painting for photographers: steps and art lessons for painting photos in corel painter and adobe...

Karen Sperling’sPAINTING FOR

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Steps and Art Lessons for Painting Photos inCorel Painter and Adobe Photoshop

Karen Sperling’sPAINTING FOR

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Bike Lane EndsPainting and photos byKaren Sperling, covered inthe December 2005 issueof Artistry Tips and Trickshttp://www.artistrymag.com.

4 Karen Sperling’s Painting for Photographers Table of Contents 5

Contents

Landscape PaintingPainting by Karen Sperling from her photo,featured in the April 2007 issue of ArtistryTips and Tricks http://www.artistrymag.com/.

AcknowledgementsThanks to all the readers and students of the Artistry tutorials and Artistry Paintingfor Photographers Retreats for their faith and support. Painting for Photographers isdedicated to them.Special thanks to Rob McDonald at Corel, Allan Chasanoff, Mike Frey, RhondaRosburg and Stanley Zabar for their kind support.Thanks to Steve Szoczei and Kelly O’Dwyer-Manuel at Corel; Vishal Khandpur andBryan O’Neil Hughes at Adobe; and Douglas Little at Wacom for all their help.Thanks to Mark Simonson, who designed the Mostra typeface; to Fujifilm for theuse of the FinePix S3 Pro digital SLR; and to Alkit for the use of the Nikon 24-120mm lens.Thanks to the photographers who contributed their photos:Evan Agostini, page 72;Kirk Allemand, page 32;Katherine Beach, page 30;Alfred Burgess, pages 34, 38;Hernan Campero, page 24;Phillip Stewart Charis, page 42;David Derex, pages 36, 54;Terri Gold, page 24;Nancy Goodman, page 39;Jackie Hicks, page 58;Kevin Kubota, page 28;Michelle Lamberth, page 68;Anita Morrison, page 37;Raymond Moy, M.D., pages 23, 26;Barbara Okun, page 27;Ken Partington, page 86;Ellen Roije-Pauwels, page 108;Rhonda Rosburg, page 26;Susan Sexton, page 107;Karen Sperling, pages 5, 6, 7, 10, 11,12, 13, 15, 17, 24, 25, 28, 29, 30, 34, 35,36, 38, 50, 64, 81, 82, 86, 90, 94, 98, 102, 112, 114, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121,122, 123, 124;Renata Spiazzi, page 107;Frank Stewart, page 32;Terrie Strick, pages 17, 31;Scott Stulberg, pages 9, 46;Felicia Tausig, page 60;Mary Wynn-Ball, page 41;Zarek, page 76.

All paintings are by Karen Sperling.

Copyright ©2009 by Karen SperlingFirst published in 2009 byArtistry BooksPO Box 57516Sherman Oaks, CA 91413http://www.artistrymag.com

Sperling, KarenKaren Sperling’s Painting for Photographers: Steps and art lessons for paintingphotos in Corel Painter and Adobe PhotoshopISBN-10 0-9818163-0-4ISBN-13 978-0-9818163-0-2I. Art. 2. Photography.Author, Designer, Editor and Illustrator: Karen Sperling

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in anyform or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval system—without written per-mission of the publisher.First Printing, 2009

Introduction 6

1 Art Lessons 9Choosing the Photo 10Choosing Colors 12Tones and Focal Points 14Composition 16Body Parts 18Art Examples 20

2 Painting Tools 23Corel Painter Brushes 24Corel Painter Tools 26Color in Painter 28Layers in Painter 30Image Hose/Textures 32Adobe Photoshop Brushes 34Adobe Photoshop Tools 36Wacom tablets/Shortcuts 38

3 Portraits 41Oil-Painted Portraits 42Watercolor Portraits 46Pastel Portraits 50Airbrushed Portraits 54Photorealistic Portraits 58

Auto-Painted Portraits 60Impressionist Portraits 64Tonal Portraits 68Painting Backgrounds 72Painterly Portraits 76

4 Landscapes 81Oil-Painted Landscapes 82Watercolor Landscapes 86Pastel Landscapes 90Photorealistic Painting 94Auto-Painted landscapes 98Impressionist landscapes 102

5 Pets 107Painting Dogs 108Painting Cats 112Painting Horses 114

6 Post-Printing 117Applying a First Coat 118Painting with Acrylics 120Painting with Oils 124

Index 126About the Author 128

Introduction 7

ing your photos into paintings usingCorel Painter and Adobe Photoshop:Practice.And the practice isn’t what you think.You won’t be trying to get better atdrawing a straight line.The practice will be in terms of makingdecisions about what to paint like choos-ing what to keep from the photo andwhat to leave out. These decisions arebased on the art concepts that you willlearn in this book.I know that you can paint your photosin Painter and Photoshop, even if you’venever painted before, because I see thephotographers in my Artistry Paintingfor Photographers Retreats painting afterthree days in my class.And in Painting for Photographers,you’ll Qnd information similar to that of-fered during my Artistry Retreats.I also know the tips and techniques inthis book work because I use them formy own art.Though I painted as a child, and mymother was an artist, my main career hasalways been as a journalist, which is howI got to write the Qrst several Paintermanuals, three Painter books before thisone and two Painter newsletters.It’s only in recent years that I’ve beenpainting, and if I can do it, you can doit! On these pages you see my Qrst paint-ing from photos in Painter—I think theymake a very good illustration for encour-aging you to try to paint your photos!A word about this book’s structure…The book is set up to Qrst give you anintroduction to art concepts that youneed to know to paint photos.Aimed at photographers who didn’ttake art classes, these art lessons willhelp you to know what you want topaint.Painting is 90% thought, 10% execu-tion. Knowing what you’re trying to dois more important than knowing how todo it.

TributeThe painting on the opposite page was cre-ated on September 11, 2001 with a red, whiteand blue color scheme in honor of those wholost their lives in the 9/11 World TradeCenter tragedy. Photos and painting byKaren Sperling, featured in the Paintingfor Photographers tutorialshttp://www.artistrymag.com/.

Introduction

6 Karen Sperling’s Painting for Photographers

I was listening in the car to an audioCD of the book, Success rough a PositiveMental Attitude, by Napoleon Hill andW. Clement Stone, when an amazingthing happened.I heard these words: “If you think youcan do something, you probably can.”Incredible! I have said that in myArtistry Painting for Photographers Re-treats to encourage photographers whothink they can paint to go for it!And there were my words, comingfrom Napoleon Hill, who got the skinnyon success from Andrew Carnegie.So I guess you can believe me when Itell you that if you think you can paintphotos, you probably can!Of course, I already knew my wordswere true because I’ve done it.I’ve gone from never Qnishing paint-

ings to exhibiting my art in a gallery inNew York’s prestigious Chelsea section!All because I Qgured I could.So here it is: If you think you can cre-ate paintings from your photos, youprobably can!Many photographers believe that eitheryou’re an artist, or you’re not.This book dispels that myth.If you’re a photographer, you have acertain visual sense that led to your in-terest in photography.Add to that the theories that artistslearn in art school, and the knowledge ofhow to use Corel Painter and AdobePhotoshop, and voilá—you’ll be paintingyour photos sooner than you can sayToulouse-Lautrec!Sort of.There is one other ingredient for turn-

Of course, computer know-how doesplay a part, and that’s what’s coverednext, information about Corel Painter,Adobe Photoshop and Wacom.Next, you’ll Qnd step-by-step instruc-tions for painting portraits, landscapesand pets, in various styles, includingoils, watercolors and pastels.The book’s Qnal section covers paintingon the canvas after the artwork isprinted, including how to apply a Qrstcoat, and painting with acrylics and oils.Keep in mind as you paint that youwill get better the more you do it.Also remember that everything youpaint is an interim step and the moreyou work on the painting the better itwill get.As you paint, refer to the art lessonssection of Painting for Photographers, anduse the art concepts to guide you to helpyou Qgure out what to paint.Just remember: If you think you canturn your photos into paintings, youprobably can!

HeidiPainting (opposite page) by Karen Sperling from a photo(this page) by Scott Stulberg, featured in the January2005 issue of Artistry Tips and Trickshttp://www.artistrymag.com/.

ArtLessons

1More often than not, when you try to

turn a photo into a painting in CorelPainter or in Adobe Photoshop, it seems to bemissing something. You can’t quite put your Qngeron it, but there’s something not quite right.What’s missing are the ingredients that make thephoto a painting and not a photo with brushstrokes.And those ingredients have to do with traditionalart concepts.In this section on art lessons, you will learn theart concepts that you need to know to turn yourphotos into paintings in Painter and Photoshop,including how to tell if a photo is a good candi-date to be transformed into a painting, how tochoose colors and how to determine tones.Knowing these art concepts will help you bothwhen you paint in Painter and Photoshop and alsowhen you add acrylics and oils to your printed art-work on canvas.

9

choosing the photo 11

choosing the photo


High ContrastPainting in Painter and photos taken at Butter-fly House, Topanga, CA, by Karen Sperling.

The Qrst step in painting a photo in Corel Painter or inAdobe Photoshop is to determine whether the photo is agood candidate to be turned into a work of art.The main ingredient that makes a photo a good candi-date to be turned into a painting is if it has strong areasof contrast between highlights and shadows.That’s because when you paint, you’re painting areas oflight and dark, not objects like eyes, hair and trees.You now know how to paint portraits, landscapes,pets—anything—because in every case, all you’re doingis painting areas of light and dark.Put another way, the better the contrasts arein the photo, the better the painting will be.Other considerations go into painting, likecomposition and colors, but those characteris-tics are easy to adjust in Painter or in Photo-shop.It’s not as easy to add highlights and shad-

ows that aren’t there in the original photo.You can adjust highlights, shadows and contrast in thesoftware, but you won’t get as good a result as choosinga photo with good contrast to begin with.A perfect example is David Derex’s photo on page 54.The photo’s interesting shadows made the painting in-teresting, and you couldn’t have added those shadows ifthey weren’t in the photo to begin with.Early morning and late afternoon are the best times ofday to shoot high-contrast photos outdoors.

How to chooseI took the photos on thesepages close to sunset.Though most looked great as

photos, I chose the one I did topaint because it had a lot ofcontrast, and in the right places.The face in the photos I didn’tchoose had either too muchcontrast or too little.In the chosen photo, the fea-tures were a bit in shadow withnice highlights on the side ofthe face and in the hair.I chose the vertical version(opposite page), not the hori-zontal one (above), becausepainting more of the path andless foliage would result in amore interesting painting.

Choosing colors 13

(opposite page) is an example of twocolors and two complements.Sargent painted Lady Agnew with

yellow and orange and their comple-ments—violet and blue.The face has yellow and orange, andall the other elements are the comple-ments or repeats of the face colors.The dress is violet, the complement

Most people make the logical assumption that turningphotos into paintings requires brush strokes.However, just adding brush strokes won’t make yourphotos look like paintings.One of the key aspects of creating paintings is choos-ing a color scheme.

The reason is that the main difference between a photoand a painting is that a photo has random colors and apainting has a chosen color scheme.Sometimes the photo’s colors Qt into a color scheme, inwhich case it’s OK to use the photo’s colors, as you’reabout to see.

choosing colors


Choosing a colorschemeColor theory is a vast topic, andthere are many ways to choose colorswith which to paint.I’ve found two color schemes thatwork well, and I describe both below.I decide which one to use based onwhat I see in the photo.Sometimes the photo’s colors fallinto one of these color schemes, inwhich case, I use the photo’s colors.When they don’t, I paint with myown colors, based on my colorscheme.

