<em>Digital Painting Fundamentals with Corel Painter 12</em>: Draw What You See - Part 1

Buy a copy of Digital Painting Fundamentals with Corel Painter 12 [1] 

 

Draw What You See
You’ll begin with a relatively simple subject and practice drawing it using several methods. First, just the outline. Then you’ll add shading and color. Each new technique will teach you more about how to draw and how to use Painter 12.

 

For this chapter, you’ll use the following items from the website that supports this book:
• Images: delicious3.jpg and apples_bowl.jpg
• Custom palettes: Basic drawing palette

An Apple a Day
One of the best assignments I ever had in a traditional art class was to create a series of 20 versions of an apple, each using a different medium or style. There are several photos of apples in the Things > Food folder on the website that supports this book. They all look good enough to eat, and draw (not necessarily in that order). Open delicious3.jpg, shown in Figure 2.1.

 

Size Matters
You may want to change the size of the apple image to fit your screen. That’s easy. Canvas > Resize brings up the dialog box shown in Figure 2.2. Before you enter the new height or width, be sure to uncheck Constrain File Size. If you don’t, the change in dimensions will be compensated with a change in resolution, and the image will be exactly the same size onscreen!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clone-and-Trace
Take a look at the edges of the apple shape. It is made up of a series of curves. The easiest way to draw the outline of this shape is to trace it, and the way to set up Painter’s tracing function is File > Quick Clone. With the Quick Clone command, Painter automatically creates an exact copy of the image, names it Clone of delicious3.jpg, and deletes the image to give you a blank canvas. You will see a “ghost” of the original apple, however, because the Tracing Paper feature is on. Toggle Tracing Paper on and off (Cmd/Ctrl+T) as the drawing or painting develops The original image will stay open only if you chose that option in the Quick Clone section of Painter Preferences. Figure 2.3 shows the Clone Source panel, with a tiny thumbnail image of the apple.

 

Opacity Capacity
Painter X (pronounced “ten”) introduced changeable opacity for tracing paper. In Painter 12 (pronounced “twelve”), the tracing paper controls are found in Navigator Settings and also in the new Clone Source panel. Percentage indicates hiding power, so the higher the value, the more opaque the tracing paper and the less you can see the original image. This is a handy feature for accommodating different stages in your drawing or different kinds of source images.

 

Use Window > Custom Palette > Organizer to import BasicDrawing.PAL, shown in Figure 2.4. When your stylus hovers over an item in a custom palette, the icon shows in full color and a “tooltip” gives you the name of the variant.

 

 

Pick a dark reddish brown as your primary color and choose Flattened Pencil from the custom palette. You’re ready to trace. Ignore the cast shadow for now, but do include the stem and a bit of the curve to indicate the depression where the stem emerges. This pencil variant doesn’t have much thick-to-thin variation when you apply pressure, so I overlapped a couple of strokes to emphasize weight at the bottom of the shape. Figure 2.5 shows my effort. Don’t forget to turn off Tracing Paper to see your drawing!

 

Dude! Where’s My Clone Source?
Painter 12 introduces a powerful new way to organize your source images for tracing and cloning. Use the Clone Source panel to designate any open image as the one you want, or click the Open Source Image icon to browse for any other image on your computer. Be sure to save your work in Painter’s RIFF format to preserve the Clone Source info, even after you close the file. Without an image as the clone source, all versions of Painter default to the current pattern.

Tonal Drawing
The outline drawing looks flat, of course. Open the apple photo again, if you need to, and notice the areas of light and shadow. You’ll do another drawing that emphasizes these light and dark variations, so you can create the illusion of depth. A traditional way to render light and dark involves working on medium gray or tinted paper. Paper color does a lot of the work, and all you have to do is add the lightest and darkest parts.

With the Dropper tool, sample a medium red or pink color near the bright highlights on the photo. Use File > Quick Clone for a fresh canvas. Choose Set Paper Color from the Canvas menu. Nothing happened yet, but when you Select > All (Cmd/Ctrl +A) followed by Delete/Backspace, your new rosy color will fill the blank canvas.

Here’s What Happened
Painter defines Paper Color as whatever an eraser reveals. When you select a new current color, and then choose Set Paper Color followed by the select-and-delete maneuver, you have in effect erased the entire canvas, revealing the new color.

This time use a Conte stick for the dark outline, and then switch to white for the left edge, indicating the light source. Traditional French Conte sticks are firmer and creamier than chalk or charcoal, and Painter emulates them rather well. As with any new brush variant, make a few test strokes and scribble on a “scratch pad” canvas. Adjust the pressure sensitivity of your tablet if needed, using Painter’s Preferences > Brush Tracking. Figure 2.6 was done with Real Soft Conte, reduced in size to about 12 pixels. Notice that there are a couple of breaks in the outline. This is deliberate, allowing some ambiguity between the foreground shape and the background.

Now that you have the outline, you don’t really need Tracing Paper anymore, so turn it off and use the “eyeball” method[md]just look at the source photo to guide your placement of highlights and shadows. (This is a good reason to keep the source image open!) Apply a few white strokes in the light areas, pressing harder in the brightest spots. Use dark brown to create some shadow areas. Switch between white and brown as you work by sampling with the Dropper.

Toggle Your Dropper
A speedy way to sample colors is to hold down the Option/Alt key. This changes your brush to the Dropper so you can tap your stylus on any desired color in your image. Release the modifier key and you’re brush tool is back.

 

Don’t let light and dark strokes overlap or even touch each other, but rely on the paper color to express mid-tones. Only a few strokes are needed to bring out this form. Refer to Figure 2.6 for guidance and encouragement. White strokes on the highlight areas help to suggest volume. Adding the cast shadow places the apple in a three-dimensional space, as does the addition of more white behind the left side of the shape.

 

Crosshatch Contours
Take another close look at the apple photo. This time, concentrate on its rounded contours. You’ll work on white paper with black lines. Tone and form will be built up from overlapping strokes that follow the contours of the fruit. This hatching and crosshatching is another traditional method, often used by cartoonists and graphic artists, especially for commercial black-and-white printing.

 

Make another Quick Clone of the photo. Choose the Scratchboard Tool pen from the Basic Drawing custom palette. Changes in pressure will affect the thickness of the lines, so take a few minutes to practice line control. Tweak the sensitivity of your tablet again, if needed. Figure 2.7 has some practice crosshatching made with the Scratchboard Tool.

 

 

A Real Page Turner
To keep from twisting your wrist too much, use Painter’s Rotate Page tool, available in all versions. It’s the very last item in the Toolbox. When you’re ready to return to normal orientation, double-click the Rotate Page tool.

 

Sketch the stem and outer edges of the apple quickly, and begin to make a series of roughly parallel strokes that follow the curves of the fruit. Use strokes that vary in length and spacing as you build up the form. For darker areas, overlap strokes in different directions. Refer to Figure 2.8 as you go.

Rhoda Draws, the artist formerly known as Rhoda Grossman, is the author of numerous books and video tutorials on the creative uses of Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop. She has taught basic drawing as well as digital painting and graphics techniques at several schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she has earned a reputation for lively and humorous presentations. Rhoda began using digital media in 1990 and uses pixel-based software for commercial illustration and cartooning, as well as fine art projects. She has successfully transferred traditional figure-drawing skills to the computer and brings her MacBook Pro and Wacom tablet along to life drawing workshops. As "Rhoda Draws A Crowd," she is a pioneer in using digital media for live caricature entertainment at trade shows and events. Visit her website at www.rhodadraws.com.