size of your brush. The Touch Strip left on its default setting makes a really useful Zoom short cut, operated by simply sliding your finger over it. Essentially, any function that you can choose with your mouse or keyboard within Painter can be assigned to an ExpressKey here.

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Tutorial Create realistic rays of sunlight

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Tutorial

Create realistic rays of sunlight Tutorial info Artist

Tim Shelbourne Time needed

2-3 hours Skill level

Intermediate On the CD

Tonal start sketch

Create realistic rays of sunlight

Painting a sunlit woodland scene can be a real challenge in lifelike lighting, but here we shed a ray of light on the mystery and majesty of sunlight hether you’re painting landscapes, still life or portraits, one of the most important factors to achieve a convincing result is that of light. Light itself is the single thing that quite literally allows the scene to exist at all, so it needs careful consideration and handling. One of the most fundamental hurdles you’ll face when it comes to painting a highly lit scene is �irst deciding where the light comes from and exactly what quality it is. A good strategy for working this out is to start with a tonal sketch. This is a monochrome sketch, which simply shows the light and dark parts of your painting. To get you started, we’ve supplied a tonal sketch that helps describes the light. We’ll show you how to paint the scene using a variety of brushes, complete with typical rays of light �iltered through the leaves of the trees. One of the brushes is customised to paint the leaves too. You’ll notice that there is quite a limited colour palette with this one. There’s not a great deal beyond brown, orange, green and yellow, but of course we need shades of each of these to bring the depth and realism to the whole piece.

Tree time Use the sketch on the CD as the base for your sunlit scene

Blocking in 01 the main trees

Open the tonal sketch in Painter. Choose Linen Canvas from the Papers, and then add a new layer to the image. Within the Layers palette, check the option for Pick Up Underlying Color. Next, choose Thick Wet Oils from the Oils variant category. Now use this brush to start roughly blocking in the main trees using a very dark brown.

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Tutorial Create realistic rays of sunlight

Fill with colour Bring warmth into the painting

02

Adding mid-tones Use a slightly

warmer, lighter brown for the lighter parts of the trees. Continue to add in the trees and the fence posts. Adjust the size of the brush as needed. When you have blocked all of these areas in, using the screenshot as a guide, lock this layer by clicking the padlock in the Layers palette.

Light plan

03 The dark distance

Add a new layer. Use the same brush but increase the Bleed to 85 per cent. Choose a dark green from the Colors palette and start to block in the distant, darker area of the woodland. Choose other green/brown dark tones from the Colors palette or the Mixer Pad now and then, and use short, dabbing strokes here.

04 Into the light

Reduce the Bleed to 25 per cent. Choose a lighter green/yellow and start to fill the tree areas towards the left with this colour, again, choosing a slightly different colour of approximately the same shade here and there. Use short strokes at different angles. Refer to the tonal sketch for placement of these tonal areas.

Use this as a guide to see the effects of light

As you’ll see from the illustration below, it’s very important that before you start to paint, you know both where the light comes from and also where it goes. In the light plan below, we’ve highlighted the main source of the light and also the points in the finished composition where it features at its strongest.

HIT AND MISS The light hits branches and leaves here and there, punctuating the mid-tones with sparkling highlights, adding real interest and focus to these areas

MAIN LIGHT SOURCE Here’s the position of the main light source. The sun, of course, is behind the trees, so the intensity of the light is filtered by the foliage

LIGHT SHAFTS Shafts of light appear where the intense sunlight bursts through gaps between the leaves, These shafts lose their intensity as they radiate away from the source and become wider

LIGHT ON OBJECTS The light hits the faces of the tree trunks which face the light. Of course, where there is light there is shadow, so we have intense shadow areas on the other side of the trunks

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For the bright areas, choose a light yellow and reduce the size of the brush. We’ll add the brightest highlights in these areas later. These areas can be fairly abstract with lots of energetic brushwork. Continue to add these various tones of light greens and yellows to all of the areas between the trees.

06 Ground level

For the woodland floor in the bottom-right of the painting, choose dark browns and tan colours, filling this area with small strokes and using the brush at a fairly large size. Return to a selection of light greens for the lighter ground areas near the fence.

07 Branching out

Unlock the upper tree layer. Reduce the Bleed of the brush to ten per cent, and at around 10-15 pixels, use a very dark brown to add some branches to the trees. Brush the branches in the directions shown in the screenshot with short, flicking movements.

Let there be light! Let the sun brighten up your image

dark 09 From to light

08 Magic leaf brush!

Return to the layer below and add a new layer, checking the Pick Up option. Select Artists’ Oils>Soft Grainy Brush and customise it using the settings in the side panel on this page. Go to Window>Brush Controls>Show Angle, and set Expression to Random. Now use this brush at 30 pixels to add all of the lightest leaves behind the trees on the left.

10

The dark side You need to carry

on adding this leaf detail in the darker, distant foliage areas, again starting with dark tones and building up to the lighter ones. Vary your brush size and use darker shades of greens and browns here. You may find it useful to soften these areas slightly with the Round Blender brush.

Again, use very light greens and yellows here, adding the odd touch of white in the brightest areas. Vary the size of the brush as you go and use the finished image for reference. It’s best to build up these areas in layers of colour, starting with darker areas and then gradually adding more leaves in lighter and lighter shades.

11 Ground cover

For the large area of leaf mould on the ground, revert to the Soft Grainy Brush and first use a very dark brown to paint in the shadows. Gradually change your colour through lighter and lighter tan colours, using the brush in quite a random fashion, slowly adding lighter details. It’s important to use the finished image as a reference here for the placement of the various tones.

Creating the leaf brush is easier than you might think, as it’s simply a modified version of the Artists’ Oils’ Soft Grainy brush. Choose this variant and then go to Window>Brush Controls>Show Artists’ Oils. Set the sliders as follows: Amount 50 per cent, Viscosity 68 per cent, Blend 65 per cent. For the lower sliders, set these values: Bristling 67 per cent, Clumpiness 65 per cent, Trail-Off 80 per cent. Set the Wetness slider to a medium value. Remember to set the Angle Control to Random as detailed in Step 8 of the walkthrough. Remember, one of the joys of Painter is that making small changes to brush settings can yield great results, so feel free to adjust these settings.

Create realistic rays of sunlight

05 Light and loose

Tutorial

Creating the leaf brush

12 Foreground leaves

Click on the Tree layer and add a new layer. Still using the custom leaf brush, add the leaves on the trees in the foreground in quite a random fashion, using various greens and varying the brush size as you go. Add a few bright green and yellow ones here and there, giving the impression of them being caught by the sunlight.

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Tutorial Create realistic rays of sunlight

Miracles of the Mixer

We’re using a lot of shades of similar colours in this project, so the Mixer palette can be a real life-saver here. After choosing a colour from the Color Wheel, you can use the Apply Color tool below the palette to apply each of these to the Mixer Palette itself. By doing this with a number of different greens, yellows and blues, you can mix these together with the Mix Color tool below the pad. This will give you a variety of colour that you can pick up with the small Eyedropper tool. You can always add some white to the mix to extend your range of colours even further.

Dodging and burning Painter features Dodge and Burn tools, and these can be useful when you’re working on a painting that uses light. The Dodge tool lightens the tone of brush marks and the Burn tool darkens them. You can immediately see the usefulness of these tools. After choosing one of the tools from the Toolbox, set a low Opacity. Now you can accurately lighten or darken small areas simply by brushing over them. If you haven’t got Painter X, you can use the Dodge and Burn variants in the Photo brushes.

Rays of light Give it an autumnal glow

13 Shafts of light

Add another new layer. From the Oils brushes, choose the Thick Oil Bristle 30 variant. In the Properties bar, use the following settings: Resat – 70 per cent, Bleed – 82 per cent, Feature – 4,.6. Now use this brush at around 60 pixels and use a very light yellow to paint in the rays of light, using short, diagonal strokes as shown in the screenshot.

15 Filtered light

Using this brush with a very light yellow over the upper branches of the foreground trees will give the impression of diaphanous, filtered light in this region, giving an diffused effect.

14 Light intensity

Make sure you keep to the shapes shown in the final image for these shafts. The upper-part of the shafts need to be lighter than the lower parts as the light is stronger here, so choose an even lighter yellow and gently apply more paint here. Remember that these shafts are wider at the bottom than at the top.

16 Patches of light

The light rays illuminate the patches of ground they hit. To add these bright patches, use the Soft Grainy Brush with Opacity at 50 per cent. Now add some bright orange and yellow patches of leaf directly below the rays of light. Start with the darker shades and overlay them with brighter ones.

17 Light on the trees

From the Palette Knife category, choose the Loaded Palette Knife variant. Add a new layer. Now use this brush at around 20 pixels to add some subtle highlights to the sunny side of the trees. Use long, flowing strokes with light tan colours and yellows. Add a few sharp strokes of near-white here and there.

19 Sparkling highlights 18 Grass in the sunlight

Still using the Palette Knife, start adding the bright grassy area. Use a variety of green yellows, and use short, upward flicking strokes, varying the size of the brush and the angle of your strokes. Use the brush at a very small size and with bright colour to add the odd flick here and there to indicate sharp, sunlit blades of grass.