Color ComplementsOne method I use all the time tochoose a color scheme is to use com-plementary colors, or colors oppositeeach other on the color wheel (above,right). To decide which complemen-tary colors to use, I look at my photo-graph.For instance, I took the photographbelow in Newport, RI.I liked it because it had good com-position, but the colors in the photowouldn’t have worked in the paint-ing—they were dark and unrelated.Therefore, to choose a color scheme,

I looked at the photo, and saw mostlysky and water, both of which are usu-ally blue.So I had my Qrst color—blue.I looked at the color wheel and sawthat the opposite of blue, or comple-ment, is orange, so I had my secondcolor.When you choose colors, you arechoosing all the tones within a color.By choosing blue and orange as thecolor scheme, I was also choosing allthe shades of blue, including lightand dark blue, and all the shades oforange, including cream and brown.As you see below, I painted thewater, sky, shore and mountains intones of blue, and the houses, cliffsand dock in orange tones.In general, if you add another color,adding its complement will improveyour painting.Lady Agnew by John Singer Sargent

AdjacentColorsMy other favorite wayto choose colors is touse an adjacent colorscheme, where you usecolors adjacent, ornext to each other, onthe color wheel.Below is an exampleof a painting with anadjacent color scheme.If you compare itwith the color wheel,you’ll see that it hasthe colors starting withred-orange and goingclockwise through or-ange, yellow-orange,yellow, yellow-green,green and blue-green.I chose these colorsbased on the photo.I saw that it had ablue-green sky, greengrass and a tree, whichcould be brown, a

shade of red-orange.I looked at my color wheel and de-cided I could Qnd a way to incorpo-rate all the colors on the color wheelin between red-orange and blue-green.

of yellow, the chair is yellow, the com-plement of the dress, and a repeat ofthe face. The background is blue, thecomplement of orange in the face andrepeated in the chair. The yellow isrepeated in the background.

If you look at the painting comparedto the source photo, you’ll see where Iused the colors from the photo andwhere I added my own colors, basedon my color scheme.The more you paint the better youwill get at choosing colors. Just keepyour color scheme and the photo’scontents in mind, and choosing col-ors will get easier.

ColorHarmonyAnother idea to keep in mind whenchoosing colors is color harmony,where colors are repeated in the fore-ground and in the background.Notice in all the paintings on thesetwo pages that the colors are repeatedthroughout the artwork.In the case of the Newport painting,the orange of the buildings is repeatedin the sky and in the water.In the Sargent portrait, the yellowand orange in the face are repeated onthe chair and in the background.And in the landscape on this page,the yellow and orange are repeated inthe tree and on the ground.One way to create color harmony isto use a color’s complement in theshadows the way Sargent shaded thebackground in his portrait with or-ange, the complement of blue.

Aerial PerspectiveTo create the illusion of distance inpaintings, artists use aerial perspec-tive, the term for making the colors inthe background a little bluer and lesssaturated than the colors in the fore-ground, which are brighter and moresaturated.

Adjacent colorsPhoto and painting by Karen Sperling.

Complementary ColorsPhoto and painting by Karen Sperling.

tones and focal points 15

editing tonesAs you saw in the Qrst chapter, it’sbetter to paint photos with good areasof contrast between light and dark.However, even the photos with greatcontrast don’t always have the con-trast in the right places.This is especially true of focal points,which don’t always appear where youwant them to be.The next chapter covers where toposition focal points.For now, let’s look at how you canrecognize and edit focal points.For instance, I decided to paint thephoto I took in Manhattan Beach, CA,that you see at right because it hadgood contrast.To see the range of tones moreclearly, including the focal point, shutoff the colors.In Painter, choose Effects: TonalControl: Adjust Colors and move theSaturation slider all the way to theleft.In Photoshop, one way is to chooseImage: Adjustments: Hue/Saturationand move the Saturation slider all theway to the left.With the colors turned off, it’s easierto see the photo’s tones.In the top row at right next to theManhattan Beach photo is the photoafter I applied Adjust Colors inPainter.If you look at the photo withoutcolor, you see that the focal point, orarea of greatest contrast between lightand dark, is the trees.However, I wanted the house to bethe focal point.In the second row at right is thepainting.I painted using an adjacent colorscheme, discussed in the previouschapter on choosing colors.Next to the painting, you see it withthe colors turned off using AdjustColors again in Painter.Notice the difference in tones be-tween the top and bottom black-and-white images.In the bottom picture, the house isnow the painting’s focal point, or areaof greatest contrast between light anddark, and not the trees, as in the

Tones and Focal Points

ChiaroscuroExamples of chiaroscuro, or contrast oflights and darks, are seen in the paint-ings of Michelangelo Merisi da Car-avaggio, Diego Rodríguez de Silva yVelázquez (top row); Rembrandt Har-menszoon van Rijn, Georges de La Tourand Peter Paul Rubens (bottom row).

You now know that photos with strong contrasts oflight and dark tones make the best candidates to beturned into paintings.You also now know how to choose colors.Contrast, tones and colors are actually related conceptsbecause all colors have tones.

When you choose colors, you also choose tones.Just like you can sometimes use the colors from thephoto, you can also sometimes use the photo’s tones.And you can also choose your own tones, just like youcan choose your own colors.This chapter covers ways in which to work with tones.

understanding tonesAll colors have tones and togetherthe tones are your image’s contrasts.The fewer colors and the more tonesyour paintings have, the more dra-matic they will be.From now on, think of the subject ofthe painting, also known as the focalpoint, in terms of tones instead of ob-jects like people or houses.Thus, the deQnition of the subject,or focal point, is: The area of greatestcontrast between light and dark.

As a result, to make something thesubject, or focal point, like a person,make it the area of greatest contrastbetween light and dark.The formal term for the contrast oflight and dark tones in a painting ischiaroscuro.It’s the idea behind all the famouspaintings through time by the mas-ters, going back as far as Leonardo daVinci, and including Caravaggio,Rembrandt, Rubens, Georges de LaTour, Velázquez, and anyone elsewhose portraits and landscapes have

stark contrasts of light and dark.In the examples on this page, youcan see how the artists usedchiaroscuro and limited colors to adddrama to their artwork.You can also see how they made theQgures the subject of their portraitsby making them the focal point, orarea of greatest contrast between lightand dark.You can apply this theory pretty eas-ily. Next time you create a portrait, ifthe Qgure is light, make the back-ground dark, if the Qgure is dark,make the background light—it’s thatsimple! Landscapes have focal points,too—see opposite page.

image above it.Once you Qgure out what you wantyour focal point to be, actually creat-ing it is relatively easy.To make the house the focal point,choose Edit: Undo to restore the col-ors, then lighten the house in Painterby painting with the Photo’s Dodgevariant and darken the foliage, skyand water around the house with thePhoto’s Burn variant.Selecting brushes in Painter is dis-cussed in more detail in the next sec-

tion about painting tools.But for now, it’s enough for you toknow that you can edit the tones inyour paintings to create the focalpoint by using Dodge and Burn.While painting, turn off the colors tosee how the tones are shaping upusing Adjust Colors, then chooseEdit: Undo to restore the colors.Making the house the focal point—and using a chosen color scheme—made the painting a painting and notjust a photo with brush strokes.

Focal PointsPhoto and painting by Karen Sperling.


Composition 17

Eliminate DetailsOne of the differences between aphoto and a painting is that a paint-ing has less detail.If a detail doesn’t add to our under-standing of what we’re looking at,then it can be eliminated.Instead of painting all the detailsthat you see in the photo, paint theareas of highlights, midtones andshadows.I think being an artist is less aboutlearning the skill to draw a straight


composition

Rule of ThirdsExamples of Monetpaintings wherethe subject/focalpoint—area ofgreatest contrastbetween light anddark— is near theintersection ofpaper folded inthirds, representedby the blue circlesin the above images.In the top row ofpaintings, it’s thebuildings; in thebottom row, it’s thewomen’s faces.

In the previous chapter, you learned about focal pointsand how to edit them.In this chapter containing composition rules, you’llQnd out where to place focal points.Of course, rules are made to be broken, but it’s good toknow what the rules are that you are breaking.

It seems that composition rules are the ones that peo-ple Rout most often—or maybe they don’t know them?In any case, here’s information about where to placefocal points and some other composition guidelines tokeep in mind, both when you’re taking the photo andalso when you’re painting the artwork.

Rule of ThirdsThe rule of thirds is a guideline forsetting up your photo or painting’scomposition or layout.When you follow the rule, you thinkof the image as divided in thirds andyou put your subject/focal point—i.e., area of greatest contrast betweenlight and dark—near the intersectionof imaginary folds, marked by theblue circles in the images at right.This rule is frequently broken. You’lloften see portraits where the subjectis right in the middle of the image.But if you move the subject over,with the face having the greatest con-trast and falling near the upper left-or right-hand circle, for instance, theportrait will be stronger.A random sampling of Monet paint-ings reveals that Monet followed therule of thirds in most of his art.Notice that in all the paintings byMonet on this page, the focal point,or area of greatest contrast betweenlight and dark, falls near the imagi-nary intersection of the paper folds.

Eliminating Details in LandscapesIn the photo I took in Newport, RI (above), thebackground had a lot of details, including treesand buildings. In the painting I did (top), Ieliminated the details in the background bypainting a suggestion of mountains.

Eliminating Details in PortraitsI blended out details in the skin, lips, eyes and hair in Terrie Strick’s photo of her daughter, Haley.Then I painted back some suggestions of the details. The step-by-step tutorials in the Portraits sec-tion will show you the various techniques for eliminating details in Painter and in Photoshop.

line and more about getting better atmaking the decisions about what toleave out and what to keep.Photographers have a hard time withthis concept, sometimes.They want to include all the details,in addition to keeping the colors andthe composition.If that’s the case, then don’t paint thephoto!But if you want a photo to look likea painting, then eliminate details.Below and at right are examples inportraits and landscapes.

leading the eye inYou want to lead the eye into yourcomposition, not out of it.In the photos I took at right, theladies on the path in the left-handphoto are walking off the image.The right-hand photo has the ladieson the path walking into the image,which is an improvement.

A Different AngleTake photos at an angle to create di-agonal lines (photo above, right),which are more interesting than hori-zontal lines that you get when you

shoot straight on (photo above, left). Itook these photos in the same place,but the one on the right is so muchmore interesting.Also, shoot from above or below atan angle, like the photo on the right.

Elements touchingImage elements should be together,like in the photo I took of RossiMusic below, right, and not apart, likein the photo I took below, left.

Body Parts 19

NosesAs with eyes, when painting noses,the idea is to paint areas of light anddark based on the light source.The light hits the bridge of the nose,so paint in a highlight even if youdon’t see one in the photo.The darkest area of the nose is belowthe tip because the nose casts ashadow on the area above the lip.Paint in a shadow there even if youdon’t see one in the photo.The rest of the nose is various mid-tones, and you can use the photo asyour guide to paint these tones.

LipsBased on the light source, paint theupper lip darker than the lower lip,the idea being that the upper lip is inshadow and the light hits the lowerlip. Add a highlight on the lower lipto show the light hitting it even ifthere isn’t a highlight there in thephoto.

HairPeople always ask me what brush touse to paint hair because they thinkthere’s a special way to paint all thestrands.But now that you know you’re paint-ing areas of light and dark, not ob-jects, and that you’re eliminatingdetails that are in the photo, youknow that you’re not painting indi-vidual strands of hair.To paint hair, paint areas of light anddark, using the photo as your guide.Then add a few strands to suggesthair when you’re done.

