[Bart Kol]

hey guys i just got into painter 8, and i have a wacom, and im off to start painting.

can u guys tell me what brushes to use, i dont feel i need the textured and realiztick brushes right now, i just wanna be able to get some speed paintings done. im looking foward to getting color down ad fillin up the canvas quikly, but the preset brushes all take up too much time and memory to do this. and just an opppacity change with the pressure of my stylus would be nice too.

thanx in advance for your help

[Impaler]

1) Use the Acrylics or the Digital Water Color for solid patches of color.

2) Set your brush tracking for opacity settings. It's in Edit --> Preferences --> Brush Tracking. Try different pressures for varying opacity responsiveness.

3) In the drop-down menu next to the media, go to strokes, and set the modulation to pressure. (or whatever you like)

4) Read the help file. Seriously. Painter has a fairly steep learning curve at first, and you'll glean invaluable information just by browsing through it. Seriously.

5) Try closing all background programs when you use Painter.

6) Experiment for yourself. Seriously. Painter isn't so intimidating if you just take the time to learn how each media behaves. You might even experiment with the brush creator. who knows.
_________________
QED, sort of.

[Jin]

Hi,

While Digital Water Color looks nice the first time you paint over a surface, there are some problems you should be aware of:

� If you paint with some of the Digital Water Color variants, then use Undo or select an area and delete it, when you paint over that surface again, you'll find ugly fringed edges appearing below your new brushstrokes, left from the deleted or Undone previous brushstrokes. To avoid this, you'll need to dry the Digital Water Color after using Undo or deleting (Ctrl/Command+Shift+L) and before painting over those areas again.

� Painting over dried Digital Water Color paint will make the new brushstrokes darker where they cross over previously (dried) Digital Water Color.

� When an image containing Digital Water Color is saved, closed, then reopened, all Digital Water Color is dried and can't be made wet again.

Brush Tracking is not the way to set your brush variant to control Opacity in response to Pressure.

The Brush Tracking test pad is used to set your hand pressure, regardless of what the brush variants settings might be. For instance:

If you want better overall control over your brushstroke in response to your hand pressure, paint a brushstroke on the Brush Tracking test pad using very light hand pressure, then click the OK button. Now when you paint, it will take more hand pressure to lay down paint.

If you want to paint using very light hand pressure, open Brush Tracking and paint a brushstroke on the test pad using more hand pressure than normal. Then when you paint it will take less hand pressure to lay down the brushstroke.

To control Opacity in your brushstroke, in response to Pressure, go to the Painter 8 Brush Creator, Stroke Designer Tab, and in the General section, adjust the Opacity slider to set the maximum desired Opacity in your brushstrokes.

Below the Opacity slider, you'll see the Expression drop down list. Choose Pressure.

Now paint in your image using varying hand pressure to make your brushstrokes range from low Opacity to the highest Opacity setting you've chosen by adjusting the Opacity slider. (This will be more evident with some brush variants than it is with others.)


Other Expression controls, such as brush Size, can also be set to Pressure. All brush variants for which these controls are available can be set to any of the Expression drop down list options:

None
Velocity
Direction
Pressure
Wheel
Tilt
Bearing
Source
Random

Tilt control is only available with the Intuos tablets.

As Impaler suggested, do spend time reading the Painter 8 User Guide.

If you've not yet installed the Painter 8.1 patch, do install it. It's available, along with the updated Painter 8 User Guide in PDF format (which you'll need to learn how to create and use Custom Palettes, only available in pre-Painter 8 versions and with the Painter 8.1 patch installed):

ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/Painter/8.1

After you read the Painter 8 User Guide and begin to understand a little about how to use Painter's brushes, open the Brush Creator and begin experimenting. It's loads of fun and as long as you remember to only save a custom brush variant using a unique name not already used by Painter 8 (don't overwrite an existing default variant), you can always restore the brush variant to its default settings:

Brush Selector menu > Restore Default Variant

To restore all brush variants in the currently loaded brush library to their default state:

Brush Selector menu > Restore All Default Variants > click the OK button

Have fun!


Jinny Brown
Painter Classes at TutorAlley Forums
(new registrations and Painter Classes on hold due to family medical emergency)
Tutorials and Painter Info at PixelAlley

[Bart Kol]

thanx to the both of you, im trying to read the help file, but it deff seems like alot to take in right now

[Jin]

Take your time. No one learns Painter overnight. In fact, it takes years to learn it well.

I forgot to suggest opening a large white Canvas and going through the brush categories and brush variants, from the top of the list to the bottom, making brush strokes with each variant.

Make notes when you find something you like.

Make notes when you have questions and post them here.

Relax and let it be fun.




Jinny Brown
Painter Classes at TutorAlley Forums
(new registrations and Painter Classes on hold due to family medical emergency)
Tutorials and Painter Info at PixelAlley