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Rangefinder Magazine
August 2003

First Exposure: by Jeremy Sutton
An Exploration in Corel Painter 8

“In casting your inspirational net as an artist, you become familiar with the humility that comes with watching your best-laid plans veer sideways. So, you set out to travel to Rome… and end up in Istanbul. You set off for Japan… and you end up on a train across Siberia. The journey, not the destination, becomes a source of wonder.

“ In the end, I wonder if one of the most important steps on our journey is the one in which we throw away the map. In jettisoning the grids and brambles of our own preconceptions, perhaps we are better able to find the real secrets of each place.” ~ Loreena McKennitt

Getting Started
My intention was to create a portrait collage of Quinn that included a variety of photographic and scanned elements that symbolized what was significant in Quinn’s life. I envisioned outputting the final portrait as a beautiful 30x40 canvas print.

Source material open in Corel Painter 8

I started the collage process with research and collecting source material. I asked Quinn, a delightful 10 year old, to help me pick out photos that were meaningful to her and asked her to write what she loved. I then scanned the source images and opened them in Corel Painter 8.

If you are already using Adobe Photoshop 7 then the Corel Painter 8 interface will look very familiar. Instead of the multitude of palettes that used to fill the screen on opening earlier versions of Painter, Corel Painter 8 opens with a Toolbox to the left (which also contains pop-up art material selectors), a tool-sensitive Property Bar along the top, a Brush Selector along the top-right and a few palettes on the right. All these interface elements can be moved around and repositioned.

Deciding File Size
In the new file window, I initially set the file size to be 8.5x11-in. at 300dpi and then changed the width from 8.5 to 30 inches and the resolution from 300 dpi to 150 dpi. This way I preserved the aspect ratio to ensure the image would be perfectly sized for a magazine cover and at the same time added sufficient pixels to allow a high quality canvas print to be made (my experience has been that painted images look fine at 150 dpi on large prints). Thus the file size I started working on was 4500 x 5823 pixels. The size in MB grew from about 23 MB to 75 MB as I added layers and detail.

Building Up and Modifying Layers
I decided that Quinn’s humorous paintings would make a perfect backdrop for the collage.

Establishing the collage background	Painting with black on the Lisa and Quinn Layer Mask to fade the edge	Painting with white on the soccer Layer Mask to add more grass

The first element I pasted in above the background artwork was a photograph I’d taken of Quinn and her mother, Lisa, and then painted, also in Painter. I chose Effects > Orientation > Free Transform to convert the layer into a reference layer, held down the Shift key while dragging the corner control handle with the Adjuster tool to resize the layer.

Painting in the portrait based on the pasted photo

When satisfied with the size I converted the reference layer back to a regular image layer using Effects > Orientation > Commit Transform. I clicked the Layer Mask button in the Layers palette, which generated a Layer Mask. The Layer Mask icon appeared in the Layer list (the Layer Mask was also visible in the Channels palette). I selected the Airbrush category > Digital Airbrush variant in the Brush selector, clicked on the Layer Mask icon and started painting on the edge of the layer with black to make the edge fade away and melt into the background. If I needed to make the layer reappear I just painted with white in the layer mask, just as in Photoshop.

	Experimenting with the Randomizer in the Brush Creator

I double clicked on the layer name in the Layers palette and renamed the layer “Lisa and Quinn.” I recommend always renaming layers to avoid confusion. I applied the same process to a layer showing Quinn playing soccer.

At this stage I started painting Quinn from observation, with her sitting in front of me. I struggled with the painting and wasn’t satisfied. I felt like giving up and starting all over again!

Change of Tack
I decided not to give up and instead to take a different tack. I took a small (960 x 1280 pixels) digital photo of Quinn, made a duplicate of my current working image (using File > Clone) and pasted the portrait photo onto the clone copy. I then resized the photo using the Free Transform effect.

I set the clone source (File > Clone Source) to be the image with the portrait photo in it. This allowed me to use Cloners category > Soft Cloner variant to bring in some of the photo into my working image. I used other brushes to add and move paint.

I used a variety of different brushes, including my favorites like the Big Wet Luscious. Besides the default built in brushes that comes with Painter, you can also make your own ones up very easily by going into the Brush Creator mode of the program.