Now reduce the size of the brush and using very light colours and white, add some really sharp highlight accents to the trees, grass and various fence posts, etc. By using the brush with horizontal strokes, you can easily create the impression of sharply highlighted branches springing from the tree trunks.

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Woodland wonderland

Add a final new layer at the top of the stack. Choose the Thick Wet Oils brush from the Oils brushes. In the Properties bar, set the Bleed to ten per cent. Zoom into the top-left of the image a little and using very light yellows and whites, add some defining highlight areas to the lightest parts of the image. Simple, random strokes will add interest and light here.

21 Bright leaves

Revert to the Soft Grainy brush and use it at 50-60 pixels to add some bright leaves across the upper area of the painting. Painting these leaves large and in bright colours suggests them being both in the foreground and being lit by the shafts of sunlight.

Sometimes, especially when painting distant areas, some of the brush marks you make can be a little too sharp, especially when you’re painting leaves. Here, you need to use one of the Blender variants. The Round Blender brush is ideal for this. This will also help in the areas of light in the top-left of the painting. Here, we need to combine sharp accents of light with soft, unfocused areas. When you’ve completed painting this area, use the Blender brush to blur a few areas a little to heighten the effect of diffused light.

Create realistic rays of sunlight

the 20 Clarify light

Tutorial

Soft and hard light

Add punch to the rays

ne the 23 Defi trees

22 Linking branches

It’s worth adding a few of these touches to the bright grassy bank by the trees. You can use the Palette Knife again to add a few linking branches between these leaves. Paint these with a light, bright orange colour, using short calligraphic strokes.

From the Artists’ Oils variants, choose the Oily Bristle Brush. Now add a few real dark colours to the trees, and a few lighter details within the tree trunks themselves to add a bit of detail and interest. A few very fine lines around the outlines can help to define the form.

Light changes everything!

24 Final touches

Using the brushes and techniques above, you can add as much additional detail to the image as you want. Here we’ve intensified the shadows cast by the foreground tree a little and added a few more foreground leaves here and there. We resolved the tones in the image with a little Dodge and Burn (see boxout on adjacent page).

When it comes to light and how it affects a scene, essentially three things can change it dramatically. The first variable is where the light actually comes from, for instance, is the sun directly above or lower down in the sky? Both produce different results. Next, the colour or temperature of the light can alter the look of the scene completely. Compare a sunset to a moonlight scene. Finally, how intense is the light source? In the image here, the light is very intense indeed, but had this been a rather overcast day, then the scene would be very different and much more subtle in regard to the lighting. With a few tweaks, we’ve turned our sunlit scene into a moonlit dream. What a difference light makes!

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showcase

CRIS GRIFFIN TITLE WEBSITE JOB TITLE

Leonie the Pirate Queen www.crisgriffin.com Digital artist

Christine ‘Cris’ Griffin is a traditional painter who has ventured into the world of freelance digital illustration and portraiture. The cover art is a portrait created for writer Elizabeth Weimer, inspired by one of her characters. Other clients include Fantasy Flight Games, Ballistic Publishing and Loose Id Publishing. She will, on occasion, work for chocolate.

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Art study How to paint realistic buildings

How to paint

rea lis tic buildin gs Employ a few traditional techniques and you can give your building paintings a solid foundation

Making plans When attempting a painting of a building, you need to decide on a few things before you make a start. Buildings are hefty objects, and to look convincing they need to feel as though they are a solid construct. So allow yourself some planning permission as you need to work out the correct perspective for the edges of the

building. Draw some perspective guides and then sketch out your building. Once you have the outline and the colour filled in, you need to add shadows. These are what will make your building really take on a three-dimensional shape, so decide on your light source and apply shadows accordingly. You will feel like some of the

shadows are too harsh, but stick with it and you’ ll be surprised at how well it all ties together. To help you get a feel for the kind of considerations needed, we’ve approached this photo as if we were going to paint it, and written what sorts of things we would take into account.

01 PERSPECTIVE

Perspective represents an image as it is seen by the eye. Objects are drawn smaller as their distance from the observer increases. There are several types of perspective: one point, two points, three points and five points, depending on the viewpoint. Some angles will give a different impression on the viewer.

04

02 LIGHT SOURCE

The light source is important for the shading. It will dictate how dark the shadows will be, how the contours will be, where they will be placed, in which parts of the building, etc.

03

03 SHADOWS

Depending on the light source and the time of the day, we will have different shadows. Some of them are cast from other features of the building upon them.

04 STYLE OF THE BUILDING

When painting a building, you need to think about the style of it and what materials were used to build it. Is it wood, is it bricks, is it stone? How is the roof shaped? Does it have ornaments? How are the windows shaped?

05 HISTORY

As the building will be your centre of attention, it will be treated as having a personality. It’s always good to think of location or the people who live there. A building with a story will make it far more interesting than a building with no meaning.

02

01

05

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Working with perspective

Art study

After you have spent a bit of time looking at your building, it’s time to start the sketching. The first thing you need to decide is the perspective of the viewer, as this will decide on the angles of the building. Here’s a look at three of the most useful viewpoints. One-point perspective

How to paint realistic buildings

This refers to a single point converging on a plane. In other words, if you look down a road or a field, you will notice the rows of the field (which, in actual fact, are parallel to each other and level with the ground) seem to meet at the same point in the distant horizon. When you draw a cube or a room in one-point perspective, all of the lines that recede away from you will appear to converge on this point. This is called the vanishing point and always occurs on the horizon. Onepoint perspective is typically used for buildings where the front directly faces the viewer.

Two-point perspective With the two-point perspective, we still have one horizon but now we have two vanishing points. Instead of looking at an object from straight on, we are looking at it from an angle. The corner of the cube in perspective is the point closest to us. In one-point perspective, the horizontal lines are parallel and the vertical lines are parallel. With two-point perspective, only the vertical lines are parallel to the edge of the page and each other. One of the most common errors is the distortion resulting from having both vanishing points within the field of vision, or too close to the subject. It’s important to make sure your two vanishing points are far apart, otherwise you get forced, warped views.

Three-point perspective Three-point perspective is used to create dramatic camera angles – the upshot and the downshot. We have to start with the original two-point perspective setup – the horizon line is very high or low. Where the third point goes is entirely up to you, depending upon the type of shot you want to create (up or down). In very extreme compositions, the third point is a lot closer to the object and the shot becomes basically one-point perspective. If you are not going for extreme shots, make sure your third vanishing point is very, very far away from the object. Otherwise, like in two-point perspective, you may find some distortion due to the short distance between the vanishing points.

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Art study How to paint realistic buildings

Start the painting Now that we have taken into account all the considerations, we can start painting a building. Here, we show you the progression from initial perspective sketch through to final creation.

Building a house and 01 Thumbnails designs

02 Use perspective

A thumbnail sketch is a quick way of seeing if something works or not. You have to think about composition and camera placement when doing a thumbnail. It may take several of these to get the right shot for your background and building. You may want to move the horizon line, play with the angle of the camera and all sorts of different compositional ideas.

03 Drop in the base colours

Now that our technical issues are solved, it’s time to drop in the first colours. Never start with a flat white background. Choose your background colours, as they will lead the overall mood and atmosphere of your building. Rough out the sky, the street or the trees, for instance. Don’t be too detailed. Just drop in the basic colours in blocks, using a big covering brush. We are more interested in the overall shape that in the details.

A horizon line and vanishing points need to be established to draw objects in relationship to one another. Use horizontal lines parallel for the horizon, and depth guidelines to the vanishing point to draw the house. By using the vanishing points, we draw windows and doors. Draw diagonal lines from corner to corner. Where they cross is the centre of the square.

04

Start with details Add details to make the

windows, doors and other elements pop out from the basic shapes, using your sketch and perspective lines layers in a low Opacity level as guides. Use a smaller covering brush and straight lines when necessary, with slight lower Opacity. You can do it on the same layer or create a new one. Do not add the shading yet.

05 Shading and further details

Until now, the house looked lifeless, and that was because of the absence of shading. There are many different brushes to use to make your house look traditional. In this case, we used the Square Chalk and the Scratchboard Tool pen for details on another layer. Feel free to use as many layers as you may need. Using the Color Wheel, make sure to pick colours that are not only darker, but have interesting hues.

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Adding shadows

underneath, but due to the position of the sun, it is not long enough to cover part of the wall.

02 WALLS As the wall is made of wood panels, you can make them look three-dimensional by placing a cast shadow from the window upon it in a wedge shape, slightly noticeable. This may also apply to bricks, stones, etc.

03 WINDOW TOP This time, the window top

casts a shadow that not only covers the underneath part,

but also reaches onto the wall next to it, making a rhomboid sort of shape

How to paint realistic buildings

01 ROOF The roof casts a shadow

04

Art study

01

Shading depicts levels of darkness on the surface by applying media with a darker shade for darker areas, and lighter shade for lighter areas. As basic as this definition goes, shading is what makes the difference between a flat painting and a painting with a three-dimensional feeling. With shadows, we can create the illusion of depth by making any lifeless object look more realistic, dramatic and interesting to the eye.

02 03

04 WINDOWS Windows can have a threedimensional feel to them easily, simply given by a darker line where the sun doesn’t hit.

