A Painting Made of Love Hearts

Using the Underpainting and Auto-painting features in Corel Painter

Here is the completed digital painting (above) with a detail (below). This is a portrait of David and Denise Boyce created as part of an all day workshop in Lansing, Michigan, September 11, 2006. I was struck by the loving looks they gave each other and wanted to express that love in the brush stroke texture. I was able to achieve that using the Auto-painting palette introduced in Painter IX.5. All techniques shown here will work in the most recent version of Painter. The Underpainting, Auto-painting and Restoration palettes in Painter IX.5 brought together features that can be useful to a photographer. These features were previously distributed around the program and not so easily accessible. Read on for my steps (you'll need to scroll down).

Step 1 Equalize

The Effects > Tonal Control > Equalize (Cmd-E on Mac, Ctrl-E on PC) is a phenomenal tool in Painter. Try it out on your source photos as well as your completed paitings. You'll be amazed at how the automatic adjustment of the black and white points in the histogram (equivalent of levels adjustment in Photoshop) invariably improves almost any image.

Step 2 Saturate

Choose Window > Show Underpainting. Then choose Style > Saturate. You'll see the effect. Then choose Apply in the Underpainting palette. In this instance I applied the Saturate twice. This helps warm and boost the colors in a source image.

Step 3 Quick Clone

Choose Preferences > General (Cmd-K on Mac, Ctrl-K on PC). I set the Quick Clone to just clone and delete the image. The choose File > Quick Clone.

Step 4 Record and Save Stroke

Go to the pop-up menu in the upper right of the Brush Selector. Choose Record Stroke. I used the Artists > Sargent Brush to make a love heart. I then chose Save Stroke from the Brush Selector pop-up menu and called the stroke "loveheart".

Step 5 Clone Color

Activate the clone color button on the lower left of the Colors palette (keyboard shortcut "u").

Step 6 Apply Auto-painting

Choose loveheart to be the stroke in the Auto-painting palette. Then press the green arow to set the Auto-painting going. At this juncture you can get up from your computer and go and pour yourself a cup of tea! The Auto-painting function will rain brush strokes one stroke at a time onto your canvas. What I like about this feature is the randomness of the stroke sizes and orientations. This gives an organic feel to the resulting painting. I let this run for about ten minutes and then changed the length and Brush Size sliders in the Auto-painting palette to get even more richness of brush strokes.

Step 7 Complete Digital Painting

After creating a wonderful background from which to work, made up completely of love hearts, I then completed the painting with the same Sargent Brush, chiselling out more detail in the faces and clothes.

Step 8 Add Acrylic to Print

I printed this image out at 34" x 45" on canvas using the Epson 9800, a great machine. The pigment ink was then fixed with a spray fixaive. I brushed on a Acrylic Gel Medium (semi-gloss) and applied some acrylic paints using a palette knife. You can see some of the acrylic below.

Here's Dave, Denise and I holding painting.

Which Resources and Materials?

Whatever level of Painter user you are, you will definitely benefit from joining my new online education center www.PaintboxJ.com. In PaintboxJ you will find new video tutorials on Corel Painter 11 added monthly, and much more. The fastest way I can help you with Painter is for you join one of my in-person workshops. In terms of my instructional books and DVDs, I recommend starting off with my book, Painter X Creativity: Digital Artist's Handbook, and introductory DVD, Learning Corel Painter X with Jeremy Sutton. The book is a great complement to all my other materials and also serves as the required text book for all my classes. The book goes deeper and broader than any DVD. It also provides convenient step lists for many of the techniques shared on the DVDs. The Learning Corel Painter X DVD gives you a good overview of the software.

Once you are familiar with the basics then I recommend the more advanced DVD sets, How to Paint from Photographs Using Corel Painter X

and Expanding Your Creativity with Jeremy Sutton - The Art of Collage Portraiture. Both these more advanced DVD sets take you through real-life case studies from beginning to end, sharing my work-flow, organizational systems, creative process, decision-making strategies, techniques and tools, plus including extensive extra brushes, art materials, tutorial images and more. In both DVDs I show how I apply physical paint onto my prints.

The interface has not changed significantly between Painter X and Painter 11 so you can easily apply the lessons from all my earlier materials when using Corel Painter 11. Likewise my PaintboxJ Painter 11 tutorials can all be easily applied in earlier versions of Painter. I do strongly recommend upgrading to Painter 11 if you currently have an earlier version. The newest Painter is the best yet. It is significantly faster than earlier versions and includes a whole new class of wonderful brushes (the Hard Media brushes).

For information on other Painter resources out there, please explore the Links page.