Launch your digital art journey with Corel Painter‘s online digital painting tutorials for novices and experts alike. Step-by-step guides offer everything from beginner advice to advanced techniques for digital painting enthusiasts.
Follow Painter Master Elite Cliff Cramp as he develops his digital concept art with digital paint tools, then uses underpainting techniques to set the scene for his final composition.
Table of Contents
Basics
With this comprehensive introduction, acquaint yourself with Corel Painter’s essential tools and commands. Discover how this pixel-based painting program can transform photographs into paintings – used by professional illustrators, concept artists, fine artists, photographers, hobbyists, and hobbyists alike!
Discover the range of brushes and techniques that make Painter flexible and adaptable, from watercolor drippings to thick oils or sketchy brushwork. There is no end to what art style can be produced with this powerful software!
Follow along as Painter Master Elite Cliff Cramp shows you how to block in shapes and establish form in digital concept art. Additionally, learn how to harmonize textures and set the mood in your work – plus take advantage of his BONUS library of textures for future projects!
Brushes
A brush must have a sturdy handle to support and withstand the bristles and endure heavy use. Bristles should ideally be secured between twisted wires to increase their strength and can then be bent into various forms by shaping them with other broom handles.
Corel Painter aims to replicate the feel and experience of actual paint on surfaces. Alongside traditional brush features, Corel Painter provides many tools designed to simplify everyday tasks – for instance, mask selection loading capabilities, an easier way to clear layers with delete, and improved Dodge/Burn mixed methods.
Mirror painting allows you to divide a canvas by horizontal or vertical lines and paint in one part while having it appear identically in another section – ideal for working with symmetrical shapes and patterns.
Layers
Understanding layers is a fundamental concept in digital painting, as they enable you to control the look and organization of your artwork while streamlining workflow. Layers also enable experimentation with different brush strokes and effects without permanently altering original works.
Corel Painter utilizes layers to simulate traditional art materials and generate realistic natural-media brushes that emulate real painting materials, producing thick oils, dripping watercolors, or many other textures. Beyond layers, Painter offers additional features to help advance your art style: painted textures, subtle glazing brushwork, and interactive gradients are among these. Dynamic plugins such as Burn, Bevel World Glass Distortion, or Kaleidoscope may also be utilized non-destructively for more creative adjustments of underlying imagery.
Textures
Corel Painter is a digital art program created to mimic the effects of physical painting and drawing media such as pencil, charcoal, oil paints, watercolor, chalk, etc. It makes an excellent option for artists with experience working in traditional media but looking to create photorealistic images.
Painter’s brush engines have been optimized to take full advantage of CPU and GPU resources for fast performance. They are compatible with drawing tablets like Wacom and Xencelabs and support various stylus pen types.
RealBristle technology enables RealArt software to replicate the angle and pressure of a stylus pen as you paint, producing brushes with more realistic textures than Photoshop. Furthermore, Glazing Brush technology delivers “stroke-level opacity” that adapts to fluctuating stylus pressure for even greater realism.
Cloning
Use non-destructive layer painting to turn any photo into a watercolor or pencil drawing, with 11 styles to choose from and complete control over the creative process.
Upgrade your cloning capabilities with brush variants explicitly designed for cloner mode. These brushes reproduce images using media effects such as paper grain or specialized dabbing to produce artistic renditions of their source images.
Tinting, a new cloning feature that dynamically mixes color between two clone brushes, is extremely useful when recoloring or masking images. Other new features include Perspective guides that let you quickly draw straight lines that follow vanishing points neatly and particle brushes that mimic smoke, fur, or any other image content.