05

05 PORCH Sometimes the cast

shadows can be in gradients. In this case, as the wall is far enough from the bottom roof, the shadow cast doesn’t have a defined contour, but it’s rather blurred.

Simplify a scene

You don’t have to paint every single brick or roof tile to create a successful painting of a building - in fact, you can get more impact by simplifying areas. Remember: you are creating an artistic representation of a structure. You only need to include the key visual elements and not everything that was needed to build it!

Windows Although everyone knows a window is not just a hole in a wall, we don’t need to draw every 3D shape of it. As with the bricks, just suggest the main structure lines to give form. The trick here is to accentuate the shapes using darker or lighter lines in the correct places to bring out the 3D shapes.

Brickwork It is not necessary to paint or draw every single brick. Just suggest them, always using perspective. Change colours on some of them to add variety, avoiding the impression of them being the same. Also take in mind 3D shapes, highlighting some contours receiving light (and shading contours not receiving it). Also you can add some texture for more painterly effects. For this example, we used the Soft Oil Pastel and Just Add Water blender, and it took few minutes. Seen from far away, they will look convincing enough.

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Tutorial Improve the background of your photos

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Tutorial Improve the background of your photographs

Susi La wson shows you how to...

Improve the background of your photographs Tutorial info Artist

Susi Lawson Time needed

One to two hours Skill level

Intermediate On the CD

Original photo

You don’t have to paint what’s in front of you – here we show you how to take a snapshot from the front garden to the beach! any of you will have cute snapshots of the kids that you would love to add some life to, but aren’t quite sure how to go about it. We all know the scenario – you’ve managed to capture the perfect facial expression or pose, but it’s only when you sit down to turn the photo into a painting that you realise the background leaves a lot to be desired. This presents two options. The �irst is

to insert a new background, or let your imagination go wild and paint in a new setting. It doesn’t have to be complicated; the simpler it is, the more impact it will have. We’re going to do exactly this using our original photo (you can �ind it on the CD). With this straightforward lesson, you will take this little girl from her front garden to the beach, by learning to paint a new background

using some traditional approaches and default brushes. You will learn to paint beautiful clouds with a Pastel brush, and how to make the skin dazzle and the hair lift with the ocean breeze using simple Airbrush techniques. So load up the photo from the disc (9-year-old Cassa Marie Smith – Susi’s favourite model), follow along with this tutorial, and enjoy an hour or two away at the beach!

Decide on an alternative background Transport your subject to sunnier climates

01 What does the image need?

The first thing to do is to look at your image and make a decision on what it needs. This little girl holding the conch shell to her ear is in need of a beautiful new background to suggest the seaside. Let’s click on the Color box and choose a lovely aqua colour for the sky. Copy the original photo from the disc, make a duplicate layer and click this layer to rename it ‘sky’.

03 Paint the clouds 02 Paint the sky

Now let’s choose the Pastel Dull Pencil brush at 100 per cent Opacity. Paint the entire sky background, taking care around the subject. Decrease the size around small areas of the girl and increase the size for the larger areas.

Make a new layer and name it ‘clouds’. Using the same brush you used for the sky, change the colour to white and the Opacity to between five and eight per cent, the Resat to 100 per cent, Bleed to 0 per cent and Jitter to between one and two per cent. Paint in a soft semi-circular motion.

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Tutorial Improve the background of your photos

Shadows, shells and skin Learn how to apply, enhance and smooth the image’s aesthetics

05 Darker shadows 04 Cloud shadows

Make a new layer and name it ‘cloud shadow’. Using the same brush and settings that you did for the clouds, choose a blue/grey colour and paint some soft shadows at the bottom of the clouds to give them more of a 3D shape.

On the same layer, use a darker tint of the same colour using the Color slider to choose. Add a touch more shadow. If the effect is too much, then adjust the Opacity on your cloud layer to get the desired softness.

06 Shell painting

Go to Layer>Drop all. Now create a new layer and name it ‘shell’. Using the Acrylics>Captured Bristle brush at ten per cent Opacity, start defining the contour lines of the shell. Use a deeper orange than the original colour. Be sure to follow along the organic shape, varying your brush tip as you go.

07 Shell shadows

Using the same Acrylic brush, choose a darker browner orange from the Color palette and define the shapes of the shell in the shadow areas.

Brushes We’ve recommended a few of Painter’s brushes to use for certain aspects within the image

Dull Pastel Pencil

Detail Airbrush

This is an excellent brush for painting clouds. Using a low Opacity, it is quite easy to create airy, fluffy clouds. Varying the Jitter amount can make the clouds more convincing.

This brush is very versatile and can be used for rendering soft hair from the foundation to little strands and is also perfect for smooth, polished skin.

08 Shell edges

Stay with the Acrylic brush for the moment. Now choose a very light yellow colour and define the edges of the shell. Follow the contour lines of the shell, reinforcing the highlight areas and taking care to maintain the form.

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Now pick a vibrant orange colour and go lightly over the previous orange areas, further defining the shape and adding more liveliness to the colour. Drop the layers.

Create a new layer entitled ‘skin’. Choose the Just Add Water brush at 20 per cent Opacity and go lightly over the entire skin area, carefully smoothing the texture. Be very careful to follow the contours of the facial and arm lines. Decrease brush size where needed and use light pressure if using a Wacom.

11 Skin highlights

Add a new layer called ‘highlights’. Choose a very light pink colour and use the Detail Airbrush at 20 per cent Opacity, lowering the layer Opacity to 18 per cent. We will very subtly paint in soft highlights to cheeks, forehead, nose tip and middle of arms. Drop the layers now.

Clouds, canvas and composition Crop to clone a cloud, and other tongue-twisting tips

12 Painting the eyes

Create a new layer titled ‘eyes’. Using the same Airbrush that you used on the skin, reduce the tip and choose a bright yellow colour. Now add flicks of sunlight to the irises and adjust layer Opacity for the most natural look.

It pays to stop and reassess your image as you paint and correct anything that may be throwing off the overall look. In this case, the girl was too centred, so by increasing the canvas and having her off-centre, the whole image becomes more pleasing by giving the girl more sense of her location at the beach. This causes the eye to move around more and see, not just her, but also her environment. A simple change in composition can create a story rather than a portrait.

Improve the background of your photographs

09 Final shell painting

10 Smoothing the skin

Tutorial

Composition is important!

13 More highlights

Using the same Airbrush and the colour white, we will now add some bright highlights to the pupils to really brighten the eyes, and while we are at it, let’s brighten the teeth. Add a shine to the lower lip and lightly go back over the cheeks, nose and arm areas that we painted before with pink. Adjust the Opacity of brush and layer as needed. Drop the layers again.

Add emotion with hair

14 A more pleasing composition

For a better composition, let’s increase the canvas to the left. Go to Canvas>Canvas Size and add 500 pixels to the left. Now Alt-click on the sky to select the same colour and using the Paint Bucket, fill in the extra area with more sky.

15 Clone more clouds

Using the Crop tool, crop a bit off the right side so the girl is not centred. Now grab the Clone brush, using the Soft Cloner, and fill in the area to the left with more clouds by using the existing clouds as the clone source.

A portrait with hair that is flat and straight does not add any emotion to a portrait. By adding additional hair strands that go beyond the confines of the original image, we are introducing other elements that were not there before. Adding motion to the hair suggest wind and a carefree spirit that can create a sense of the outdoors, and change the whole mood and dynamics of the portrait.

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Tutorial Improve the background of your photos

Hair today, gone tomorrow Use the Detail Airbrush to instantly add to the hair

Use care with the Burn tool The Burn tool is great for creating dark, defined pupils and defining eyelashes, but you don’t want a small child to look like she is wearing three coats of mascara, so use a very soft touch when using this tool. This tool is also great for going back and defining shadows in the hair and skin – as long as you remember to use discretion!

16 Painting hair

Make a new layer titled ‘hair’. Using the same Airbrush, choose a very light beige colour at a low Opacity and a small brush tip. Now carefully paint in light hair strands over the existing hair to brighten and add life. Vary the brush tip and extend the hair into the sky area, adding motion and length.

17 Adding more hair

To add hair where there is none, start with a base coat of paint using a darker beige colour, then add much lighter and thinner strands of hair on the top as shown.

18 Hair shadows

Add shadows to the hair using the original shadows as a guide, such as under the shell area and between the fingers. Use a darker brown for this.

19 Windblown hair

20 Burning in eye details

21 Adding a rosier glow

For a final touch on the hair, reduce the Airbrush tip to very small and add stray white hair strands all over to create a windblown effect. Drop the layers once more.

Opacity is important! When painting hair, it is very important to adjust the brush Opacity as you build layers of hair. This is especially important when painting the smaller flyaway hair strands as they need to be very soft to be natural-looking, The same is true for airbrushing blush on top of the skin; you don’t want pink clown cheeks, but just a kiss of rosy good health!

Using the Photo>Burn brush, go over the eyelashes to darken using a very low Opacity. Also darken and define the pupils and eyebrows. Take care not to overdo this effect; you want to add emphasis but not overpower.

With the same Airbrush at six per cent Opacity, Alt-click on the lips to select a natural blush colour and use this to softly apply blush to cheeks, the left side of the forehead and the shadow area of the arms.

