Well, I got my Gateway CX210 Tablet PC. I decided on Painter software. I just had time last night to play with the brushes and paint and mixer… After about two hours, I came up with this.
My rough sketch with the 2B pencil option
Then my oils (took the longest)
I have a question to all CG’ers. When you are trying to match colors, do you use the sampler option on the original or mix them on your own?
I would advise against the colour picker (eyedropper) for finding out which colour is which on a ref (that’s what you mean, isn’t it?).
Can only teach your eye for colours.
I rarely use the mixer palette, though. I use the colour triangle.
the axis from left to right determines the amount of saturation.
the axis from up to down regulates the share of whites and blacks.
the outer ring determines the hue.
this together with the colour info palette set to HSV (via its menu which pops up after pressing that little arrow/triangle pointing to the right) gives you a great amount of control over your colour.
Play with it.
Mr. Mu - That triangle thingy just seems difficult. I haven’t used it yet. I have been using the mixer tablet like I would a real palette. I will try it. I do not understand the Hues and Saturation stuff. And how would you get back to those colors? How do you make it store the colors you are using for later use?
You paint with that color, so you can use a color picker from your own painting to get back that color. Just don’t use a color picker to pick colors from the painting you’re studying. Or there’s a pallete in painter , where you can store colors. Not the color mixer, but the other one. To turn it on go to windows > color palettes > show color sets. I think that might be what you need.
aggie,
the color sets can hold color swatchs, much like a real life palette.
If you hit the plus button below it, the colour set palette will add the actual colour that you paint with at that time.
You can also choose to transfer all the colors of your mixer palette to the color set palette. Check its menu.
COLOR:
it is important to learn what determines colour.
HUE:
-Hue is what people would probably normally call colour. you can choose a red or an orange or a blue hue, e.g…
SATURATION
VALUE
Now, the exact shape and lighting of everything you paint is primarily determined by VALUE alone. If you paint on a white canvas with black, a 50% value of grey (no saturation, or saturation=0) and finally white - that is if you paint something in greyscale only - then you practise handling the most important part of any colour. If your values aren’t correct, no hue and no saturation is going to put it right. On the other hand, if your values work, almost any hue with almost any saturation will do the job.
So, master your use of values, then add the other two parameters. That’s why I think the color triangle is an important tool (together with the color info palette set to HSV [Hue Saturation Value!]) It shows you exactly what the three parameters do to your color.
Finally, take a close look at what happens here,
http://www.androidblues.com/JealousyStepbystep/jealousystep.html
you can do the value part of your paintings first and then cover it with colors while keeping the values!
Let’s see your greyscalee studies!
Mr. Mu - good call. I think looking at that link I learned that grey first would work better. i will try that.
Mr. Mu - Thanks for the link, androidblues. That was real informative. So I am trying that technique with the OFDW. Here is what I came up with last night:
Hi aggie,
glad you found the link informative.
One suggestion with this method. It is advisable to get rid of the white areas, because they influence your perception of the values that you lay down. No colour and no value can be assessed on its own, but by the relations to the neighbouring colours and values.
That’s why the white areas won’t help you. It will make you think you are adding dark values when in fact it’s a middle grey.
Therefore:
put your lineart with the white background on a separate layer. I hope you still have it untouched somewhere.
set this layer to layer mode “multiply”. This will slightly darken your lines. But it has two other important effects.
then, create a new layer under the lineart layer which you will use for putting down values.
Fill it equally with a 50% grey (any Hue, 0% saturation, 50% value)
build your darks and lights from this middle grey.
use big brush sizes, avoid scribbles - the blending comes at a later stage!
avoid white and black (100% and 0% value figures). If you are going to color it later with a layer set to color mode, whatever hue and saturation you put over spots you used black or white on will always stay either black or white. That’s not what you want.
Keep it coming!
Mr. Mu - Thanks! I created a layer to fill, called it values. Used 50% value, no sat. So now I can add dark and light tones of grey to a new layer called paint? I did have my sketch isolated in its own layer called sketch, as well as my background sketch in its own layer. I assume I treat my background like a seperate painting. I am still unsure what Hue is and how it works? Never was much of a painter.
So now I can add dark and light tones of grey to a new layer called paint?
Well, wether you want to paint on that same layer you filled with grey depends on wether or not you chose a variant/brush that smears and blends with existing colour. If yes you should either paint on that grey filled very layer or make sure the “pickup underlying colour” checkbox is checked in the layers palette, so the smearing does interact with what is already there regardless of wether you paint it on that same layer or another layer above it.
When I look at you canvas it might even be a good idea to choose a darker tone still. I don’t know - it depends a bit on the atmosphere you want to create, but I am saying this because more often than not I found myself adding bright values and never getting the desired effect, because my bright tones were already surrounded by comparably bright tones. Bright tones start to shine in a dark environment, of course.
I don’t know, really…depends on what you want to do. But don’t worry - this is digital… you can always do that at a later stage, still…
as concerns colour theory: check out this thread in the tutorial section!
that helped me a great deal.
So for now, I am looking forward to your first round of lighting on that lineart!
I got venturous last night. I painted a ball. I found out how to customize paint brushes, make things blurry, etc. However, I am not sure exactly how to add color. I just took the paints opacity and toned it down to 50% and made the layer with the color soft light. I probably did that wrong. Also how do you blend hard strokes to smooth them out?
and made the layer with the color soft light.
does that mean you chose “soft light” for the layer’s blend mode?
