Mixing your own blacks+darkening colors

[Taltos]

+ a small and most likely super basic question:How do you set the brush so that the pressure applied controlls opacity or e.g brush width in painter?

you can do that in the brush designer (ctrl-b) in the window menu, although i am not sure if this is the exact name of the option, since my painter is german.

[Jinbrown]

Hello , I`m new to this forum and beginning painter user. I have however painted quite a bit in traditional media. I have adopted the habit of not using black when painting, because black might dirty the colors in mixtures and besides " your not really mixing colors " as Crawshaw would say. Anyway my question is as follows:

In the middle of the color sirkel ( "color chooser" ) you have the color " sfere " although it is really a triangle in painter ( where every color is mixed with white and black ).


In Painter, the circle and triangle you see in the Colors palette are called the:



Hue Ring (circle)
Saturation/Value Triangle


I`m usually not to keen on choosing e.g a dark orange from the triangle because the color is mixed with black. I`d rather mix my own orange, adding some blue instead to make it darker, and I can thanks to the ingenius mixer palette ( where I have out in my " custom palette"). Anyway, mixing your own colors from scrath like this is more time consuming, so do you really bother.


A lot of people just pick colors from the Hue Ring and set the saturation and value by picking in the Saturation/Value Triangle.

Many prefer to mix their colors using either the Canvas or the Mixer palette.

Some artists like to use colors from an existing image/photo/painting by going to the Color Sets palette and choosing the New Color Set from Image command (left icon).

Some like to pick colors from another image/photo/painting or from their working image once there are colors used the artist wants to continue using, and often use the Colors palette command New Color Set and add those colors to the custom Color Set.

Some do all of the above, as I do, depending on the brush variants I'm using, whether or not I like the colors in an existing image/photo/painting, and how I happen to feel at the moment. ;)

Whichever way the artist prefers to work is up to them and all methods are equally good overall, some better for certain purposes and some suit the artist's working style better than others.




And is it really worth it?


Sure it's worth it if that's how you like to work. No one else can decide that for you.




+I have also noticed to my irritation that when I choose e.g burnt umber . It shows in the color triangle as an orangey color with quite a bit of black added, and not actually a true brown.


I can't explain all of the technical reasons for how color is mixed in Painter, but can say that working in Painter, you're using RGB colors (light based) rather than pigment which you're probably more accustomed to using having done traditional painting. Colors mix differently. For instance, to get green, we need to mix yellow and cyan rather than yellow and blue.




Is there any point in being " conserned" about this matter?Do you get what I`m saying?Or does it not matter?


Personally, I don't think there's any point in being concerned about black in your darkened color as long as the color you see is what you want. After all, once the painting is done, how many people are going to even think about how the colors were mixed, let alone spend time analyzing and critiquing your method (or Paiinter's method if they even understand it)?

It's not as if you're painting with color "straight out of the tube" as one might using traditional paint. Any color you pick from the Colors palette's Hue Ring and Saturation/Value Triangle is your individual choice and it matters not how that color was mixed, semi-automatically by Painter and you when you pick from the Hue Ring and Saturation/Value Triangle, or "manually" mixed either on the Canvas or in the Mixer palette. Painter will do a lot of the work for us, no matter which method we use, even when we "mix" colors in the Mixer palette. That's just a fact of digital art where the choices are made by us and the processing work is done by the software.





+ a small and most likely super basic question:How do you set the brush so that the pressure applied controlls opacity or e.g brush width in painter?

In Painter IX, there are two places where this can be done:



Brush Controls palettes
Brush Creator's Stroke Designer tab
I've always found the Brush Creator annoying and cumbersome to use since it opens in a different Painter screen and separates us from our work. If you prefer to use it, it can be opened using either of the following:


Window > Show Brush Creator
Ctrl/Command+B
I prefer to use the Brush Controls palettes that open in the normal Painter screen. To open the whole docked group of Brush Controls palettes, use:


Window > Brush Controls > Show General
The Expression options are used to set Pressure to control Opacity and Size, and many other aspects of how a brush variant's brushstrokes look.

To control Opacity with Pressure:

Go to the Brush Controls' General palette and below the Opacity slider, choose Pressure from the Expression drop down list of options.

To control Size (width of the brushstroke) with Pressure:

Go to the Brush Controls' Size palette and below the Size and Min Size sliders, choose Pressure from the Expression drop down list of options. Adjust the Size and Min Size sliders to control the basic width of the brushstroke (Size slider) and it's minimum size when less pressure is applied (Min Size slider).

Before setting your brush variant to express width of the brushstroke (Size) using Pressure, take a look at a Painter IX default brush variant that already does this, test it, then look at it's Size palette controls:


Pens' Scratchboard Tool

You're right that these are basic questions and you'll find these and many more answers in either your hard copy Painter IX User Guide or if you don't have one, from within Painter, Help > Help Topics. Get in the habit of reading it now and then and referring to it whenever you have questions. You'll find that learning Painter IX is easier and faster that way and you'll always be free to ask questions when you either can't find the information in Help > Help Topics or don't understand it.


Happy weekend to you!

[Henrikg]

Some artists like to use colors from an existing image/photo/painting by going to the Color Sets palette and choosing the New Color Set from Image command (left icon).

Some like to pick colors from another image/photo/painting or from their working image once there are colors used the artist wants to continue using, and often use the Colors palette command New Color Set and add those colors to the custom Color Set.


I want to thank both of you for replying, and especially Jinbrown for your lenghty answer.

The quote above really exemplifies working methods that I have to some extent overlooked, when " going digital".Methods that are extremely useful.

+I `m really looking forward to customizing some of the brushes, and getting as close as possible to the feel of using a real brush:) - I resently bought an Intuos3 so I hope I`ll also be able to use the tilt function with "a regular sable style brush"?

Anyway, I`ll definitely read the painter user guide in detail ( which I should have done already ) and hopefully I won`t be asking any more basic questions:)

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.