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23 Painting the shirt

Now let’s go to Effects>Brightness/ Contrast and adjust the Brightness slider to increase brightness and softness overall.

Drop any layers that may still be open and make a new one titled ‘shirt’. Using the Acrylic’s Captured Bristle brush at 100 per cent Opacity. Alt-click on the pink top and paint over all the orange areas of the shirt following the shape and lines.

Shine, shirts and more shadows Unleash your inner nail technician!

24

Choosing a shadow colour Now Alt-click on the pink area,

bringing up the Color box and using the slider, choose a darker pink colour. We will use this to paint in the shadows.

There are several ways to clean up any overflow into your subject when painting a background such as the sky. Here are a few suggestions. You can flip over your stylus pen and use the eraser or choose the Eraser tool in the software, or you can work traditionally and paint directly over any messy edges. Just remember to erase. You must have two layers in order to expose what is under the paint overflow.

Improve the background of your photographs

Time to 22 brighten things up

Tutorial

Cleaning up after painting the background

25 Painting the shirt shadows

Using the same brush from Step 23, adjust the Opacity to 25 per cent and paint in subtle shadows beneath the arms and around the neck as shown. Apply a second coat of paint closer to the edge of the arm where the shadow is darker.

28 Warm illumination 26 Nail polish

Drop any open layers and make a new one titled ‘nails’. Using the Detail Airbrush at 20 per cent Opacity and a very soft pink, let’s paint over each fingernail in an upand-down stroke.

27 Nail highlights

On the same nail layer with the same Airbrush and settings, choose the colour white and paint a nail shine highlight on each nail as shown.

Go to Effects>Surface Control>Apply Lighting. Now use the slider to locate and choose the Warm Illumination effect. Increase the exposure and brightness. Play with these sliders to adjust until you see the most pleasing effect and press OK. We now have transported the girl to a beautiful day at the beach!

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Drawing 101 Portrait composition

Drawing 101…

Portrait composition Make your portraits the best they can possibly be with this guide to getting the best composition for your subject NO CUT-OFF It’s good to have the head near the top of a canvas, but don’t cut it off

NOT CENTRAL Place the eyes above the central line for more impact

EQUAL SPACING Try to leave an equal amount of space at the side of the head

LEAVE ROOM Keep a good amount of space between the bottom of the canvas and the chin

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Drawing 101 Portrait composition

This is the kind of composition you’d expect from a portrait. It’s formal, but the reclined position does give a touch of relaxation. The hands are placed together and form the bottom of a triangle, with the head providing the top. The arms also act as direction guides, pointing you towards the face

ainting portraits is a wonderful skill to master, but there is an awful lot to consider. We’ve already included various guides in previous issues that look at speci�ic techniques for the actual painting side of portraits (how to paint skin, hair and draw facial features), so this time we wanted to concentrate on one of the fundamental skills you’ll need – the one of composition. No doubt most of you are familiar with the principles of composition, such as the rule of thirds, using visual markers to force a viewer’s eye in a certain direction and framing a subject. When it comes to portraits, there are slightly different matters to take into consideration. The prime goal of a portrait is to capture a

Most portraits will show the head and shoulders, but you can include what you like. Hands are very expressive, so they make good additions to the composition and can also be used to help with character. You can use them in an animated way, as if the person was caught in a conversation, or they can be used to draw attention to the face or eyes, maybe by holding the head or playing with hair. You also need to consider how clothes can be used in the composition. The colours or shapes of fabric can all aid the portrait composition and help achieve the sense of character. You can also use them to lead the eye around or �ill the frame. You also need to think about background. A lot of portraits are placed on a plain background, but you can

Composing your subject in a setting will instantly give the viewer an idea of what they do. Here, we are obviously looking at a worker – if she had been on a plain background, the effect wouldn’t have been so immediate. She looks as though she is in the middle of doing something, giving a feeling of activity

“The goal of a portrait is to capture a person’s character and let it be seen in the painting” person’s character and let it be seen in the painting. Although a lot of this will have to do with you making the person recognisable, you can also fall upon composition to help suggest character traits. For example, a formal composition will give a stern feeling to the person, while a more relaxed stance will alter the mood entirely. How you choose to compose your subject will affect how that person comes across.

use more complicated settings to help with composition and convey a mood. A complex background of a person’s favourite objects can frame them within the things they love the most. We’re going to have a look at some of the most common portrait compositions and explain how and where they work well. By following a few tried-and-tested techniques, you can instantly improve your portraits.

The composition of this painting emits a mood of sadness. The slumped form of the character exudes a feeling of hopelessness – see the head to one side. The handkerchief suggests the character has been crying, with the dominance of the framed picture hinting that it might have had something to do with it

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Drawing 101 Portrait composition

Head and shoulders

LET THE BODY TALK

While the face is always important in a head and shoulders composition, never forget that the body can speak volumes. Here, the entire mood is coming from the crossed arms of the figure. The body’s composition dictates the mood of the painting and the face just backs this up.

The most traditional pose Most portrait artists will start with a head and shoulder composition, but there is still a lot that can be done with this format. How you place the head can drastically alter the mood of the image. Bowed heads give a submissive, sad feeling, while upturned heads will suggest arrogance or con�idence. When creating a head and shoulder portrait, make sure you don’t cut off any area of the head. It’s always best to leave more space in front of the face than behind, and don’t place the head in the middle of the paper. Slightly off kilter is far more interesting.

SIMPLE BUT EFFECTIVE

This is a great example of how a composition can work to capture a mood. There really isn’t much detail in the image but the slightly upturned head and far away look gives a proud, defiant expression. Notice that there is more space in front of the eyes, which gives them something to look into!

LOOK WITHOUT BEING SEEN

Sometimes it can be unnerving to have a portrait staring out, and can make the viewer feel uncomfortable for looking. A composition such as this, where the eyes are looking off to the distance, is the perfect solution. There’s enough of the face to engage with, but you don’t feel as though the image is staring at you!

FEELING FED UP?

The hands cradling the head in this example instantly give the impression of someone who is fed up. Try covering the hands up – you can see that the effect isn’t so strong, which shows how the right composition can get a mood across. Because of the position of the hands, the shoulders have to slope downwards, which again adds to the fed-up feeling.

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Formal and relaxed

Get maximum impact

The easiest way of getting instant impact with your portrait is to have an extreme close-up. Obviously this is the most unforgiving of compositions, since every mark is ampli�ied by the sheer scale. However, if you feel con�ident enough, a close-up composition can be very successful. It’s good to leave a small gap or white areas somewhere on the frame, otherwise it looks like you have cropped too far.

Portrait composition

Go into any art gallery and the portrait section will be �illed with paintings of people in formal garb, stood up as straight as a plank. If you decide to do a full-body shot, you can go for something more relaxed but there are a few things worth considering. The most important is that you have to get the proportions right. This is the most unforgiving composition, and dodgy proportions will ruin whatever you are trying to achieve.

Fill the frame

Drawing 101

Full-body composition

EXTREME EMOTION

Here we obviously have an angry face. In a different composition, a lot of the raw anger would be diluted from all the other details. You can really go to town with the wrinkles and frown lines.

Seated composition The comfortable position Having your subject sit down is the most comfortable for them but still offers plenty of interesting compositions for you. Seated �igures instantly give a relaxed feeling, and this in turn makes the viewer feel as though they are seeing the ‘real’ person. In addition, the type of chair you pick can help with the overall composition, as can the surrounding.

RELAXED STYLE

As you can see, the figure occupies the central axes, but the chair means it doesn’t look contrived. Again, there is more space in front of the face to allow for the figure’s eye to wander and by having the objects use the lower two-thirds of the area, you don’t run the risk of having a floating chair!

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TITLE WEBSITE JOB TITLE

Eren’s art is perfect if you want to leave this world behind and be whisked away to another universe with strange characters and outlandish spaceships. Through expressive brushstrokes, Eren manages to infuse paintings with movement and texture, and the use of colour injects a shot of life into the proceedings.

Attack to Convoy www.erenarik.net Freelance concept artist

EREN ARIK

showcase

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Your

questions answered

On this issue’s panel… Cat Bounds

With her natural ability, Cat is perfect for this part of the magazine. This issue she deals with simplifying trees, playing with perspective and many other techniques.

Jo Cole

The magazine’s editor had a strange obsession with aerial perspective, so she decided to wade in and handle the query about distance, in addition to applying subtle colour.

What you’ll find in this section Software

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

Fine art

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

Illustration

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

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

SHARE YOUR PROBLEMS!

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

On the farm I realise that this is a bit of a strange question, and not one of the usual requests you get sent in, but do you have any good advice for me to paint simple sheep?

K��� D���������

Sheep are fun little critters to paint, mainly because we’re familiar with their fluffy, rounded shapes. When we paint a few of them in a landscape picture, grazing in a pasture, they’re easily identifiable. Without a great deal of shading or worry with features, we achieved our pastoral scene. Shaping the landscape is just as much fun as painting the sheep themselves in this instance. Choose the Grainy Wet Sponge 160 brush. At a large brush size, and 100 per cent Opacity, start to lay in your landscape, adding indications for branches, fences and any grasses you want to include with the Acrylic brushes or Pens. Now return to the Grainy Wet Sponge and reduce the size. Begin making the puffy white bodies of your sheep. Although it might sound patronising, taking a look at a reference image can pay dividends. We can all conjure up an

image of a sheep in our heads, but there can be no substitution for the real things – or an image of the real thing anyway! They will need little face shapes and feet that can be painted with the same brushes that you used for painting the branches. Then stand back and – ta-da! You’ve got your sheep! You didn’t think it would be so easy, did you?