Selecting a brush category from the Brush selector	Applying Big Wet Luscious in the eyes	Applying the Smeary Wet Sponge 60

You can save your custom brushes as custom variants. I have my own collection of custom brushes, some created by me, some by others, that will be included in my forthcoming book, Painter 8 Creativity: Digital Artist’s Handbook.
To change brush category I simply clicked on the category pop-up menu, which I have set to thumbnail option (it can also display a list), followed by the variant pop-up menu.

One of the great new categories of brushes introduced in Painter 8 is the Sponges category. Sponges are great for soft textured dabbing of paint.

Cloning
One of the phenomenally powerful features of Painter is that you can turn any brush that adds color to the canvas into a cloner brush that draws its color information from the clone source. All you need to do is click the magic Clone Color icon (looks like the Photoshop Rubber Stamp tool) in the color palette. I used this technique with the Artist Pastel Chalk to clone in the cute picture of Quinn in a white dress.

Capturing and Applying Paper Texture
Another wonderfully powerful feature of Painter is the ability to capture any image as a paper texture. In this case my source image was a scanned piece of writing. I selected all and then chose Capture Paper from the Paper selector pop-up menu.

Capturing the scanned writing as a paper texture	Applying the Large Chalk using the “quinnwriting” paper texture	Applying the Artist Pastel Chalk using clone color

I saved the paper as a custom paper called “quinnwriting.” I opened the Papers palette, where I increased the contrast of the paper texture to make it more effective. Papers in Painter are grayscale tiled images where black acts like the mountains of the grain and white acts like the valleys. I chose the Large Chalk variant, which is a grainy brush that is sensitive to paper texture, and applied it with a variety of colors in the upper left corner of the image.

Finding Harmony
At this point I stood back and took stock of the overall composition. There were some elements that stood out too much and were distracting, such as the deep tones in the soccer image and the background face in the lower left. I also felt (with useful independent feedback from Lisa) that the image of Lisa and Quinn in the top right needed to be smaller. I started modifying the detail, density, coloration, placement and scale of images in the background until I felt there was balance and harmony and the image worked as a whole.

The 30x40 canvas print

My final stage was to touch up the eyes, which I wanted to stand out and convey Quinn’s personality and vitality.
I printed out a 30x40 canvas print (using the HP 5000) and unfurled it at my presentation at the Professional Photographers of Santa Clara Valley, San Jose, CA.

Conclusion
Corel Painter 8, a program that offers rich, organic artistic looks that no other program can equal, is a “must have” complement to Adobe Photoshop in your digital toolbox. Corel is offering upgrade pricing to all registered users of Adobe Photoshop 5.5 and higher, Fractal Design Painter 4 and 5, MetaCreations Painter 5–6 and users of all versions of Corel/Procreate Painter and Painter Classic™ (that comes bundled with every Wacom tablet).

	Final

Creating this collage was both a joy and a struggle. There were times when I wanted to give up. The final image came out very different from what I had initially envisioned. I encourage you to adopt an open-minded creative approach to transforming your imagery. Think beyond just applying a single effect or technique. Think, instead, of entering a journey of transformation. Every image suggests its own path of transformation that may include experimenting with several different effects and brushes. The creative process is intuitive and spontaneous, rather than preplanned and calculated. Embrace serendipity and treat every unexpected result as an opportunity to explore a direction you may not have previously considered. As Loreena McKinnett muses, “I wonder if one of the most important steps on our journey is the one in which we throw away the map.” Allow your creativity to flow.

Jeremy Sutton is a renowned portrait artist, author and educator whose recent publications include: Painter 8 Creativity: Digital Artist's Handbook (Focal Press, 2003); Painter Creativity for Professional Portrait and Wedding Photographers 4 DVD Tutorial (PhotoVision, 2003); and Secrets of Award-Winning Digital Artists (co-author Daryl Wise, Wiley, 2002). Visit www.paintercreativity.com to see samples of Jeremy's colorful portraits, learn about his commissioned portraiture, seminars, publications and to find links to other Painter educational resources. Jeremy can be reached at jeremy@paintercreativity.com.