Applying the ConceptsUse these art concepts to guide youboth when you paint portraits digi-tally and when you paint on the can-vas after it’s printed.In both cases, you’re painting areasof light and dark, and you can do sowith either digital paint or traditionaloils and acrylics.


Body Parts

EyesPaintings by Karen Sperling from pho-tos by Jackie Hicks (top); Terry Strick(middle) and David Derex (bottom).

Artists paint features in a portrait based on some gen-erally accepted rules or guidelines.As previously stated, rules are made to be broken, butit’s good to know what the rules are that you’re breaking.On these pages are the guidelines that artists use torepresent eyes, noses, lips and hair in their paintings.

You can add these visual notations to make your paint-ings more painterly even if you don’t see them in yoursource photos.With time and practice, you’ll feel better about ventur-ing away from the source photo and using art conceptsinstead to guide you as you paint.

EyesThere are a few art concepts to keepin mind when painting eyes.The main idea is that the eyes arespheres, and how you paint them isbased on representing those spheresin relation to the light source.For instance, paint the catchlight atthe top of the sphere touching part ofthe iris and part of the pupil, as yousee in the images at right.Paint the catchlight on the left if thelight is coming from the upper left,and on the right if the light source ap-pears from the upper right.Paint the top of the eye a littledarker than the bottom of the eye, thetheory being that the top of the eye isin shadow cast by the eyebrow.Make the sides of the eye evendarker to convey that the eyeballsphere gets darker as it recedes intothe eye socket.Paint some color over the corners ofthe eyes, a great example of how youeliminate detail.We know we’re looking at eyes with-out the details in the corners, so justsuggest those areas with some darkcolor.Apply the art concept of eliminatingdetail when you paint eyebrows andeyelashes, too.Paint broad areas of light and darkbased on what you see in the photo,then add suggestions of individualhair strands.The section on painting portraits in-cludes all the brushes to use.Refer to the guidelines on this pageto help you to decide what to paint.

Noses, Lips and HairPaintings by Karen Sperling from pho-tos by her (top and bottom) andMichelle Lamberth (middle).

Art Examples 21

↑DegasEdgar Degas painted with limitedcolor palettes with strong contrastsbetween areas of light and dark.His dancers have interesting posesseen from above or from an angle.Seen mostly in groups, the dancersare usually touching, which is bettercomposition than showing them apartfrom each other.


art examples

Edward HopperEdward Hopper’s paintings have sev-eral things in common.These include:1. The use of a limited color palette,

English LandscapesPaintings by English watercolorlandscape artists have a limited colorscheme and high contrast in dramaticskies with clouds.Each has a subject, or focal point, oran area of greatest contrast betweenlight and dark that’s very clearly seen.This subject is a building, a moun-tain or even a horizon line.

in many cases, an adjacent colorscheme (see page 13);

2. Simple, realistic subjects;3. A sense of solitude;4. Stark contrasts between lights anddarks.

LandscapesPaintings by Edward Hopper (top) and English landscape artists John Robert Coz-ens (left) and Thomas Girtin (above).

↑Mary CassattMary Cassatt was an Americanpainter who lived and worked inFrance and who was a contemporaryof Degas, Manet, Cézanne, Renoir andMorisot. Cassatt captured subjects inthe middle of activities including talk-ing, sipping tea and bathing children.In most of Mary Cassatt’s paintings,two or more people are touching orinteracting in some way so that theviewer is witnessing personal mo-ments between the subjects.

←rembrandtRembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn’sportraits have stark contrasts. Thefaces are very light and the back-grounds are very dark, and within thefaces are distinct highlights and shad-ows. The clothes also have distincthighlights and shadows as well.Rembrandt used a limited color

palette. The colors are mostly reds,yellows, browns and greens, and hefrequently used dark outlines.

↑John Singer SargentIn many cases, Sargent painted faceslighter than the backgrounds, and thebackgrounds are mostly either thesame color as the clothes or a darkervalue of the color of the faces. In mostcases, he painted a plain backgroundwith brush strokes.Many of his paintings have limitedcolor schemes of just two colors andall the saturations and values withinthe chosen colors.He painted distinct areas of light anddark in the faces.The highlights and shadows havevisible brush strokes.Hair is broad areas of color with sug-gestions of individual strands.

↓RenoirPierre-Auguste Renoir’s paintingshave a limited color scheme; ornate,detailed backgrounds; and a lot of de-tail in the clothing.The dresses, though clearly white,have colors in the shadows.

I use traditional art for reference all the time.If I’m uncertain how to paint something, I do agoogle.com search and see how other artists have han-dled the same aspect of their paintings.On these pages are some of the artists whose work in-

Ruenced the paintings in this book.Knowing great art is the best way to create your own.Go to galleries and museums, or look at books and websites to build your art knowledge. Then use this knowl-edge when Qguring out what to paint in your photos.

PortraitPainting (opposite page) by Karen Sperling from a photoby Raymond Moy, M.D. (this page), featured in the July2005 issue of Artistry Tips and Tricks.http://www.artistrymag.com/

Paintingtools

2This section shows you the main tools I use

to turn photos into paintings using CorelPainter, Adobe Photoshop and Wacom tablets.When I Qrst started talking about creating Paint-

ing for Photographers, people told me that they did-n’t want another book with more software andhardware tools than they’ll ever use.Everyone said to keep it simple and to just showthem the software and hardware they need forturning photos into paintings.And that’s what I’ve done in Painting for Photog-

raphers!

23

Corel Painter Brushes 25

Auto-PaintingAuto-Painting is a great way to paintbrush strokes quickly.You can use the supplied strokes orcreate your own.After you File: Open a photo, chooseFile: Clone (cloning is explained onthe next page). Next, set up a brush:1. Open the Auto-Painting palette(Window: Show Auto-Painting).

2. Choose a brush: The Artists’ Sar-gent Brush and Impressionist vari-ants work well.

3. Click the rubber stamp in the Col-ors palette.

4. Choose a stroke in the Strokemenu in the Auto-Painting palette.

5. Click the arrow in the Auto-Painting palette to run the strokes.Run them until you have largeareas of brush strokes.

6. Click the red button in the paletteor anywhere in the image to stopthe strokes.When the boxes beneath Random-ness are checked, the strokes are hap-hazard/random.I think you get a better result whenyou control the brush strokes by de-selecting the Randomness boxes andadjusting the sliders.The ones I use most often are theRotation slider, which determinesstroke direction; the Length slider,which decides how long they are; andthe Brush Size slider, which controlstheir width as a percentage of the set-ting in the Property Bar’s Size slider.To slowly build up a painterly look,choose a setting for the sliders, runAuto-Painting, stop, adjust the slidersagain, run Auto-Painting some more,keep repeating till you get the lookyou like.You can personalize Auto-Paintingby painting with your own, custom-made stroke in the Stroke menu.To create a custom stroke:1. Click the triangle in the Brush Se-lector.

2. In the drop down menu, choseRecord Stroke.

3. Paint a short stroke.4. Choose Save Stroke in the samemenu and type a name for thestroke in the dialog box that ap-pears. Click OK.

5. Choose this new stroke in the

Custom palettesUse custom palettes to access yourfrequently used brushes.To create a custom palette:1. Click on a brush or on a variant inthe Brush Selector and drag to themiddle of the image. You’ll see alittle square.

2. Let go. The square becomes a cus-tom palette.

3. To add a brush, choose it in theBrush Selector and drag it onto thenew custom palette.

4. To move a brush within a custompalette, press shift and click anddrag on its icon.

5. To delete a brush, press shift andclick and drag it off the custompalette.To name the custom palette:1. Choose Window menu: CustomPalette: Organizer. The CustomPalette Organizer dialog appears.

2. Click on the new palette in the list.Click Rename.

3. Type in a name for the custompalette. What I do is type in theQrst name and hit the space bar afew times then I type the second

name, etc. This way, each variant’sname appears above its icon in thecustom palette, as you see in thephoto below.

4. Click OK, then click Done.The names you typed now appear inthe custom palette.To delete a custom palette:

1. Choose Window menu: CustomPalette: Organizer. The CustomPalette Organizer dialog appears.

2. Click on the palette you wish toeliminate in the list. Click Delete.

Brush SelectorAll the mark-making tools in Painter,from Oils to Pencils, are calledbrushes, regardless of whether theirreal-life counterparts are indeedbrushes.They live in the Brush Categoriesicon in the Brush Selector.To select a brush:1. Click the Brush Categories icon inthe Brush Selector. A drop-downmenu appears.

2. Click on the desired brush’s icon.Variants are the variations within aBrush Category, like the Square Chalkvariant of the Chalk, pictured below.To select a variant:1. Click the Variants icon in theBrush Selector. A drop-downmenu appears.

2. Choose a variant in the menu.Now you can paint!

You have arrived at the most important part of Painter, the brushes.Painter has always offered brushes unlike those found in any other soft-ware program, and now, close to 20 years after Painter’s debut, it’s still true.In this chapter, you’ll learn the basics for selecting brushes and customiz-ing them.In addition, you’ll discover tips for getting the most out of two handypainting tools, namely Auto-Painting and custom palettes.The tutorial chapters later in the book also discuss these painting features,and this chapter serves as a quick reference for using Painter’s brushes.

Corel Painter Brushes


Property BarThe Property Bar has the settingsyou’ll use most often to customizeyour brushes.Some brushes have different settings,but here are the most common ones.Size: Brush stroke width. Lower forthinner strokes, raise for wider ones.Opacity: Brush stroke transparency.Lower for more transparent strokes,raise for opaque ones.Grain: Brush stroke texture. Lowerfor more texture (yes, it’s counterintu-itive), raise for less texture.Resat: Amount of color.Bleed: Amount colors bleed together.Resat and Bleed work together.Lower Resat to 0% and raise Bleed to49% and you have a blender brush.Jitter: Randomness of dabs withinbrush strokes. Raise jitter for multipledabs in a stroke. Useful for textures.

Save new settings asa VariantTo save brush adjustments, create anew variant. Here’s how:1. Click the triangle in the Brush Se-lector.

2. Choose Save Variant. The SaveVariant dialog box appears.

3. Type a name for the new variant.4. Click OK. Your new custom vari-ant is listed in the Variants menu(click the Variants icon to see it).To restore a variant’s initial settings:1. Click the triangle in the Brush Se-lector.

2. Choose Restore Default Variant.The variant’s original settings arerestored.

Locating Painter’s Brushesphotos by Terri Gold (left), HernanCampero (top) and Karen Sperling(above).

Using Painter‘s BrushesPhoto of Laura Pursell (top) and SanPedro, CA ships by Karen Sperling.

Stroke drop-down menu in theAuto-Painting palette and runAuto-Painting.

Corel Painter Tools 27

Tracing PaperTracing Paper is another one of thoseuseful Painter tools that’s easy to useonce you get the hang of it.Turning Tracing Paper on lets yousee your photo in your painting whileyou paint it.You might think at Qrst that it lookslike the photo is part of the painting.It isn’t.When Tracing Paper is turned on,you see a 50% non-printing ghost of

Paper (command+t, Mac;ctrl+t, Windows, or click the Trac-ing Paper icon in the image win-dow’s top, right-hand corner).Tracing Paper appears.

6. To change Tracing Paper’s opacity,click and hold on the TracingPaper icon and choose an opacitysetting. The default is 50%.You clear the image to paint fromscratch. To add brush strokes to thephoto, create the clone, but don’t se-lect and delete. However, you won’tsee the Tracing Paper till you havepainted in the clone.If you have layers or selections in thephoto, you’ll lose them if you clone,so set up Tracing Paper this way:1. With the photo open, choose File:Save As and name the new Qle.