You may be happy with detail this soft and subtle, or you may want to take it a bit further by describing patches of leaves, random blades of grass and facial features on the sheep with smaller brushes

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Q&A

Seeing triple

Art class

Is there a way of setting up a triptych painting in Corel Painter, or is it a case of having three separate documents? P��� P������ This depends on what you intend to do with the finished paintings. If you intend to print them on canvas to be hung side-by-side on the wall, then you should keep them as three separate files. This can be done by painting each panel one at a time, or by painting one image and dividing it equally into separate files. If, however, you will be using the image on something like a greeting card, you may want to select and crop a finished painting into three parts, then copy and paste them back onto a new canvas, drop all layers and save. The side panels are usually subordinate though connected in subject to the centre panel.

Abstract thought I would like to do an abstract painting but have no idea where to start. Do you have any advice?

We could write a book (and many people have) on creating abstract art, but in this small space we’ll touch on a few points to get you started. Some artists have never delved into the

abstract realm because it intimidates them. Not all abstract art may appeal to you, though you can learn from and respect the processes of Jackson Pollock or Piet Mondrian. One of the great abstract artists was Georgia O’Keefe. If you really want to understand the process, study one or more of her many abstract series. She might begin by painting a black shingle in a fairly realistic manner and with each painting, the shingle gets more simplified, becoming at last a black obelisk representing the essence of the shingle.

01 Flowers on the Wind

02 Stone Gardens

M������ S������

The idea behind this painting was tulips and snow and cold spring breezes, and it was achieved quickly using Palette Knives. It’s fun to use brushes that, like the Palette Knives, aren’t completely controllable and the process becomes even more intuitive.

Stone Gardens began with a painted background and a square. As you place graphic elements into your abstract, you will begin to feel what arrangements work for you and which ones do not. Trust yourself; vanish the thought that someone else might not get it. Some will and some won’t.

Abstract paintings are one of the most intuitive painting styles both for the painter and for the viewer because they allow each of us to bring ourselves and our experiences into the fold as we interpret it. We can begin with a reference image or photo that we wish to simplify or follow the lead of such artists as Mondrian or Pollock and begin with a paint brush, a canvas and an idea that needs expressing. Below, we bring you three images painted in an abstract style to give you some sort of visual aid to have a go yourself.

03 City Lights

We began with a cityscape photo and wanted to simplify it to the point of abstraction, to make a painting about the excitement of night-time in the city. What we lose in detail, perhaps we gain in the composition of our shapes, lights and colours.

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Q&A Art class

Get to the point

Mixing media What’s the best way of getting the effect of ink and wash? I’m most familiar with them in delicate shades of sepia and charcoal inks. J���� R������ Strive for a look of spontaneity. Resist the urge to erase your lines and washes as you go, and you’ll find that you’ve created a more interesting painting than if you had tried for perfection. The lines are usually the primary focus, with soft washes added later that denote depth and dimension.

quick 01 Asketch

For this quick little sketch, we used Detail Sumi-e with Size set to four and Opacity set to 100 per cent. Try out various Pens and Pencils before you begin. You could reduce the size on some of the brushes meant for painting and draw excellent lines with them.

I’ve heard of the term ‘stippling’, but I’m not really sure what it is, how it’s used and even if it can be done with digital paint brushes. What can you tell me about it? B�� B����� Stippling was popular with the French Pointillists, a school or an art movement led by Georges Seurat, and is a technique where dots of colour are applied to the paper with the tip of the brush or pen. It is used in detailed paintings and drawings to fill in areas and add texture, and yes, it can easily be used digitally. Brushes like the Simple Round or Fine Camel are excellent for this technique. Try not to become obsessed with perfect dots in perfectly symmetrical lines. We’re still aiming for a painterly appearance, and dots done with the tip of a paintbrush will necessarily have variations in size, shape, colour hue and opacity. Want an even easier way to do stippling? Look no further than the Seurat brush in your Artists brush folder. This brush lays down dozens of beautifully variegated dots with each stroke. Apply lightly and change brush size and Opacity along the way.

ABOVE We used the Seurat brush to add shading to this ink sketch. You can see how it gives an attractive textured effect, with little hassle

BELOW Here colours were chosen from the image to add extra splashes of colour and interest

for 02 Now the wash

The Digital Watercolor Wash brush does a nice job here of giving the effect of a loose watercolour wash. We set our size to 56, and the Opacity to five per cent. We then chose shades of pale charcoal and worked on new layers so we could play with opacities.

03 Ainpainting minutes

If the finished piece looks a bit too much like a cartoon to you, spend some extra time defining the shapes in order to bring more detail and realism into it. Alternatively, you might decide to wash some greens into the bushes and plants.

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Match the palettes

01 Opening the images

To get started, you need to open the image you want the colours applied to, as well as the image that holds the desired colours. With both open, select the destination image and go to Effects>Tonal Control>Match Palette. Use the Source pop-up menu, and select the image with the colours you want to use.

Green fingers I want to paint my garden. Do you have any tips for painting �lowers without painting each petal? S���� H���� This process would be similar to our example for painting the impression of trees in the distance (pg 78), except that here, instead of masses of green, we’re thinking of masses and splashes of colour, and you can try out a variety of brushes because each area of flowers will call for its own shapes and textures. In this watercolour painting of springtime in a botanical garden, we combined the Watercolor brushes with Digital Watercolor brushes, and the dogwoods in the distance required tiny splashes of white, using the Bleach Splatter and Eraser Salt brushes. The mid-distance flowers take on a bit more form and can be painted with Fine Camel or Spatter Water, and then when we get to the nearer flowers in the foreground, we want a bit more detail but keeping it painterly. Try the Fine Tip Water or Fine Palette Knife for this.

02 Tweak the effect

As soon as you select the source image, you’ll see the Preview square change. This shows the current result. To tweak this, move the Color slider right to add more of the source colour (or left for less). Increasing the Variance (Color) slider will take more shades from the source image too.

Art class

G��� F��

Luckily there is a quick answer Gary, and it comes in the shape of the Match Palette command. Take a trip to the Effects menu and select the Tonal Control group to reach it. The command works by taking the colour from one image and then simply applying it to another. You can control the intensity, but generally the effect is quite subtle and should work well on the monochrome images that you’ve become so attached to!

Q&A

Recently, I’ve taken a bit of a shine to painting in monochrome, but I’d like to start introducing subtle colour. However, if I try and do it freehand, I end up making things too bright – I’ve tried Color Overlay, but can only get a uniform effect. I’m using Corel Painter X, so is there a quick answer with this?

03 Bright spark

The Brightness slider lets you set how much highlight and shadow you pull from the source image. A move to the right will take more than a move to the left. The Variance (Brightness) slider decides the contrast between the two. Higher settings means more contrast between highlights and shadows. The Amount setting decides how intense all the effects are.

The end result is a painting splashed liberally with the images of flowers growing along the path and of flowering trees in the distance, and we didn’t paint a single petal. Remember to include light and dark areas for interest

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Q&A Art class

Tree effects I’m painting a watercolour landscape. How do I give the impression of soft, painterly trees in the distance using the Watercolor brushes? C���� G���� You’re in luck! The Watercolor brushes are some of the best for describing soft foliage in the distance and behave very much like traditional watercolour brushes as they flow and bloom on your canvas. If there’s any trick to it, I think that would be don’t overwork or overthink them, sometimes one of the hardest lessons we learn in watercolour. We want shapes of trees and indications of foliage, not detail, and since Watercolor brushes work on their own dedicated layers, use this to your advantage by painting each group of trees on its own layer so you can feel free to play and discard, move or blend them later. But for now just play with the brushes, changing colour hues and Opacities as you go. For our examples, we used shades of green and blue, but this works equally as well for autumn colours. Trees at a greater distance will be soft and hazy, while the closer they get to the viewer, they become more vivid and more detailed. The Bleach Splatter and Salt Watercolor brushes add great texture to your foliage. Remember, even in less detailed areas, flat expanses without colour changes or texture can be boring.

Soft 01 individual trees

Both deciduous and evergreen trees can be added to your soft, painterly tree line, and since they’re on their own layers, they are easy to position either in front of or behind the masses.

Runny 03 Smooth Bristle

These brushes are just full of happy surprises as we make quick, random strokes and then watch as the paint washes vertically, as if pulled by the tension of water-soaked paper, feathering at the top and pooling at the bottom.

02 Organic shapes

Notice how beautifully the Wet Runny Camel brush gives us backwash watercolour pools with each stroke. Once you’ve got your foliage, you can choose a Pencil, Pen or Sumi-e brush to paint trunks and a few random branches on more separate layers.

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Q&A

Playing with perspective

I want to paint a sky using the Oil brushes, but I can’t seem to get a smooth effect between colours. How can I achieve this?

