Custom Palettes
After you’ve been working with Painter for a while you’ll probably have some favorite brushes and paper textures. They can be collected in a compact little palette that can be used over and over. Custom palettes are easy to make. Choose a brush variant you want, and press the Shift key while you drag the brush icon away from the Brush Selector. A new custom palette is created containing that brush. Add more brushes by simply dragging in more items. Hold the Shift key down to remove or reposition items. Figure 1.17 shows the first two items in a custom palette, a Pastel variant and a Blender. There are custom palettes provided for many of the projects in the following chapters. They can be downloaded to your hard drive from the website that supports this book.

Meanwhile, Back at the Palettes
You can create a different custom palette for sketching, painting, working with photos, or for any specific project. Manage them with the Custom Palette Organizer, shown in Figure 1.18, by choosing Window > Custom Palette > Organizer. Give them descriptive names and save them using the Export command. Load them with the Import command.

Back to the Drawing Board
Your first assignment is to fill a blank canvas with scribbles and strokes, using the twelve brushes in a custom palette shown in Figure 1.19. Download this Painter 12 Sampler palette from the website that supports this book. Or just make it from scratch, using the following list. Brushes are in alphabetical order by category, starting at the upper left of the palette.

Top row:
• Acrylics > Real Wet Brush
• Airbrushes > Pixel Spray
• Artists > Impressionist
• Blenders > Water Rake

Middle row:
• Charcoal & Conte > Real Hard Conte
• Impasto > Gloopy
• Oils > Flat Oils
• Palette Knives > Dry Palette Knife 

Bottom row:
• Pastels > Square Hard Pastel
• Pencils > Grainy Pencil
• Pens > Dry Ink
• Digital Watercolor > Broad Water Brush