2. Keep the new Qle open and openthe previous photo.

3. Attach the images (see the instruc-tions on the previous page underFile Menu: Clone Source).

4. Turn on Tracing Paper (see number5 above). Tracing paper is on andyou also have your layers and se-lections to work with.

the photo.When Tracing Paper is off, you justsee your painting/clone without thephoto.Meanwhile, when you paint withTracing Paper turned on, you seeyour brush strokes on 50% opacity.So you don’t want to paint the wholepainting with Tracing Paper turnedon and then shut it off at the end be-cause the result will be far differentthan it appeared with Tracing Paperturned on.

The way to work with TracingPaper is to turn it on, paintsome strokes, turn it off, viewyour progress, turn it on, paintsome more strokes, etc.To turn on Tracing Paper:1. Open a photo.2. Choose Qle: Clone. A cloneof the original photo ap-pears.

3. Select: All (command+a,Mac; ctrl+a, Windows).

4. Press delete, Mac; back-space Windows. The imageclears.

5. Choose Canvas: Tracing

toolbox.5. Choose the Brush Selector menuicon (the little arrow all the way tothe right): Capture Dab, whichadds the new tip to the variant.Save the variant one more time.1. Choose Brush Selector icon: SaveVariant.

2. In the Save Variant dialog, clickOK. A prompt asks if you want toreplace the variant. Click Yes.

3. Choose Select menu: None (com-mand+d) to deselect the selection.

4. Paint with your new variant.

ClonesThe word “clone” is thrown around alot in Painter.After you use the software forawhile, you get used to all the differ-ent clone references, but when you’restarting out, they may not be clear.Here’s what’s going on: The wordclone is used in Painter as both anoun and as a verb.Used as a noun, think of a clone as apainting.As a verb, clone in Painter means topaint from a source, usually a photo.Easy, right?

Establishing a clonesourceWhen you paint, or clone, from aphoto, you have to establish thephoto as the clone source.Here are the three ways to set up the

Artists have used photos for reference probably since photos were in-vented, from the Qne artist, who “eyeballs” a photo attached to his or hereasel, to the commercial artist, who projects photos on paper or canvas andpaints by “tracing” the projection.Painting from photos, then, isn’t new, and Painter offers several tools tohelp you in the process.This chapter shows tools that you will use most often when painting fromphotos. You’ll also see how to create custom brushes, which are useful forpainting backgrounds and softening the Qgure’s sharp, photographic edges.

Corel Painter Tools


photo as a clone source:• File: CloneWith a photo open, choose File:Clone. Now the clone is the painting,and the photo is the clone source.• Option/alt and clickTo paint within one image or be-tween different-sized images, choose aCloners’ variant, press option, Mac;alt, Windows, click to establish theclone source and paint.• File menu: Clone SourceUse this method to reconnect aclone source and clone that are thesame size (usually a clone that youcreated when you chose File: Clone).Here’s how:1. Open both the source image andthe clone image.

2. With the clone as the active win-dow, select File menu: CloneSource and select the source image(as you see in the image below).The clone source is now set up..

XScale 2P variantAn exception to using option/alt andclicking to establish a clone source iswhen you use the Cloners’ xScale 2Pvariant, which scales as you clone.You establish your source and desti-nation with two clicks instead of one.1. Press option, Mac; alt, Windows,then click a point at the top andbottom of what you want to copy.

2. In the same image, or in a differentone, press shift+option on Mac;shift+alt on Windows and click apoint at the top and bottom ofwhere you want to paint.

3. Paint. The source comes in resized.

customizing brushesA great way to create your own,unique look and to add texture toyour brush strokes is to create yourown custom tip, which creates thebrush stroke’s silhouette. The Artists’Impressionist variant is an example ofa brush with a custom tip.You can create “abstract” tips forgeneral textures, or you can create“realistic” ones, like leaves.To create a custom tip:First create a new variant:1. Choose a brush and a variant. Thevariants that work particularly wellare the Artists’ Impressionist andthe Sponges’ Smeary Wet Sponge.

2. Choose Brush Selector icon: SaveVariant. The Save Variant dialogappears.

3. Type in your new variant’s name.Click OK.

4. Choose the new variant in the Vari-ants pop-up menu.You now have a new variant that has

the same properties as the originalbrush variant.Next, create a new brush tip for thenew variant (see the examples above).1. Start a new image (File: New).2. Choose black in the Colors palette.3. Create selections with the lassofrom the toolbox and Qll withblack (Effects: Fill) to get the tipsabove, or paint tips with the Im-pressionist brush for painterly re-sults.

4. Draw a selection around the newtip with the rectangle tool from the

CloningPainting (left) by Karen Sperling froma photo by Raymond Moy, M.D.; photo(above) by Rhonda Rosburg.

customizingPhoto (top) by Barbara Okun; painting(above) by Karen Sperling.

Color in Painter 29

GradientsUse Painter’s Gradients and ColorSchemes to create underpaintings.Here’s how you create a gradient:1. Choose the Colors palette in Win-dow menu: Color Palettes and theGradients palette in Windowmenu: Library Palettes.

2. Choose Two-Point in the gradientslist at the top, right corner of theGradients palette.

3. Choose a color in the Colorspalette, then click on the rearsquare and choose a second color.Click on the front square again tomake sure it’s selected.You now have a two-point gradientthat you can see in the Gradientspalette preview.Click and drag on the red dot in theGradients palette to reposition thegradient direction.You can adjust the gradient to exper-iment with different colors.Choose Gradients palette: menuicon (the little arrow in the upperright-hand corner): Edit Gradient.The Edit Gradient dialog box appears.You can add colors from the Colorspalette while the Edit Gradient dialog

box is open.To add a color to the gradient:1. Click under the color bar in theEdit Gradient dialog, which adds atriangle.

2. Click a color in the Colors palette.You now have a new color in thegradient, and you see how it looksin the Gradients palette preview.You can keep clicking new trianglesand choosing colors for them in theColors palette.To change an existing triangle’scolor, click it, then choose a color inthe Colors palette. Dragging the trian-gles in the Edit Gradient dialogchanges the colors’ ratios to one an-other. To delete a color, click on itstriangle and press delete, Mac; back-space, Windows.All changes appear in the Gradientspalette preview.When done, click OK to close theEdit Gradient dialog.Now you can apply the gradient inone of these ways:• Effects: Fill, click next to gradient.• Choose Gradients palette: Menuicon: Express in Image. Click OK.The gradient appears in the imagebased on luminance, or areas oflight and dark.

• Paint bucket. Click where you’dlike the gradient to appear.

Using color schemes

Edit your photo’s color scheme usingthe Underpainting’s Color Schememenu, which applies another image’scolor scheme based on areas of lightand dark (luminance).Get paintings from the internet orscan them from books and use theircolor schemes in your art!1. Choose Window: Underpaintingpalette.

2. Open the source image and desti-nation image.

3. With the destination image as theactive window, choose the sourceimage—in this case, a Monet paint-ing—in the Underpainting palette’sColor Scheme menu.The colors appear in the image.In the Underpainting palette, choosePhoto Enhance menu: High Contrast,click Apply, then choose IntenseColor to intensify the effect.

Colors PaletteThe main way to choose colors inPainter is to select them in the Colorspalette, found in the Window menuunder Color Palettes.The Colors palette is pretty easy touse, once you get used to it.The circle is called the hue ring, andyou choose a color family in it.The triangle shows saturation fromleft to right, with the least saturatedcolor, gray, all the way to the left, andthe most saturated color to the right.The triangle from top to bottom rep-resents values or tones, with the topbeing the lightest, or white, and thebottom being the darkest, or black.Most brushes won’t paint the colorchosen in the rear color square, somake sure the front square is chosenby clicking on it before painting.

You’ve seen how to choose a color scheme and how colors are related totones.This chapter has the basics for applying color in Painter, from choosingcolors to paint with to adding colors in an automated way.You’ll use color in Painter not just to paint brush strokes, but also to createan underpainting, which, in art terms, is the Qrst coat of paint applied to thecanvas or paper.An underpainting uniQes the painting’s colors and it speeds up the paint-ing process by Qlling broad areas with color.

color in Painter


More color optionsIn addition to using the Colorspalette, choose colors by:• Using Cloners variants, whichpaint the clone source’s colors (seepage 26 for ways to establish aclone source).

• Clicking the rubber stamp in theColors palette, which turns anynon-Cloners brush into a clonerthat uses the clone source’s colors.Setting a clone source allows youto pick up all the source’s colorswhen painting.

• Pressing option, Mac; alt, Win-dows and clicking on the desiredcolor with a non-Cloners variantchosen, which is a shortcut to theeye dropper tool. This lifts theclicked color from within theimage or from another image.

Here it is in a nutshell: For non-Cloners brushes, pressing option/altand clicking picks up a single color.For Cloners or non-Cloners with therubber stamp selected, pressing op-tion/alt and clicking sets a clonesource for you to pick up all colors.

LayersPainter’s layers can be helpful forcreating a color scheme (see page 30for more information about layers).1. With a photo open, choose Layersmenu: New Layer.

2. Uncheck Preserve Transparency inthe Layers palette (found in theWindow menu).

3. Choose a color and choose Effects:Fill, click OK.

4. Choose Color in the Layers palette.The chosen color now tints thephoto and you have a selectedcolor scheme (see above images).

colorsPainting (left) by Karen Sperling froma photo by Kevin Kubota; photos(above) by Karen Sperling.

gradients, color schemesImages on this page by Karen Sperling.

Layers in Painter 31

Painting beyond alayer objectI use layers mostly for portraits.I have the Qgure in a layer and thebackground is the Canvas.The layer’s edges are deQned by theoriginal selection used to create thelayer.Editing layer edges is useful forchanging objects like hair, as you seein the images at right.You can edit the layer’s edge usingPreserve Transparency and LayerMasks.Preserve Transparency lets you paintbeyond the layer’s edge.Try it yourself:1. Select a layer, click Preserve Trans-parency in the Layers palette

2. Choose the Chalk’s Sharp Chalkand paint in the layer. The brushstrokes stay within the layer’s edge.

3. Deselect Preserve Transparencyand paint in the layer. Your brushstrokes go past the visible edge.When you paint past the edge, yourstrokes become the new edge.1. Click Preserve Transparency again.2. Paint on the edge. Your strokesnow go on the new strokes, butnot past them.

Reducing the layerobjectYou reduce the layer object’s visibleedge by painting in the layer mask.Use layer masks to create trans-parency within a layer, too.1. With the layer chosen in the Layerspalette, select Layers menu: CreateLayer Mask. A new mask icon ap-pears next to the layer icon in theLayers palette.

2. Click on this new mask icon. Theicon is now outlined in black.

3. Paint in the layer mask in theimage with the Airbrushes’ DigitalAirbrush with black chosen in theColors palette. Adjusting theOpacity slider in the Property Barproduces varying levels of trans-parency, with 100% being opaque.Paint with white to restore color.When done, choose Layers menu:Apply Layer Mask to merge the maskwith the layer.It’s a good idea to apply the layer

masks right away because they tendto corrupt easily, especially when youmove the layers.

Flattening LayersChoose Layers menu: Drop to Ratten

one layer at a time; choose Layersmenu: Drop All to Ratten all the layerssimultaneously.

LayerobjectsPhoto by Terrie Strick, painting addedby Karen Sperling.