What are the rules concerning light and dark colours? Someone told me they affect whether objects recede or advance in a painting, but annoyingly, I can’t remember which is which! K����� H����� Yes, the person who told you was right about that; while we usually think of cool colours as receding and warm colours advancing, the effects of light and dark areas in our paintings will also affect the perceived closeness or distance of that part of the image. Dark areas will seem to shrink and recede while light areas will appear larger and closer; a very good thing to remember as you decide which parts of your image you want the viewer to notice more than others, because whites and light colours attract the eye and open up spaces. This plays an important part in planning your composition. Once you’ve got it like you want it, squint your eyes and see if the patterns of lights

Go the distance I’m attempting landscape paintings and wondered if you had any tips for giving the impression of distance? M�� W������� Yes – employ a bit of aerial perspective. This means that as objects get further away, they become

Art class

Blending oils A����� D���� Create a stunning oil-painted sky with soft transitions, using the Fine Soft Glazing 30. This is a beautiful brush for sky colours because it lays down brushstroke glazes softly, creating deeper colours as you brush over previous strokes.

paint 01 Let’s the sky!

In this example, note how much larger and closer the light-grey rectangle appears when compared with the dark one. The dark rectangle seems almost like a hole we could get lost in, while the light one looks close enough to touch

You can get a smooth gradation of colours by moving the indicator in small increments around the colour hue ring, or you may want to reach over and grab a yellow or an orange to represent a rising or setting sun. Save when you have your colours as you like them.

and darks are pleasing and bring attention to the desired areas, and whether those were the elements you wanted to push forth or pull back.

lighter and more blue. Objects that are nearer are darker than those in the distance. The biggest mistake made in landscapes is painting objects in the same colour. Even if you get the perfect perspective, if you don’t have variation in the actual colours, you won’t have any impression of distance. In our example, the forms are very simple but by using dark colour for the nearer objects and light for the distant ones, we have got the impression of distance.

02 Blending in

With a large Just Add Water brush set to about 20 per cent Opacity, begin blending large areas of your canvas horizontally, noticing how you can pull light and dark colours from one area to another. You may want to leave some rough areas as clouds in your sky.

03 Adding some light

It’s a good idea to work more slowly at this point and save along the way so you can revert back to an earlier stage. Now bring in a large Glow brush set to two per cent Opacity, set the colour to white and brush delicately where you would like additional subtle light. Make sure that you make distant objects lighter than those nearer

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Using the products The excelle

Read about the best products out there to extend and improve your Corel Painter experience

The creative products on test this issue…

Hp photosmart c5280 all-in-one

Paint from photographs dvd

Find out whether this combined printer, scanner and copier has enough power to satisfy your Corel Painter-creation needs

Painter Master, Jeremy Sutton, has recorded the process he goes through to paint a commissioned portrait. See what it has to teach

Book reviews

OUTPUT

Another quality batch of creative books, which will teach you how to use colour properly in your painting and make your own camera equipment!

Embellishing your digital artwork with traditional media is a fantastic way of introducing texture and depth. We show you what’s involved in the process

Reviews

Encyclopedia nt o book reviewed f Colour th inspired this limis issue ited colour palette

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Reviews HP Photosmart C5280

HP Photosmart C5280 specs

£149 | We find out whether this all-in-one printer, scanner and copier has all you need for your creative purposes

HP Photosmart C5280 Company

Minimum requirements

HP PC: Windows 2000 Price or higher, 233MHZ, £149 128MB RAM, 1GB Website hard disk space www.hp.co.uk Operating systems Mac: Mac OS X Mac and PC 10.3.9, Power PC G3, 128MB RAM, 200MB hard disk space

One-hit wonder The buttons along the front of the all-in-one give you the ability to scan and copy with no hassle

“Newcomers to the digital world won’t be intimidated, and the quality of results will keep the more advanced set happy” Studio) lets you set scanning resolution, which area to scan and so on. You can also bypass all this and just push a button on the front panel of the machine to perform a scan. The print side of things sees a maximum resolution of 4,800 x 1,200dpi, and a variety of paper formats supported. As well as envelope options, you can choose borderless photo (4 x 6 inches, 5 x 7 inches and 8 x 10 inches) in addition to borderless panorama (4 x 10 inches, 4 x 11 inches and 4 x 12 inches). You can print to a maximum of A4 size. There’s also

images are sharp and de�ined, with crisp edges and perfect colour distribution. The printer handles inkjet canvas paper beautifully, and the special templates for different-sized paper or CDs mean you don’t risk dodgy positioning. This is a great machine for Corel Painter users. You can scan in materials, use them in your Painter project and then print out to frame and hang. The fact that it is so simple to use means newcomers to the digital world won’t be intimidated, and the quality of results will keep the more advanced set happy.

Different media The different paper trays and templates let you easily swap between different paper types and sizes

we say

the option to print to CD or DVD, with special holders to ensure perfect print placement. What’s more, you can bypass your computer when it comes to printing. Insert your memory card and then use the 2.4-inch screen to work through the menus and print the image. You can even get the printer to remove red-eye from portrait snaps. Setting the printer up causes no problems at all. The software is easily installed and is intuitive to use. The four separate ink cartridges are easy to snap into place, and deliver bright and vibrant colour. Printed

verdict

or most digital artists, there are three considerations when buying equipment – money, quality of results and space. Which is why an all-in-one machine is perfect for price-conscious, spacesavvy digital creatives. It ticks the right price box at £149 and it won’t take up much space, measuring 17.8 x 21.5 x 17.5 inches. HP is a major player in the printer world, and its C5280 model promises lab-quality prints. The scanner offers a resolution of 4,800 x 4,800dpi, although you can enhance this to 19,200dpi. The supplied software (Photosmart

See it all The 2.4-inch screen means you can easily pick the photos to print from a memory card

What we like

Looks stylish Easy to set up Good results

Looks fantastic, especially next to a white iMac. However, it’s the ease of use and sumptuous print-outs make this all-in-one a winner

Overall score

Total control The HP Photosmart software is easy to use and lets you dictate the paper type and print quality

What we don’t like No USB cable included

Features

9.0

Ease of use

10

Quality of results

9.0

Value for money

10

9.5

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Company

Sutton Studios & Gallery Price

$325

Website

www.jeremysutton. com

specs

How to Paint from Photographs Using Corel Painter X

How to Paint from Photographs Using Corel Painter X Operating Systems

PC and Mac Minimum requirements

QuickTime, 4GB free space (for tutorial files), internet connection

$325 | Learn what’s involved in creating a commissioned Corel Painter portrait

“It is the equivalent of having an artist sit down with you and explain the entire process of an image’s creation ”

need can be found on the second disc. You get 900 tutorial images, 90 extra brushes, 40 custom Color Sets… the list goes on. You can also watch a lecture Sutton gave at Oxford University, which is another two hours of helpful instruction. Even if you have a different style to Sutton’s, his knack of dropping in useful tips means you will still get an awful lot out of the DVD. You have to register to activate the DVD, but it takes only a minute and is a small price to pay for such a helpful resource. However, we fear the cost of the disc will seem anything but a small price. At $325 (approx £157), it certainly isn’t cheap, but it is like having an artist explain the entire process of an image’s creation to you.

Work through the disc The video takes place in a dedicated interface, with all the chapters to the side

See from the start Seeing how Sutton photographs his subjects is an excellent learning experience for your own projects

Follow along

Mixed media

Thanks to the supplied resources, you can watch the chapters of Sutton creating the painting and follow along

It’s interesting to see how Sutton incorporates traditional media into a digital painting and sparks off lots of ideas

What we like

What we don’t like

A mammoth learning resource for anyone, professional or amateur, wanting to better their portrait paintings

Features

Packed with information Explains an image from start to finish

we say

With source files and over 4 hours of footage, there’s certainly lots to this DVD!

arrangement, through to the actual painting itself. In fact, you get over four hours of instruction, all of it useful. The digital painting sections are full of tips and techniques for using Corel Painter. On one level it works as a tutorial for how a certain image was created, but the fact that Sutton explains each brush he uses, in addition to pointing our any short cuts or alternative ways of doing things, means that this part almost becomes a manual to the program. The content plays within a dedicated interface, with controls to pause, fast-forward and rewind. The disc only plays on computers, but that means you can watch a bit and then try the techniques out for yourself. All the resources you

The price could exclude a lot of users Disc only plays on computers

9.0

Ease of use

verdict

t’s rare to get the chance to sit down with an artist and have them show you exactly how they create one of their paintings, but that’s exactly what you get with this DVD. Corel Painter Master, Jeremy Sutton, has put together a creative documentary about how he created a portrait for one couple. You get to see the whole process, from initial meeting and photoshoot, through to creating the actual painting, printing it out and �inally unveiling it to the couple. You also bene�it from Sutton’s helpful and instructional narration. He explains absolutely everything, from his computer setup, to his Painter palette

10

Quality of results

n/a

Value for money

8.0

Overall score

9.0 83

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Reviews Books

The Encyclopedia of Colour for Watercolour Artists £12.99 | Grapple the fundamentals of working with colour

See the difference The book is full of clever techniques to help you understand colour, such as painting the same image using different colour schemes

hen this book �irst arrived, we had a quick �lick through, thought it looked quite interesting and then put it on the pile of stuff that needed reviewing. It was only by doing this proper review that the sheer brilliance of the title becomes apparent. After sitting down and reading the pages properly, we realised that every single image used in this book has masses to teach a keen artist about colour – whether they work in traditional watercolours, oils, pencils or good old Corel Painter. The book begins with examining the pigments in watercolour paints. Not relevant, you may think. Well it is, because you also learn about what effect each colour gives and how to mix different colours. This heralds the start of the book’s typical approach of using paintings to explain the concepts being discussed, which instantly gets the point across. By examining the images in this section, you not only learn about how traditional watercolour pigments work (giving an appreciation of how Corel Painter’s Watercolor brushes work), you bene�it from breakdowns of paintings that point out what colours were used and why.