That is indeed the wrong method: choose “color”…
I chose soft light for adding the blue color. Not to blend. But I do not know how to do that either. I know I done it wrong. What do I do?
I know some people swear by hardedged brushes for blending (setting it to low opacities), but for me the real blending breakthrough came with soft-edged brushes.
It is rather late around here and I need some sleep, but you just tell me if softedged brush rings a bell with you or not and in case you need more info I will put something together…
Hey aggie93
In Painter I blend using the “just add water” brush. You can find a tutorial on Don Seegmiller’s website if I’m not mistaking.
The brush is located in the Blenders brush category
experiment a bit with that… change the size of the brush up n down… blend by pressing hard and softly… etc.
Great way of blending and pretty fast too, compared to blending by actual painting
Hope this helped
btw, I’m really sorry to hear you stopped on the OFDW. i’m hoping you’ll pick it up again after getting used to the blender brush
take care
43
EDIT:
hm I must have mistaken coz I couldn’t find a tut for that just add water brush on http://www.seegmillerart.com/
maybe it was on one of the video tutorial links I got when buying painter IX. (maybe you got them too? it’s worth to check those tuts on the corel site if you haven’t)
Hi aggie,
one thing I did when I was new to Painter was to create a category of very simple brushes.
This category I named laboratory. Painter’s abundance of literally hundreds of brushes can be both intimidating and confusing at the beginning, so I decided I would do with three or four simple variants to get accustomed to everything.
In there I initially placed a hard-edged round brush and a soft-edged round brush. No impasto, watercolor, liquid ink or other fancy stuff. Just the basics. Should you want to create a category of your own, too, you can simply paint a category symbol on a small resolution canvas (300 * 300) and select all (ctrl+a) and then choose “capture dab category” (direct translation from the german localization, I hope it is the same in english) from the brush selector menu. You then get a dialog where you can specify a name for your new category and then you should be able to create new brushes in there using the brush creator/designer (ctrl+b), e.g.
For blending, instead of using a specific blending tool I used a soft-edged round brush with which I put down the paint/colour. The soft edge provides a fade-out area on the outer circle of your brush dab which can be used to blend colours into another.
Many people frown on the usage of soft-edged round brushes, because they fear that your painting will loose any distinct edges, but that is because they probably don’t mind that you can always change the brush size (very conveniently so by ctrl+alt and then click dragging, btw…
). That reduces the outer fade-out area and gives you a wide variety of edges you can choose from.
If you want to create a brush like that choose
brush property window->general->dab type->circular (or round?, damn the localization!)
then go to the size section of the brush properties and choose the following dab profile…
Think you can see the selected one. Make sure to play with the others so you see the effect of each of them…
here’s a comparison of hardedged round and soft edged round
you can see that I changed the brush size to rather small on one area on the left side (where the softedged strokes are) and that those little strokes have a different edge.
Apart from that, noone hinders you to change brushes while painting… But I just thought it might help to cut down on the variety of Painter’s brush library to focus on some simple basic brushes. I found it useful at least, but everyone has different approaches.
I painted the complete face of this paintingwith softedged brushes, e.g., and while I can see its weaknesses, I have still fond memories of it, because I sort of had a breakthrough on blending with it.
keep going…
Mu - I was wondering if there was a way to creat a custom brush holder. Thanks. I will try that and try to create my own brushes. It is intimidating trying to find all those brushes.
NR43 - Thanks for you help. I couldn’t even find the way to water down brushes. I am still looking. I like my first paint strokes to be wet and transparant in traditional. However, I cannot find out how to do this in painter.
You guys are big helps. Here is what I did last night. My tribute to the finding of Munch’s Madonna and Scream in Oslo. You know I was right in front of these paintings just a few days before they were stolen. Had my picture made in front of the Scream, even. When we got home, I heard about it on the news. I was just hoping Interpol wasn’t looking for me. Glad they found them.
I started using the blender brushes to blend the paint. It is probably wrong, but it did the trick. By the way, I am using the artist oil paints. I also find it easier to paint in color that in the grey tones, why is that?
Again, played with painter for a couple of hours last night. I think I am getting this down or at least it looks a little more real.
Reb - Thanks for the link to the anatomy pictures. You have been wanting me to work on that so I did last night. I think I am ready for the next OFDW now.
Anyhow, here is what I have done.
I decided to play, after I thought I was getting it, with the layer thingy.
Aggie,
Impressive start to this!
I would really love to see you bring up the rendering of the anatomical model as much as possible, and worry less about the ‘grim reaper’ character.
This could work out to be a very nice study.
Cheers,
-Rebeccak
WHAT!! You do not like my grim? :sad: That is alright, I got tired of zooming in and moving around on the muscles. It was a ten minute breather before I went to bed.
Did that study look familar?
I will probably work on this study a little more. I am really enjoying it. However, it appears I may start out with a scale to small because when I get to the detail information my brush size is already as small as it gets (1.0) and that is too big of a brush stroke. I start with a 8 x 10 @ 100. This is Acrylics mostly Wet Acrylic 10-30 then I blend it with the Wet Soft Acrylic brush. This could be entirely wrong to do, but it is a way. I also cannot work well with the greys. Just opposite with my traditional works. That’s weird, huh?!