Layers in Painter

Making the Canvas aLayerIn Painter, the Canvas isn’t a layer.It’s like the Roor—it doesn’t move.You can place the contents of theCanvas into a layer. Here’s how:1. Click Canvas in the Layers palette.2. Choose Select: All.3. With the Layer Adjuster tool se-lected, click anywhere in the Can-vas or choose Select menu: Float.The Canvas contents are now a layerand the Canvas is white.If you want a copy of the contents toremain in the Canvas, press option,Mac; alt, Windows when you click onthe Canvas to make it a layer or whenyou choose Select: Float.

Copy/paste1. With a selection active, chooseEdit: Copy.

2. Choose Edit: Paste. It’s now a layer.

Click and drag1. Click within a selection and drag iteither within the same image oronto another image.

2. The selected area becomes a layer.

Layer tool and listLayers are listed in the Layerspalette, found in the Window menu.Move layers in the image with theLayer Adjuster tool. Click Auto SelectLayer in the Property Bar to select in-dividual layers in the image withouthaving to click them Qrst in the Lay-ers palette.

Creating LayersYou can create a new layer as easilyas choosing Layers menu: New Layer.I usually make a layer from a selec-tion of a subject like a person, a pet, aRower, etc.You create a layer from a selection inseveral ways.

FloatWith a selection active, choose Selectmenu: Float. Hold option, Mac; alt,Windows to create a copy

Click1. With a selection active, choose theLayer Adjuster tool, located next tothe Brush in the toolbox (or type fto access it).

2. Click inside the selection. The se-lected area becomes a layer. Holdoption, Mac; alt, Windows whenyou click to create a copy.

I don’t use layers a lot.I’m in the habit of painting mostly on the canvas because doing so is themost similar to the way you paint in real life.Layers do come in handy, though. I use them when I am painting a por-trait—I’ll put the Qgure in a layer and paint in the background.I also use layers to composite the source photo/image.Layers are great for creating image hose nozzles, discussed on page 32.You usually create a layer from a selection.I use Photoshop’s Magnetic Lasso to select, which is described on page 36.

Before Preserve TransparencyThe hair layer before it’s painted. The girl is alayer and the background is in the Canvas.

After Preserve TransparencyThe hair after it’s painted with the Sharp Chalkwith Preserve Transparency deselected.

Before Layer MaskThe girl is a layer and the background is in theCanvas.

After Layer MaskPainting in the layer mask using the DigitalAirbrush trimmed the hair.

LayersTop photo by Katherine Beach, otherimages by Karen Sperling.

Using the Image HoseThe image hose sprays multiple im-ages from nozzles.For instance, you can create animage hose nozzle of Rowers and Qll abackground with them, which is whatI did in the photo of the girl on theopposite page.Here’s how the Image Hose works.1. Start a new image (File: New) orpaint on an existing image. ChooseBrush Selector: Image Hose.

2. Click the icon in the toolbox’slower right-hand corner. TheImage Hose nozzles list appears.

3. Click on the various icons andpaint in the image. The ImageHose sprays multiple images fromthe chosen nozzle.The Image Hose variants with theword linear paint in lines; the oneswith the word spray paint randomly.Adjust element size using the Sizeslider in the Property Bar.You can change nozzle element col-ors. For instance, in the image on theopposite page, I made the Rowers inthe background darker to appear fur-ther away:1. Click on the rear square in the Col-ors palette. Choose a color, thenclick on the front square.

2. Move the Grain slider in the Prop-erty Bar to the left.

3. Paint with the Image Hose. The el-ements are the color you chose forthe Colors palette’s rear square.The more you move the Grainslider to the left, the truer the colorwill be to the one you selected; themore you move the slider to theright, the closer the color will be tothe original nozzle-element color.You can create your own nozzles.1. Start a new image (File: New).

One of the best things about Painter is that it offers many tools for you tocreate your own look and style rather than copy someone else’s.You saw on page 25 and page 27 how to create your own Auto-Paintingstrokes and custom brush tips.In this chapter are instructions for creating your own image hose nozzlesand paper textures.

image hose/textures


Make it 7" x 5" at 300 dpi.2. Open a photo or a painting. Selectsix elements one at a time with thelasso. For example, I selected Row-ers from the photo below for myimage hose nozzle.

3. Click and drag each element intothe new image with the Layer Ad-juster tool with Auto Select Layerchosen in the Property Bar.

4. Click Canvas each time before youclick and drag on a layer in thesource image. If you don’t see thelayer in the destination image,double click it in the Layers paletteand type 0 in the Top and LeftQelds, then click OK.Next, save as a nozzle.1. In the Layers palette, highlight allthe layers by pressing shift andclicking on each one.

2. Choose Layers menu: Group.3. Click the icon in the toolbox’s

lower right-hand corner. Click thetriangle in the drop-down menu’supper right-hand corner. ChooseMake Nozzle From Group. Animage appears. This is your newimage hose nozzle.

4. Choose File: Save As and save it inthe RIFF format. Close the image.Paint with your new nozzle.1. With the Image Hose selected inthe Brush Selector, in that same tri-angle in the toolbox, choose LoadNozzle (above image). Find yournozzle in the dialog and open it.

2. Start a new image and paint withthe Image Hose. The Image Hosesprays your nozzle elements!

Image Hose/Textures 33

face Texture. Choose Paper in theUsing menu to apply the chosen tex-ture, or choose Image Luminance,which adds texture based on theimage’s light and dark areas. UsingImage Luminance adds depth andtexture to individual brush strokes.When you see paintings from photoswith a little bit of texture, like theportrait on page 40, you’re probablylooking at an example of Apply Sur-face Texture using Image Luminance.

Editing TextureChange the scale of the chosenpaper texture in the Window menu:Library Palettes: Papers palette bymoving the top slider.Adjust the amount of texture in yourbrush strokes using the Grain sliderin the Property Bar.Move the Grain slider to the left toshow more texture; move the slider tothe right for less texture.This is counterintuitive, but in thevery early versions of Painter, theGrain slider was called the Penetra-tion slider. So moving it to the leftmeant the color penetrated the papergrain less, revealing more texture.Moving the slider to the right meantthe color was penetrating the papermore, hiding more paper color. So theslider affects not paper texture, buthow color mixes with paper texture.The Digital Watercolor brushes work

differently from the other brushes.Moving the Grain slider all the way tothe left shuts off paper texture—theopposite of all other brushes.

Creating TextureYou can create paper textures frombrush strokes, original art, photos,recognizable shapes, abstract designs,gradations, scanned textures—any-thing—and save them in the Paperspalette.For the texture at left, I cropped thephoto, below.Here are the steps:1. Crop the photo to what you wantto appear as the paper texture:With Painter’s Crop tool in thetoolbox, select the desired area,then click inside the selection tocrop.

2. In the Patterns palette (it’s in theWindow menu under LibraryPalettes) choose menu icon (the lit-tle arrow all the way to the right):DeQne Pattern, which makes theimage wrap around.

3. Press shift and spacebar and clickand drag in the image—you cancheck the paper’s repeating pattern,including any obvious seams.

4. Paint over seams with the Cloners’Soft Cloner—press option/alt andclick on the area next to the seamand paint on the seam to hide it.Check the seams again, blend moreof them out, repeat.

5. When done, choose Select: All.6. In the menu icon in the Paperspalette choose Capture Paper. TheSave Paper dialog box appears.Type a name and click OK. Yournew paper texture now appears asan icon in the list of paper texturesboth in the Papers palette and inthe paper icon in the toolbox.Now you can paint with this texturewith a paper-sensitive brush, or applyit with the Effects menu. For myimage at the top of this page, I starteda new image, Qlled with a color (Ef-fects: Fill) then used Effects: SurfaceControl: Apply Surface Texture usingPaper.

Adding Paper TexturePainter has powerful tools foradding paper texture either with paintbrushes or with the Effects menu.Brushes that interact with papergrain show the Grain slider in theProperty Bar when selected.To paint with paper texture, use apaper-sensitive brush like the Chalk’sSquare Chalk variant and choose atexture in the Qrst icon in the groupof icons at the bottom of the toolbox.You can choose as many differenttextures as you like.In addition to painting with papertexture, you can also add paper tex-ture, either to the entire image, withina selection or on a layer, by choosingEffects: Surface Control: Apply Sur-

Image hosePaintings by Karen Sperling from pho-tos by Frank Stewart (left) and KirkAllemand (top, opposite page).

Adobe Photoshop Brushes

34 Karen Sperling’s Painting for Photographers Adobe Photoshop Brushes 35

refers to stroke edge.Moving the slider to the right pro-duces an aliased, or hard-edgedstroke. Moving the slider to the leftcreates anti-aliased, or soft-edgedstrokes.Opacity in the options bar controlsstroke transparency. The lower thesetting, the more transparent thestroke will be. The higher the setting,the more opaque it will be.I generally paint broad areas withthe Brush tool and a soft-edged presetlike the Soft Round, the Airbrush SoftRound or the Airbrush Dual BrushSoft Round, and details with a hard-edged preset like Hard Round.To blend the strokes, choose theSmudge tool and the Charcoal LargeSmear preset, which blends with tex-ture. To blend with less texture, use aChalk preset on a low Master Diame-ter setting.When you use the Smudge tool, ifyou’re painting on layers, click Sam-ple All Layers in the options bar toblend using color data from all visiblelayers. If you don’t select it, theSmudge tool uses only the activelayer’s colors.For rougher areas, like hair, paintwith the Brush tool and the Spatter orthe Rough Round Bristle presets andblend with the Smudge tool with theOil Medium Wet Flow preset.Artists frequently paint outlines to

add deQnition to objects like clothingand buildings. Paint with a Spatterbrush on various opacity levels to cre-ate outlines.

Custom brush presetsUse textured presets like the Scat-tered Leaves for backgrounds—seepage 54 for an example.

Photoshop BrushesPhotos by Alfred Burgess (top) andKaren Sperling (right and opposite).

One of the questions I hear most frequently is, “What’s the difference be-tween Photoshop and Painter?”The answer used to be simple: Photoshop’s metaphor was a photographer’sdarkroom; Painter’s was an artist’s atelier.Those distinctions aren’t quite true anymore because Photoshop’s brushesare more powerful today than ever before.Interestingly, the contrast between the two applications nowadays is in thedifferent effects achieved with each program’s brushes.I Qnd it’s easier to paint brush strokes with texture and variety in Painter,while you can more easily create bold, smooth, maybe even slicker brushstrokes in Photoshop.You can adjust controls in both programs to get just about any effect youwant, but I’m interested in what each program does best without the userhaving to jump through software hoops to get good results.In these chapters, I go over some of the Photoshop brushes and featuresthat I use most often.You’ll also Qnd Photoshop instructions in the tutorials section.This book has more Painter tutorials because Painter offers a broader as-sortment of brushes.However, Photoshop’s brushes provide additional creative possibilities!

Brush and SmudgeI paint in Photoshop the way I paintin Painter, that is, I paint color, thenblend it, then paint some more, thenblend some more, building up thepainting based on the lights and darksin the photo.Photoshop’s two main painting toolsfor me, then, are the Brush and theSmudge, found in the Tools panel.You choose variations of the Brushand Smudge tools in the Brush Presetpicker in the options bar.After you select a preset, press re-turn, Mac; enter, Windows to hidethe Brush Preset picker.You can also choose brush presetsfrom the Brushes panel, accessed inthe Window menu.I like to leave the Brushes panelopen because it’s easier to quickly ac-cess brush presets there than in theBrush Preset picker, which you openand then close each time you chooseanother brush preset.

Whether you use the Brush Presetpicker or the Brushes panel, chooseText Only in the drop down menu (inthe little triangle) to see the brushpresets’ names, which makes selectingthem easier.