Keeping with the hands-on approach, the book then looks at how different colour schemes can portray different moods. To achieve this, the book presents the same image but painted in various schemes. After colour schemes, the book looks at different colour palettes, again giving you clear ideas of how hues can alter mood. The �inal section of the book looks at practical skills such as painting shadows and tone before moving onto speci�ic objects and how colour can be used to make them seem more realistic. This includes topics such as skies, waterscapes, animals and �lowers. We really think this book is a must-buy for any artist. While it doesn’t show you how to paint a speci�ic scene, it does give you the knowledge and skills to use colour with con�idence.

Basic considerations Even though some subjects are dealt with in just two pages, the book still manages to pack in a wealth of information

Bring into Painter Although the book is obviously aimed at traditional media, there is still plenty of advice that can be used in your digital life, such as mixing colour

Author

Jan Hart Price

£12.99 Publisher

Search Press ISBN

978-1-84448-293-1

Real-life examples There are some beautiful paintings used throughout the book, which help you instantly see how a colour theory can be applied to the painting itself

Colour fundamentals The title covers juicy art techniques such as working with contrast and manipulating it to get the very best from your images, which should keep you occupied

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Low Budget Shooting £13.99 | Get creative and build photography equipment Author

Cyrill Harnischmacher

Price

£13.99

Publisher

Rocky Nook

ISBN

978-1-933952-10-9

s the back of this book states, once you have bought a camera, computer, lenses and extras such as memory cards and batteries, the last thing you want to do is shell out for non-essential but desirable extras such as lights and diffusers. This book aims to help you achieve your creative desires without damaging your bank account. The author has put together an interesting collection of guides for building photography equipment such as light boxes, light tents, re�lectors and striplights. The author states that you’ll need some experience with building objects and he isn’t kidding – you don’t get clear steps for creating the objects, but there’s enough to work out what needs doing and the supporting images help. What is nice is the photos to show what can be achieved with the equipment, and all in all, it has lots to capture the imagination.

Get building While hopeless DIY bods may struggle with the lack of steps, each project has plenty of helpful information to get you building your equipment

What you can achieve You can see the fruits of using the equipment throughout the book, with examples showing you the sort of fantastic results you can enjoy

Recycle materials There are some very good ideas for putting other objects to good use in your photographic setup, such as adjustable mirrors

Getting Colour Right £19.95 | Manage your colour effectively Authors

Michael Walker with Neil Barstow Price

£19.95 Publisher

Ilex ISBN

1-904705-24-3

e’ve already looked at using colour in paintings, but this book deals with the practicalities of managing colour. It is essential to set your computer and printer up to display colours correctly, and this book aims to help you in that task. It begins with an interesting look at how colour works and then moves into how different �ile formats affect the colour information. What is most interesting, though, is the �inal section that deals with speci�ic colour-correction tasks through a series of walkthroughs. Although this section just uses Photoshop, a lot of the commands it focuses on has Corel Painter counterparts, and so the techniques can be adapted seamlessly. Colour correction is a slippery �ish to try and get hold of, but this book makes everything straightforward. It offers an insight into the processes of ‘seeing’ colour and then gives you some ideas for using it creatively in photos.

Printing formats The pages that deal with different formats and why they are used are very interesting, and help you pick the correct file type

Important concerns We like the pages that deal with capturing digital images and prepping for colour work, including explanations of file size and resolution

Image editing The final part of the book gives you practical guides to editing photos and tweaking the colours for wonderfully creative effects

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Output

Embellish your artwork

Embellish your artwork Make your Corel Painter artwork really special by applying traditional materials to printouts Tutorial info Artist

Anne CarterHargrove Time needed

Up to you! Skill level

Beginner

ne of the ironies of the digitalpainting world is that it’s quite possible to be an accomplished digital artist without ever having held a brush or opening a tube of paint. And that‘s a shame, because there’s something about working with traditional art materials that can add an extra dimension to your work – both to the �inished piece and to the experience of creating that art. The term used to describe the process of adding real paint, gel and other media to a digital print is embellishment, meaning to ‘enhance or make beautiful’. Through embellishment, you can use gel and paint to add actual brushstrokes and textures, add a range of colours not possible in inkjet printing, and create real impasto effects that make your painting a touchable, three-dimensional piece of art.

Corel Painter artists such as John Derry are noting that embellishment may be the next milestone in elevating computer art to acceptance in the traditional art world and in the public eye. Embellished work is a one-of-a-kind piece of art that can’t be reproduced with the simple touch

found the process so enjoyable that I created a DVD tutorial on the subject. The video – Finishings: A Basic Guide To Digital Print Embellishment – is available at www.cadmiumdreams.com, or through the Digital Paint Shop at www. digitalpaintingforum.com.

of a print button – as a result of this, its value and worth as a collector’s item is signi�icantly enhanced. There’s also something very satisfying about the process of embellishment. It gets you away from the computer monitor and in front of an easel, a brush in your hands and paint in your hair. In fact, I

In these next few pages, we’re going to take you step by step through the basics of embellishment. For this tutorial, we’ll be using Golden’s Acrylic Gel Medium and acrylic paints on an inkjet canvas. So grab a smock, gather your materials, take a refreshing breather from your computer screen and let’s get started!

“There’s something about working with traditional art materials that can add an extra dimension to your art”

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Step away from the screen Make your print truly stand out with the addition of traditional materials

Using gel mediums

01 Let’s begin

We’ll start with an inkjet print. The print can be one that you’ve printed at home or had printed commercially. Start with a small version of your painting so you’ll feel more free to play without worry. Inkjet canvas is most commonly used to embellish, but the techniques will also work on fine-art paper. Secure your print to a board or stretcher bars so it doesn’t shift while you’re working.

02 Spray and seal

Now we need to seal the print with a waterproof barrier so the ink and the acrylics don’t intermingle. Using Golden’s Archival Spray Varnish (the gloss version), start in the upper-left corner of the painting and spray a light coat of varnish from 12 inches away, overlapping your strokes. Let the varnish dry, then turn the painting 90 degrees. Repeat until you have applied three coats of varnish. Use a mask to protect your lungs!

04 Make a plan 03 Choose your brushes

Start with an assortment of synthetic brushes. You’ll need rounds for curved areas, flats for lines and angles, and a soft blender brush. The brush size should match the size of your digital brushstroke – small for details and larger for backgrounds. A soft brush will yield a smooth effect, while a stiffer brush will enhance an impasto effect.

Take a good look at your print and decide how you want to use the brushstrokes to enhance it. Thick brushstrokes with lots of gobs and ridges of gel will create energy, texture and shadows even if you don’t add colour – great for areas like foliage or ocean waves. But you may want less texture and softer brushstrokes over eyes and skin.

Gels are simply acrylic paint without the pigment, designed to let you change the paint’s characteristics. Since paint and gel are the same material, you can combine them to create anything from a thick impasto to a thin glaze, or use the gel by itself to create texture without adding colour. Gels come in a variety of luminosities – matte, semi-gloss or gloss. Gloss gels dry clear and intensify colours, while matte gels lower the intensity. Consistencies range from extra-heavy body to soft, allowing you to choose the desired degree of impasto effect. Gels are an inexpensive way to extend your acrylic paint. Use them freely, and enjoy experimenting with combinations of gel and paint.

Colour mix

05 On with the gel

To work on the smooth areas of your print, dip a soft brush into a jar of Golden’s Soft Gel (gloss). Paint on your print, following the brushstrokes of the original painting and matching the size of your brush to the size of the strokes. The gel will dry quickly – don’t overwork it with your brush. There will be some opacity to the gel that will disappear as it dries.

06 Add some energy

Wherever you want more texture (eg, hair or foliage), use the Golden Heavy Body Gel (gloss) and a stiffer brush. Paint with the brush at a shallow angle to the print to get an impasto effect. Remember that texture will cause the area to pop forward, so you may not want too much texture in the background.

Acrylic paints are often used in embellishing – their versatility lets you simulate oil paint, watercolour, glaze or other effects. They dry quickly, making paint-overs almost as easy as Ctrl/Cmd+Z. Acrylic paints come in two grades – student and professional. Get the professional paints for the best grade of pigment. Both heavy body and fluid acrylics can be mixed with gels to achieve the consistency you want.

