Pixiq

Keeping It Simple

 Digital painting has been going through a growth spurt the last few years. Most recently there has been a trend to create some of the most complicated methods of painting that can be very challenging to beginners and can possibly scare some exceptional artists away from the medium.  Like users of Adobe Photoshop who began developing actions and plugins years ago, I saw the future was going to happen with Corel Painter. I knew it when I explored installing Photoshop plugins into Painter and it worked on a PC. That was a great deal of the research I did for my book published by Lark “The Art of Digital Photo Painting”. It was clear that digital painting was poised to make the big leap into the real art world and that endless means of creating the art was going to begin.

Using all the digital tools available to us as artists is as valid as using hundreds of different brushes to put paint on a canvas. One is not better than another. The only factor that matters is final product and the artists’ happiness and satisfaction with the result. As artists, we all have masses of unfinished paintings that are not “singing” to us and others that took virtually minutes to create that are living on in finished canvas and prints.

As a studio photographer for over twenty five years I nailed film and exposure to perfection but yet, I am not a technical person.  I am not a “techie”. I don’t care “how” things work, only that they do.  So here is a painting that I had a great deal of fun playing with which is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Having fun!

This is one of those simple lessons that I find enjoyable both as an artist and as an explorer of digital software and methods to paint.

Here is the out of the camera simple capture taken years ago at City Walk in Los Angeles with my point and shoot Canon camera that was maybe 5 megapixels back then.

 After opening the image in Photoshop I created two copies of the layer so I would only be working on the layers and not on the original image.  Using Topaz Lab filters I adjusted the image on two layers.

First Layer: Filter menu > Topaz Labs > Adjust 4> Spicify. Accept the default settings and click OK.

 Second Layer:  Filter menu > Topaz Labs > Clean 2> CrispStyle Turn STRENGTH up to 3  Click OK

 Next lower the opacity of the Spicify layer to approximately 60% and on the Crisp layer change the blend mode to VIVID LIGHT. This will bring together the layers with strong saturation and less detail yet retaining plenty of edges to paint in Painter.

Flatten and save as with a new name and open in Corel Painter 11. We are going to do a fast autopainting with a simple Painter brush. As in Photoshop the painting will be done on a layer and not the original.

In Painter create a duplicate layer of the photo.

SELECT>ALL>EDIT>COPY>PASTE IN PLACE

Now it is all on a layer to autopaint. Open the autopainting palette WINDOW>AUTOPAINTING

Click QUICK CLONE and check SMART STROKE PAINTING and check SMART SETTINGS

Choose the brush category ARTISTS>IMPRESSIONIST

Use the brush defaults and be sure the CLONE COLOR rubber stamp is clicked so the brush is clone painting and not laying down original colors.  Click the green PLAY button at the very bottom right of the autopainting  palette and let the brush paint until it stops.

TIP: After clicking both Smart Stroke Painting and Smart Settings the brushes category will automatically default to Smart Stroke Brushes. This tells you that the settings are correct and it’s important to remember to choose your brush AFTER clicking both settings and not before.

Last I changed the Composite Method from Default to Luminosity which brought back a great deal of the edges details.

After dropping the layers and saving again with a new name I have my “so far final” painting. Because I can still play with so many of the features available to bring back details or add other interesting areas to the painting I still think of it as a work in progress. But for purposes of this lesson, it is also an incredibly fast and easy painting and will print rich and detailed on either watercolor paper or canvas. My choice of watercolor paper is any of the papers from http://www.redriverpaper.com  Red River papers have been tested with all printers and they hold the ink well and retain rich colors.

Here is a close up of the painting to see how the brushstrokes show detail and yet retain their impressionism.

Topaz has free downloads to try out their software. Go to: http://bit.ly/topzbundle  and download where it says FREE TRIAL. Try out all their filters on your paintings both before painting and afterwards. I have found many new “paintings within a painting” by playing with the filters.

More and more depend upon your own heart and soul to decide if your painting is done and don’t let the complexities of the software get in your way. I have found that the more complicated techniques I try the more they take away from my organic flow of painting that comes from doing the painting rather than thinking about the technique.  This is my way of Keeping It Simple.

Marilyn Sholin

Corel Painter Master

PPA Master Craftsman Photog. CPP