In both locations, the Master Diame-ter slider controls brush stroke width.Move the slider to the left for morenarrow strokes and to the right forwider ones.Hardness in the Brush Preset picker

You can also create your own pre-sets. Here’s how:1. Using any selection tool, select theimage area you want to use as acustom preset.

2. To create a brush with sharp edges,set Feather in the options bar tozero pixels. To create a brush withsoft edges, increase the Feather set-ting.

3. Choose Edit: DeQne Brush Preset.The Brush Name dialog appears.

4. Type in a name for the preset, clickOK.Choose the brush tool and your newpreset and paint—instant texture!

Spot Healing BrushYou read in the art lessons chaptersthat one of the differences between apainting and a photo is that a paintinghas less detail (see page 17).Using Photoshop’s Spot HealingBrush tool is a great way to eliminatedetails like telephone lines, as you seeon the previous page and this one inthese photos I took in Malibu.The Spot Healing Brush tool can’t beany easier to use, you just scribble onthe spot you want to remove andpoof, it’s gone. It works better on apattern like trees than on Rat color.

Adobe Photoshop Tools 37

Save Selection. The Save Selection di-alog box appears. Type in a name forthe selection and click OK. Save theQle in the Photoshop .psd Qle format.This selection is then available herein Photoshop by choosing Selectmenu: Load Selection.You can also use the selection inPainter by opening the image inPainter and choosing Select menu:Load Selection.

Smart BlurI use Smart Blur sometimes to blendout details before I start painting.1. Choose Filter: Blur: Smart Blur.The Smart Blur dialog box appears.

2. Choose a Radius setting of 25.6and a Threshold setting of 41.9.Click OK. The image is nowslightly blended.

LayersCommand+j, Mac; ctrl+j, Windowsmakes a layer copy. If you select anarea Qrst, then you get a layer copy ofjust the area within the selection, likea Qgure, for example.

Adding to the layerI edit Qgure layers in Photoshop theway I edit them in Painter, paintinginto and beyond the layer edge.To paint past the layer:1. Click the x next to Lock: in theLayers palette to deselect it.

2. With the layer selected, paint—inthe second image in the top row atright, I used the Clone Stamp toextend the hair (press option, Mac;alt, Windows and click on thesource and paint in the destina-tion—in this case, I pressed op-tion/alt and clicked on one part ofthe hair and painted in another).The painted area extends past thelayer, but it’s still part of the layer.

3. Click the x in the Layers palette.Now the brush strokes stay withinthe visible layer, including the newbrush strokes that you justpainted.When you paint past the edge, yourstrokes become the new edge.

I lightened the hair by painting witha Soft Round with Soft Light chosenin the Mode menu in the options bar.The brush strokes remained withinthe new edge (second row, Qrstimage).

Reducing the layerLayer masks work pretty much thesame in Painter and in Photoshop.I use the mask in both to reduce thelayer’s edges. In Photoshop:1. With the layer chosen in the Layerspalette, click the Add Layer Maskicon (the circle in the square). Anicon appears next to the layer icon.

2. With the Brush tool and a SoftRound preset selected, and Normalchosen in the Mode menu, paintwith black to reduce the layer. I re-duced the size of the hair (second

image, second row, below).If you paint out too much, choose

white in the Color panel and paintback what you took out.When you’re done painting in thelayer mask, choose Layer menu: LayerMask: Apply. The mask is nowmerged with the layer and the layer’sedge is reduced.

ColorsUse the Color panel accessed in theWindow menu to choose colors.Choose HSB (Hue, Saturation andBrightness) Sliders in the menu icon.This way, you choose the main colorfamily in the H slider and then youcan play around with the various val-ues and saturations in the other twosliders, and the Color panel staysopen the whole time.

Magnetic LassoThe Photoshop tool that I use themost often is the Magnetic Lasso,found in the Tools panel by clickingand holding on the Lasso tool.I use the Magnetic Lasso for select-ing everything from Qgures for por-traits to image objects for creatingimage hose nozzles in Painter.Here’s how the Magnetic Lasso tool

This chapter covers the Photoshop tools that I use the most often whenturning photos into paintings.I’ve been using Painter longer, so I do a lot of things there that experiencedPhotoshop users might do in Photoshop.If you are used to working in Photoshop, use all the tools that you knowhow to use. These pages aren’t trying to imply that these are the only Photo-shop tools there are, they’re just the ones I use.If you’re like me and know Painter better, these are the main Photoshopfeatures you need to know for painting photos.

Adobe Photoshop tools


works.1. Click a starting point.2. Move the cursor along the edge ofthe area you want to select.

3. Click a point every inch or two asyou go along the edge of the Qgure,or whatever you’re selecting. Theline acts as a magnet and sticks tothe areas between the clicks.

4. If you click in the wrong spot,press delete, Mac; backspace, Win- dows to go back.

5. If the selection gets hopelesslyjumbled, press return, Mac; enter,Windows, which completes the se-lection. Press command+d, Mac;ctrl+d, Windows to deselect the se-lection. Start over again.

6. Keep going till you get to the start-ing point and click your last pointon the Qrst one, or press return/enter, which results in a selectionmarquee.Once you have the selection mar-quee, you can edit it with the Lasso.To reduce the selection, hold downoption, Mac; alt, Windows and drawa circle with the Lasso where youwant to reduce the selection. The no.1 circle in the image at left shows youthe direction in which you woulddrag the circle to reduce the selection.To add to the selection, hold downthe shift key and draw a circle withthe Lasso around the section whereyou want the selection to extend to.The no. 2 circle shows you where youwould draw the circle.Once you have your selection theway you want it, choose Select menu:

SelectingPhotos by Karen Sperling (top) andDavid Derex (left).

Photoshop LayersPaintings by Karen Sperling from aphoto by Anita Morrison.

Wacom tablets/Shortcuts 39

For instance, paint with the Air-brushes’ Digital Airbrush. The strokeis one width no matter how you pressdown on the stylus.In Window menu: Brush Controls:Size, choose Pressure in the Expres-sion menu and move the Min Sizeslider to the left. Now, painting withlight pressure produces narrow brushstrokes; painting with heavy pressuregives you wide strokes.Painter 11’s variants with the wordReal in their names take special ad-vantage of the Wacom stylus.Choose the Pencils’ Real 2B Pencil,for instance. Hold the stylus perpen-dicular to the tablet as you draw andyou get a thin line, like under the lipin the portrait on the opposite page.If you draw with the stylus tiltedslightly you can shade as if you weretilting an actual pencil, like on theforehead on the opposite page.

photoshop pressureIn Photoshop, I painted the Roweron this page without changing brushsize. All I did was set up the brush sothat pressing lightly on the stylus gaveme a thin stroke and pressing heavilygave me a thick one.The Qrst image in the top row is thephoto, the one next to it shows youthe early brush strokes and the set-tings—I used a Hard Round brushand chose Pen Pressure in the Controlmenu in Shape Dynamics (see below).Pressing lightly on the stylus, Ipainted short, thin strokes to createtexture and long, thin outlines to es-tablish lights and darks. I lowered theopacity in the options bar, pressedheavily on the stylus and painted thewide areas of color.In the second row, the Qrst image isa little further along in the process. I

made the area in the image’s lowerright-hand corner yellow-orange, thecolor complement of the blue-violetin the Rower and I painted where Isaw lights and darks in the photo.The image next to it is the Qnalpainting. I added yellow-orange in theRower and blue-violet in the back-ground for color harmony.I blended colors by adding strokeson 30% opacity. The more you paint,the more they blend.

hide the cursorIf you’re using the Cintiq, in Painter,choose Preferences: General: Singlepixel, which pretty much hides thecursor while you paint (you still see atiny circle).I use the Intuos for painting largeareas and the Cintiq for painting de-tails. You don’t need both, but if youhave both, painting is great fun!

Wacom Tablets/shortcuts


painting with wacom TabletsPhoto by Karen Sperling (right).Painting by Karen Sperling from aphoto by Alfred Burgess (top). Paintingby Karen Sperling from a photo byNancy Goodman (opposite page).

I’ve been using Wacom tablets since I demonstrated the Qrst version ofPainter when it debuted at the August 1991 Boston Macworld at the Wacombooth, which Painter shared.Wacom (pronounced WAH-come, not way-calm) tablets and pen displaysallow you to edit pixels by painting with a stylus with a hand motion similarto that of painting or drawing with traditional brushes.If you’ve never heard of Wacom, take a look at wacom.com.If you don’t use a Wacom tablet, go get one.Painting in Painter and in Photoshop is greatly enhanced when you do itwith a stylus. Tablet companies come and go, but Wacom is the standard.This chapter covers how I use Wacom tablets.The wacom.com site has a lot of good information for using Wacomtablets, and offers updated drivers—it’s always a good idea to update thedrivers to keep things running smoothly. Visit the web site for details.

Wacom tablets come in two vari-eties: The Intuos-type devices, whereyou paint on a tablet and the informa-tion appears on your computer moni-tor; and the Cintiq version, where youpaint directly on a computer screen.I have always used a medium-sizedIntuos-style tablet in its various incar-nations, the latest being an Intuos4.I also have a Cintiq, which I use asmy main monitor for my desktopMac. I have an LG monitor as my sec-ond monitor. The Cintiq, which youcan calibrate for printing, has theimage I’m working on, and the LGhas all the Painter/Photoshop palettes.

pressing ButtonsThe Intuos and the Cintiq have but-tons that people like to customize forfrequently used shortcuts and tools.I like to use the buttons on the de-fault settings, which I Qnd work great,a compliment to Wacom!You might prefer to set up the but-tons to coordinate with shortcuts dif-ferent from those offered in thedefault settings, and it’s very easy toadjust these controls to Qt yourunique working style.

Wacom tablets also offer a touchstripfor adjusting brush stroke size, or itcan control image zooming.I use the keyboard to edit brush size.Photoshop CS4’s brush resize short-cut is control+option+click and drag,Mac; alt+click the button on the sty-lus (i.e., right click)+click and drag,Windows.In Painter, the resize shortcut is op-tion+command+click and drag, Mac;alt+ctrl+click and drag, Windows.For image zooming, I use the naviga-tor in Photoshop and the zoom sliderat the bottom, left-hand side of theimage window in Painter.

sensitivity: PainterIn Painter, you can set the stylussensitivity in Preferences: Brush

Tracking (image below).Holding the stylus, click and drag astroke across the Scratch Pad area.If you want to make strokes using alight touch, then drag lightly acrossthe Scratch Pad area. If you tend tohave a heavy touch, drag more heav-ily. Click OK. The stylus is now moreresponsive to your personal touch.

painter pressureYou can set up the stylus to controlbrush stroke characteristics like sizeand opacity based on pressure.In Painter, the settings are in Win-dow: Brush Controls: Expressionmenu in each of the listed palettes.

PortraitPainting by Karen Sperling from a photo by Mary WynnBall, featured in the August 2005 issue of ArtistryTips and Tricks http://www.artistrymag.com/

Portraits3

P ainting portraits tops most peoples’ lists forwhat they’d like to do with photos in Corel

Painter and in Adobe Photoshop.In this section, you’ll apply the art theories youlearned in Section 1 and the painting tools youdiscovered in Section 2 to painting portraits inPainter and in Photoshop.By the way, use 300 dpi as your standard resolu-tion for Rles that you output to paper or canvas,including portraits, landscapes, pets and any otherpaintings that you do.Using 300 dpi, the dimensions are the actualsize, i.e., if you create a Rle at 8" x 10" at 300 dpi,it will print out at 8" x 10".To paint from photos, make sure the sourcephoto is the desired dimensions because the re-sulting painting is the same size as the sourcephoto, usually—you may crop at the end, etc., butgenerally, the photo and the painting are the samesize.One other thing, if you get into really large out-put sizes, like 30" x 40", you can create the Rlehalf the size at 15" x 20" then resize up in Photo-shop to 30" x 40" at the end.Working at half the size will help things go morequickly.