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Output

Embellish your artwork

Sign off in style Apply some colour and emphasise the highlights in the image

07

Ready for some colour? Painting on

the clear gel alone may be quite enough, but if you’re feeling daring, try some colour. An easy way to begin is by painting the highlights. Adding texture to your highlights will bring them forward visually – viewers will be drawn to the highlights and see paint!

08 Pop the highlights

To paint the highlights, mix up a little acrylic paint to match the colour of the highlights. Titanium White is a good opaque white paint to use in the mixing. Add a little gel until the paint is the desired consistency, and then use a small brush to paint on your print. The paint will dry quickly, so if the colour isn’t quite right, you can try again.

Where to buy your art supplies

Online resources www.goldenpaints.com The granddaddy of acrylic manufacturers, Golden Artist Colors offers its first-rate gels and paints online, and also provides a listing on the site of hundreds of retail stores in 47 different countries. The website also contains plenty of tutorials about using acrylic gels and paints. Email for a handpainted colour chart of the available acrylic paints.

09 Sign and seal

Use a tiny brush dipped in acrylic paint to sign your work. To finish, make sure the gel and paint are completely dry, and then use Golden Archival Spray Varnish just as you did in the second step. Use the gloss version of the varnish for the first two coats, then, if you want to tone down the gloss a bit, end with a final coat of the varnish in ‘satin’. And you’re done!

We’ve scoured the web for the best materials

InkJet Art

Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff

www.inkjetart.com

www.cheapjoes.com

A great resource for all supplies related to printing and sealing digital prints, including a nice selection of inkjet canvas that you could purchase in small quantities for experimenting. Extensive help on a wide variety of topics is available in the free online forum. It ships to the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, Ireland, Germany and New Zealand.

Blick Art Materials www.dickblick.com Dick Blick sells a vast selection of brushes, gels and paints from all different manufacturers. Sampler sets of six different Golden gels and eight different acrylic paints are sold online. A 600-page catalogue is available with great mini-tutorials, and information on international shipping is available on the site.

Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff online store has great prices on a wide variety of art materials, with a downloadable catalogue to peruse at your leisure. The website also lists art workshops available around the world, while international shipping is available through either air or surface parcel post.

Breathing Color www.breathingcolor.com Breathing Color offers a great selection of inkjet fine-art paper and canvas, as well as its own line of protective sealants. A free colourmanagement consultation is also available. Breathing Color manages individual websites for USA/ Canada, Australia and the UK, and international shipping is available at reasonable prices.

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Readers’ gallery issue twelve

Gallery

Get inspired by a fellow reader’s work with our regular showcase of talent from our website. This issue, we look at the artwork from Giovanna Gazzalo and find out more about how she incorporates Corel Painter into her vision How would you describe your style? Good question… do I have one? Some friends often tell me that I have a particular gift for colours, or they can always recognise one of my drawings. Or that there is always a feeling – a little story to tell through them – but personally, I can’t de�ine a style for myself.

iovanna Gazzalo is a Corel Painter user through and through. Despite only using the program for just under a year, she has already produced an impressive body of work that uses colour in an expressive way. Her approach to work is very free and liberating, basically allowing herself to be inspired by whatever she �inds in her life. Find out more about Giovanna by reading on, or see more of her work by visiting www.paintermagazine. co.uk/user/giovanna. When did you start using Painter? I originally started with Painter Essentials less than a year ago, and soon went onto Painter IX and then Painter X. Had you been using traditional art materials before Painter? Actually, I have never used traditional art materials. I have only used my pencil for sketching but really nothing of importance. What’s your favourite Painter tool? Oh, I do have a lot! I love the possibility that I can create a particular colour that I have in mind, or one that I need in a certain situation. Then again, each brush has its own personality and it seems that they are all there to push your creativity.

Is there a type of style or Painter medium you would like to try? Painter is a continuous learning experience. At the current moment in time, I sketch an idea onto a piece of paper, then I scan it and start using Painter. Really, this is the more interesting work I do. After a while, a simple sketch starts to have a shape, some lights and some gorgeous colours… for me, it’s like being reborn every time! I like to use default textures as well as new ones. I like to try different colour schemes and composite methods. I know there are lots of opportunities, but sometimes just clicking on one simple tool could really make the difference!

I think I caught his shyness, with colours which represent, for myself, that feeling. But the most dif�icult, and the one that brought back painful memories, was the one of my father as a child. As you can see, the emotion and the feeling behind the picture is really the key to my work. What’s the most helpful piece of advice you’ve been given about Painter? Karen Bonaker, who was and continues to be my teacher, gave me some very good advice. I remember her once saying something that is now always on my mind. She said something like “you have to learn all about the program, to know perfectly the thousands of possibilities that it can offer you, with a particular care for brushes you can use… this will give you the opportunity to paint in your own way.” I still have a lot more to learn about Painter and the more I learn, the more I am able to use it, just as in traditional art. In fact, it is actually as if I am painting freehand. I won’t forget one of the pieces

“Each artist has a feeling towards something and having the capability to materialise it in a drawing is fantastic!” Who or what inspires you? I get ideas from everywhere, mainly from what has captured my attention. It could be a memory, a discussion that I had or something that was on my mind, it depends. Normally I am not inspired by other painters – from them, I receive a strong and emotional feeling, a joy I can’t reproduce. They can inspire me for a subject, but I could never add that peculiar sentiment which I can’t de�ine. That is unique to each painter and so intimate! Each of us has a feeling towards something and having the capability to materialise it in a drawing is fantastic! What’s your favourite piece of Painter work you’ve created? I can say without hesitation that my favourite is the one of Tommaso, my nephew. He is a new-generation writer, and I love his beautiful mind! I like it because

of good advice I constantly receive from Bernadette Catherine Buechler. She always pushes me to think to ‘how’ a painting shall be printed. Actually, I used to send my �inal drawings to her for the �inal print setting!

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

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01

Title: Born To Be A Lady? “This came from my imagination… a rich woman, dressed in an uncomfortable dress. Here, as in some other of my paintings, I found myself drawing a long neck, big black eyes and a sort of hidden, uneasy feeling.”

01

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Gallery

Readers’ gallery issue twelve

02

Title: Pirate “This is a portrait dedicated to a friend who spent all his life sailing! I did my best to remember him like he was and collected a few pictures of him… I wanted to represent him as he was in my young mind.”

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03

Title: Black Dancers (above) “I painted this with a wonderful ballerina I met many years ago in mind. I mixed some strong colours together and sketched it on my pad.”

04

Title: The Child (top right) “I did this for my father who is no longer here. I wanted to use the colours he would have liked and to reproduce a feeling of solitude. This was a very intimate experience!”

05

Title: Shy (right) “A new-generation writer – Tommaso, my lovely nephew. I do love his beautiful and sensible soul. Here, I painted him with the colours of shyness and a touch of surrealism!”

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Website challenge

issue twelve

Website Challenge

The latest crop of entries to the online challenge ith some of the challenges we set, it appears that we seem to hit just the right note of images, resulting in you sending in far more entries than normal! This was certainly the case for challenge number �ive. Although challenge

Barb Christensen

number six is already under way, we have had so many excellent entries to challenge �ive, that we decided to display a few more here. You may remember that last issue we printed the winner of the �ifth challenge – Adrian Beamish. But we’re sure you’ll agree that these

entries are also of a very high standard and display the possibilities of the Corel Painter software perfectly. Head to www.paintermagazine.co.uk and click on Competitions to download the latest images. Deadline is 6 February 2008.

David Ulke

WIN!

A YEAR’S SUBSCRIPTION TO THE OFFICIAL COREL PAINTER MAGAZINE

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

M T Markanson

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

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Create your own gallery online Sign up now at www.paintermagazine.co.uk! hen it comes to sharing your work with other people, the easiest way is to get the paintings online. For sharing your Corel Painter artwork, the website for this fair magazine is just the ticket. Thousands of people visit the site every week to browse through the images posted. There are no limitations for visiting the site to look at pictures but if you want to upload your own, you need to

register and become a member. This is completely free to do and means you can then expose your work to a global audience, leave comments and ratings on other members’ work and also invite comments on your own art. It only takes a few minutes to sign up at the site and then it’s just a case of simply uploading your own images. To see exactly what’s involved in adding your artwork, we’ve supplied you with the walkthrough below.

Register at the site to upload artwork A few minutes is all that’s needed to get started

01 Register

Pop along to www. paintermagazine.co.uk. You’ll be taken to the home page of the website. Go up to the Sign-up link and click on it. Fill in the form and make sure you enter the correct email address. Once completed, click Create User and wait for an email. Click the link and you’re now a member!

02 Your profile

There’s a default avatar, but you might prefer to add your own image. This is easily done. Make sure you are logged in and then click on Edit Profile. Go down to the avatar bit and click Remove This Image. Now click Choose File.

03 Set the file

Navigate to where the image is you want to use and select it. For ease of use, make sure it is relatively small, but the image will be automatically shrunk to fit the space. Make sure it is a square format to start with.

Waiting for approval When you have uploaded an image, there will be a short delay for the image to be approved. We have to do this to make sure no offensive or legally questionable images are uploaded. We approve images throughout the day, but take into account the time differences if you are in another country. We are based in the UK, so are tucked up in bed while some of you are just starting your day!

of 05 Words wisdom

04 Uploading

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

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

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