41

oil-painted portraits 43

LipsPaint the lips by blendingthem with the Just Add Water,

adding color with the Chalk’s SharpChalk, blending some more with JustAdd Water, then repeating. Followthe tones in the photo and also the artconcept that the upper lip is darkerthan the lower lip (see page 19). No-tice in all the images how the lipschanged shape as I worked on tones.I was trying to get them to look likethe photo and like a painting, too! Inthe photo on the far right in this row,I painted color on the entire face withthe New Simple Water. I wanted toadjust the tones, but I didn’t want toaffect the brush strokes I had so far.

3

Adding PaintBegin the painting using theRealBristle Brushes’ Real Oils

Short brush for bristly strokes, like onthe jaw and in the hair; the Chalk’sSquare Chalk for textured strokes,like on the forehead; and the Chalk’sSharp Chalk for tonal strokes likeunder the lip and in the hair. Pick upcolor by pressing option, Mac; alt,Windows and clicking in the image,choose a lighter or darker tone in theColors palette, and then paint.Learning to paint isn’t as muchabout acquiring painting dexterity asit is about getting good at observingtones and painting them. The moreyou paint, the better you get.

1

EyesPaint the irises by blendingwith the Blenders’ Just Add

Water and lightening the bottoms alittle with the Photo’s Dodge.Paint shadows at the tops of the eyeswith the Digital Watercolors’ NewSimple Water on 2% opacity. See theart lessons on page 18 for detailsabout painting eyes.Painting with the RealBristle Brush-es’ Real Oils Short, continue addingtones and colors in the skin, thenblending them back, building up theportrait based on the tones in thephoto. Paint and lift and paint againto get color; paint without lifting andthe strokes blend together.

2

I used Painter to create this portrait in an oil-paintedstyle from a photo by renowned photographer PhillipStewart Charis.When you paint portraits, whether it’s in Painter or inPhotoshop or with traditional paints, you paint tonesrather than objects like hair and faces. Painting the toneswill give you a painterly result and will insure that theperson in the painting resembles the one in the photo.What makes the Rnal image more painterly than thephoto is the use of the art concepts described starting onpage 10—high contrast, uniRed colors and fewer details.

Start this painting by opening the photo in Photoshop.Choose Image: Duplicate and select the light part ofthe girl (head, shoulders, arms, etc.) with the MagneticLasso (see page 36 for instructions). Use Image: Adjust-ments: Levels to lighten the selected area to create aclear focal point, or area of greatest contrast betweenlight and dark with the background—see page 14 for in-formation about focal points.Use Image: Adjustments: Color Balance to make theRgure a little less yellow and a little more red to Rt inbetter with the predominantly red color scheme.

Open the photo in Painter and chooseFile: Clone and File: Save As.Choose the Window menu: Under-painting palette, set Smart Blur on 34%and click Apply. Smart Blur removessome of the detail, making the imagemore painterly. Save this version, chooseFile: Clone again, and name it.As you proceed through the followingsteps, turn Tracing Paper on and off—seepage 27 for instructions.

Oil-Painted portraits


Oil-Painted PortraitPainting by Karen Sperling from a photo byPhillip Stewart Charis.

oil-painted portraits 45

Chair

As you learned in the art les-sons on page 17, one of the

differences between a painting and aphoto is that a painting has less detailthan the photo.For the chair, smooth out tones inthe wood and in the upholstery usingthe Square Chalk as a blender, creat-ing distinct areas of light and darkwhile blending out the details.For instance, the top of the chair atright is a light tone, below it is a darkone and below that is a midtone.Paint out details within each tonalsection, and create the edges deRningeach section. These edges are detailsthat add to our understanding of the

8

Jewelry/FlowersBlend out the photographicjewelry with the Square Chalk

as a blender.Then use the Pens’ ScratchboardTool to paint the necklace and ear-rings back in. Paint white, black andgray where you see light, dark andmedium tones in the photograph,using Tracing Paper as your guide.Fix up the skin and Sower by paint-ing with the Artists’ Oils’ BlenderBristle and the RealBristle Brushes’Real Oils Short.Add color to the highlights andshadows with the Chalk’s SharpChalk, then blend with the BlenderBristle and Real Oils Short.

7

Dress

Lighten the source image tosee the folds in the dress

better (Effects: Tonal Control: AdjustColors, move the Value slider to theright).Turning Tracing Paper on and off(click the icon in the image window’supper right-hand corner), paint thefolds in the dress with the Artists’Oils’ Blender Bristle, using differenttones of the basic dress color basedon the lights and darks in the sourceimage.To get the effect in the dress, youpaint with the Artists’ Oils’ BlenderBristle in a sort of scribbling motion.As you paint, the brush runs out of

9Speed controls how fast the brushstrokes appear—adjust to taste.Click the arrow and let the brushstrokes go for awhile, then click inthe image to stop them.This produces some nice horizontalstrokes in the background.Paint with the Cloners’ Soft Clonerto Rx edges.For the brush strokes going aroundthe image edge, Rrst choose Windowmenu: Underpainting palette: EdgeEffect: Jagged Vignette and lower theAmount slider.Then, paint over the vignette withthe Blender Bristle to create the brushstrokes. Paint both with red and withblack to add a little color and textureto the black.

6


adjustingChoose Layers: Dry DigitalWatercolor for other brushes

to interact with the Digital Watercolorstrokes. Paint light strokes with theSquare Chalk, and blend with ablender variation of the Square Chalk.See the steps on page 24 for turningbrushes into blenders and saving asnew variants.Continue to paint with the previ-ously mentioned brushes, paintingmore color here, lightening there, fol-lowing the tones in the photo.Add dark tones around the eyes andlips with the New Simple Water.Adjust levels and color balance inPhotoshop at the end of the painting.

4

HairAs you saw on page 19, painthair using broad areas of light

and dark, then add a few strands.Paint areas with the Real Oils Shortvariant. Press option, Mac; alt, Win-dows and click on a light color in thephoto and paint over it with a lighterversion chosen in the Colors palette.Press option/alt and click on darktones and paint with darker versions.When you have broad areas of lightand dark, paint a few individualstrands with the Chalk’s Sharp Chalk.Paint over parts of the strands withthe Real Oils Short to blend.Roughen things up a bit by paintingwith the Square Chalk as a blender.

5

background Story

Paint in the background withthe Artists’ Oils’ Blender

Bristle variant to smooth out areaslike the Sowers.Add some brush strokes using theWindow: Auto-Painting palette.Select part of the background withthe lasso, and with the Artists’ Oils’Blender Bristle chosen, set up Auto-Painting on the following settings(deselect the check boxes, too):Stroke: Fade In/OutPressure: 85%Length: 33%Rotation: 97°Brush Size: 129%Speed: 24%

color. So you have the full color, or inthis case, white, where the highlightis on a fold, and then as you scribbleand as the brush runs out of color,you paint into the shadows to create ablended effect.When done, choose Edit: Undo inthe source image to get the originaltones back.I rarely make a brush stroke thatlooks perfect.The process is like I describe in thistutorial. You paint, then you blend,then you paint, then you blend again,continuing to build up paint based onthe areas of light and dark in thephoto. Eventually, you get a painting!And that’s how I painted a photo byPhillip Stewart Charis!

chair we are looking at, so leave themin.After blending with the SquareChalk as a blender, paint back high-lights, midtones and shadows usingthe Artists’ Oils’ Blender Bristle. No-tice I didn’t paint back all the scrollsin the wood or the pattern in the fab-ric—I just suggested them with tones.To add the color full strength, paintand lift the stylus, then paint again.To gradually fade the color as youpaint, keep painting without liftingthe stylus.Paint with the Cloners’ Soft Clonerto bring back some of the edges. Themore you add your own strokes, themore painterly the image will look, sogo easy on the Soft Cloner.

46 Karen Sperling’s Painting for Photographers Watercolor Portraits 47

First, the boyChoose the Digital Watercolor’s New Simple Waterand make these adjustments:

Window menu: Brush Controls: General palette: StrokeType: Rake. Brush Controls: Angle palette: Squeeze slider:39%; Angle slider: 199°. Set Opacity on 20%, Grain on 0%and Wet Fringe on 50% in the Property Bar. Save thechanges as a variant (see page 24 for steps).In traditional watercolor, you paint the lightest tones Rrst,then work your way up to the darker ones.Choose a light value of red-orange in the Colors paletteand begin to paint in the boy’s hair. Shut off Tracing Paperto check your progress.Turn Tracing Paper back on and continue to paint, usingdifferent-width strokes by adjusting the Size slider.Scribble Digital Watercolor strokes to blend colors to-gether. Also, if you start on a light area and drag you’ll get alighter color, start on a darker area and the brush strokewill be darker. Choose a lighter value for the boy’s face anda darker value for his shirt in the Colors palette and keeppainting. You’re putting in washes of color, so it’s OK if youdon’t have details at this point.Meanwhile, the Wacom Intuos4 tablet produces moreSexibility when painting Digital Watercolor strokes thanI’ve ever seen with previous models.Press lightly and paint: The brush strokes will blend, giv-ing you true-to-life watercolor effects.

Then, the Girl and backgroundContinue to paint light strokes. Choose a blue-greenand paint the girl’s clothes.

You paint by building up all the areas of the painting atthe same time. You don’t, for example, paint the boy untilhe’s completely done and then move onto the girl.The idea is to build up the tones throughout the painting,and as you do so, details will emerge.One of the many nice things about the Digital Watercolorsis that you can easily Rx strokes by simply painting overthem while the strokes are still “wet.” They remain wetuntil you dry them (Layers menu: Dry Digital Watercolor).They also stay wet if you save in Painter’s native .rif (RIFF)format. You can’t open .rif Rles in Photoshop, by the way.Paint and lift and paint and lift to get strokes with edges;paint without lifting to get blended strokes.Next start to Rll in the background. Notice how the colornext to the boy’s head gave deRnition to the boy’s proRleeven though I didn’t put any color there. That’s a tradi-tional art technique called negative painting, where youpaint around a space to create the space itself.The secret to painting the green area next to the face asyou see in the above image is to Rrst paint a thin linearound the silhouette and then Rll in the color next to theline with a wider brush (use the Size slider to adjust brushstroke width, or use the shortcut option+command+clickand drag, Mac; alt+ctrl+click and drag, Windows).

1

Watercolor PortraitsI painted this watercolor portrait inPainter from a photo by Scott Stulberg.Scotty’s photo was perfect for a water-color painting because of its bold areasof light and dark.In traditional watercolor, you let theunpainted paper serve as your lightestareas, or highlights. Therefore, I left thehighlights unpainted to emulate the lookof paper in a watercolor painting.The photo’s main colors, red and or-ange, and their complements, green andblue, were just right for a painting.I cropped the photo in Painter. To do

so, click the crop tool in the toolbox (ortype c to access it quickly), click anddrag to select the area you want to keep,then click within the selection to com-plete the crop. To paint, click on thebrush in the toolbox (or type b).Then turn on Tracing Paper.1.Choose Rle: Clone.2.Clear the clone (Select: All, pressdelete, Mac; backspace Windows).

3.Click the Tracing Paper icon in theimage window’s top, right-hand cor-ner to turn on Tracing Paper. (Clickit again to turn Tracing Paper off).

Watercolor PortraitPainting by karen Sperlingfrom a photo by Scott Stulberg.

2

Digital Watercolor’s SaltTo paint the dandelions, use the Digital Water-color’s Salt variant, which paints white intoDigital Watercolor strokes before they’re dried.

Finishing TouchesUse the Finer Mop Brush to paint large areaswith diffused, textured strokes. Lower the Dif-fusion slider in the Property Bar for less diffu-sion and more bristles in the strokes. Loweropacity and press lightly on the stylus for moresubtle strokes. Finishing Up

Keep painting where you seelights and darks in the photo.

It’s an editing process, mostly. Youpaint, then you Rx what you painted,either by lightening or darkeningtones, or by blending.Paint details with the Fine Tip Waterwith a low Size slider setting. Blendthe lines a little, and add bristles tothem by painting over part of themwith the Pure Water Bristle, which isalso good for cleaning up outlineswhere there is too much diffusion.At this point, dry all the Digital Wa-tercolor Strokes.You dry Digital Watercolor strokeseither by choosing Layers: Dry DigitalWatercolor or by saving in any Rle

4

Watercolor Portraits 49

Adding DetailsUsing the custom New SimpleWater you created, raise the

Size slider to paint wide strokes forbroad areas like the clothing andbackground rather than a lot of nar-row strokes.Lower the Size slider to paint detailslike on the sleeves and the eyes.Turn up the Grain slider a little forthe clothing and hair.Paint darker and lighter tones by ad-justing the Opacity slider, using thephoto’s tones to guide you.Paint with a lower opacity on thebroader areas of color and a higheropacity on the details.Use the Digital Watercolor’s WetEraser on high size and low opacitysettings to lighten tones.I made the girl’s face darker than theboy’s to create dramatic areas of lightand dark. I Rgured since the boy wasfacing the light, and the girl was fac-ing away from it, that her face wouldbe darker, even though it was hard tosee that difference in the photo.Sometimes you make decisions likethat based on logic and not necessar-ily on what you see in the photo.Paint highlights like on the boy’sshirt with the Wet Eraser on low sizeand high opacity settings.Paint with the New Simple Blenderon a low opacity to blend some brushstrokes. Don’t blend too much—

Face TonesSet the Grain slider higher for the clothing,hair and background; lower for the faces.Lighten tones with the Digital Watercolor’s WetEraser with a low opacity.Leave highlights white like the paper showingthrough in traditional watercolor paintings.

New Simple WaterWith low size and high opacity settings, paintdetails like hair strands and clothing outlines.

New Simple WaterWith high size and low opacity settings, paintareas like hair, clothing and backgrounds.

Round Water BlenderWith low opacity and wet fringe, and high sizesettings, paint to blend. Paint white highlightson the shirt with the Wet Eraser. Use the NewSimple Blender to blend watercolor strokeslike on the boy’s shirt and on his arms.

showing the brush strokes makes theimage look more painterly.To paint the girl’s hair:1. Paint broad color with wide (highSize slider) strokes using the cus-tom New Simple Water.

2. Paint strands with narrow (lowSize slider) strokes using the cus-tom New Simple Water.

3. Blend with the New SimpleBlender. Paint the line ends toblend them into the big areas ofcolor. Leave the boy’s hair less de-Rned than the girl’s because he’syounger and his hair would beRner.


3

format other than Painter’s native .rifformat and closing the Rle.Paint new Digital Watercolor strokesover dried areas to darken tones andto create edges where the newlypainted strokes and the previouslydried colors meet.Next, paint with Image Hose vari-ants with the word linear in them.Use the Red Poppies and the GreenGrass Bunch nozzles.See page 32 for information aboutpainting with the Image Hose.Blend the Image Hose strokes so thatthey don’t look pasted on by paintingwith the Blenders’ Smudge to blendwith texture and the Just Add Watervariant to blend without texture.Clouds

Use the Wet Eraser on wet watercolor to createclouds. Blend with the Pure Water Bristle.

Pastel Portraits 51

Auto CloneNext create an underpaintingusing Auto Clone. Choose

the Chalk’s Square Chalk variant andlower the Opacity slider to get trans-parent strokes to build up the effectgradually. Also, lower the Size slider.To clone the colors from the previ-ous image, click the rubber stamp inthe Colors palette.Choose Effects: Esoterica: AutoClone. Chalk strokes appear, lightlybringing in the photo as a pastel.To stop the cloning, click anywherein the image.Deselect the rubber stamp in theColors palette.

3

Color schemeEdit the photo so that it hasthe red-orange/blue-green

color scheme.This edited photo is the new sourceimage so that you can clone the colorsfrom it into the drawing later.To edit the colors, create a gradientand then use Express in Image.The steps for doing so are on page29 in the Color in Painter chapter.At left is the gradient that I createdto get the color scheme that you seein the image.This image is now the new sourceimage.

1

Paper colorPastel artists draw on paperthat is a midtone of their

drawing’s colors for two reasons:• Create color harmony because thepaper’s color shows through partsof the Rnal drawing;

• It’s a shortcut—by starting withcolored paper instead of white, itsaves brush strokes.Fill with a color to reproduce the ef-fect of using colored paper.First, choose File: Clone and File:Save As. This new image is the paint-ing. Next, choose a medium blue-green in the Colors palette andEffects: Fill using Current Color. Theimage is now blue-green.

2

I used Painter to create this pastel drawing of a coupleon their wedding day, which I photographed.I drew with the Chalk’s Square Chalk and blendedwith the Blenders’ Smudge. I didn’t blend that much—Ileft the Chalk strokes to make the image look like a pas-tel drawing. For details I used the Chalk’s Sharp Chalk.I used some shortcuts to make the drawing go faster, asyou’re about to see in the next few pages.I decided that the photo was a good candidate to beturned into a painting because it had two of the charac-teristics described in the art chapters starting on page10: It had good contrast and the people were touching.After that, I looked at the photo to decide on a colorscheme, discussed on pages 12-13.You saw in the previous two chapters about oil paint-ing and watercolors that I pretty much used the colorsthat were in the photos.However, the colors in this chapter’s photo didn’t lendthemselves to being painted.I looked at the photo and at the colorwheel on page 12 to come up with a colorscheme.The bride’s dress and the skin tones

were all in the peach family, so I chose red-orange,which is a shade of peach, as my Rrst color, whichmeant blue-green, the color opposite red-orange on thecolor wheel, or its complement, would be my secondcolor. I thought blue-green would work well for thedark areas like the groom’s dark jacket.When you choose a color scheme, you use all the val-

ues within the color, so deciding to use red-orangemeant I could use peach, orange and brown, all differentvalues of red-orange, and light, medium and dark ver-sions of blue-green.Now that I had decided on a color scheme, I choseFile: Clone to make a copy of the photo, and closed thephoto to save it intact. I made the color changes on thenext page on this clone, which would now be the sourceimage.That’s what you should have open on your monitor, aclone of your photo, which you’re about to edit.

Pastel portraits


Pastel PortraitPainting and photo by Karen Sperling.

Pastel Portraits 53

JewelryPaint the bride’s jewelry and hair ornamentwith the Photo’s Dodge. Lower the Size sliderand with Tracing Paper turned on, draw whereyou see the jewelry in the photo.

TonesMake the bride darker because she is inshadow and because doing so creates goodcontrast with the light groom, adding drama inthe drawing. Darken the bride by paintingwith the Photo’s Burn variant on high size andlow opacity. Add some texture to the bride bypainting with the Photo’s Add Grain variant.

blendingBlend more with the Smudge on the faces andin the hair than on the clothing and in thebackground.

HairLeave the blue-green tone in the hair because itadds to color harmony, where colors repeatthroughout the painting. Add brown with theSquare Chalk on low opacity and high size set-tings, providing color and texture to the hair.Draw a few lines with the Chalk’s Sharp Chalkto suggest hair strands.

ready, set, draw!Deselect the background (com-mand+d, Mac; ctrl+d,

Windows) and use the Square Chalkto draw light and dark strokes goingin one direction to indicate tones likeon the bride’s arm, for instance.Draw edges between tones like onthe back of the bride’s dress, for ex-ample, using the Chalk’s Sharp Chalk.Blend a little with the Blenders’Smudge, but not too much—youwant the strokes to look like pastels.Slowly build up these strokes. TurnCanvas: Tracing Paper on and off tosee the highlights and shadows in thesource image and add them in thedrawing.Keep painting a little, blending a lit-tle, and repeating, till you’re done!

7A new slantWith the Chalk’s Square Chalkselected, choose Record Stroke

in the Brush Selector popup menu.Choose a dark blue-green and draw ashort, slanted stroke. Choose AutoPlayback in the Brush Selector popupmenu, and the stroke appears repeat-edly (see image at right). Click in theimage to stop the strokes. Choosepeach—a tone of red-orange—andchoose Auto Playback again, thenstop. Blend the strokes by loweringResat, raising Bleed and choosingAuto Playback again. Raise Resat andlower Bleed, choose another color andchoose Auto Playback again. Repeattill you’re happy with the result.

6


cloning aroundNext, clone in some detailsfrom the source image.

Choose Canvas: Tracing Paper toshow the source image, and with theCloners’ Soft Cloner, paint a little inthe faces and hair.At this stage, you’re just bringing insome of the details (see image atright) from the source image, not thewhole thing.Move the slider in the image win-dow’s lower left-hand corner to zoomup on the image.Press the spacebar and click anddrag in the image to locate the spotyou want to paint.

4

It’s getting darkerMake the background darkerto contrast with the Rgures.

Select with the Magnetic Lasso toolin Photoshop, reopen the Rle inPainter and load the selection.For instructions how, see page 36 inthe Photoshop Tools chapter.Next, in Painter, reattach the paint-ing image and the source image. Seepage 26 for instructions.Choose blue-green in the Colorspalette, and Effects: Surface Control:Color Overlay. Choose Image Lumi-nance in the Using menu, keep DyeConcentration selected and move theOpacity slider to 40%. Click OK. Thebackground is now darker.

5

Airbrushed portraits 55

Less JitteryPaint with the Dodge tool atthe bottom of the irises.

Use the Burn tool on the girl’s left eyeto depict that it is in shadow.Blend in places with the Smudgetool and Charcoal Large Smear preset.Click the checked options in theleft-hand column in the Brushespanel to reveal more options on theright (see image at left).Lower sliders with the word jitter toreduce randomness so that theSmudge strokes are more even.Just lower the sliders a tad. TheSmudge strokes are nice with a littlejitter, or randomness.

3

light adjustmentThe girl’s left eye was in toomuch shadow, which would

have been difRcult to paint.Choose the Dodge tool in the Toolspanel and select Shadows in theRange menu in the options bar.Paint in the girl’s left eye just enoughto make out details so that you cansee them to paint them (see beforeand after images at left).Paint a dark outline around the iriseswith the Brush tool and a HardRound preset on 53% opacity. Pressoption, Mac; alt, Windows and clickon the eyelashes to pick up theircolor and paint the iris outlines.

1

eye for an eyeUse a Soft Round preset on aMaster Diameter of 21 pixels

and Opacity on 25% to paint theirises. Press option/alt and click onthe iris to get the color and then paintone shade of it in the lower part ofthe iris and a darker version on thetop to show a shadow cast by thebrow. See page 37 for informationabout choosing colors and page 18for art theories for painting faces.Blend with the Smudge tool with theCharcoal Large Smear preset selected.Set Master Diameter on 8 pixels,Strength on 23% and select SampleAll Layers in the options bar tosmudge using color data from visible

2

Photoshop’s brushes lend themselves to a “slick,” air-brushed look in contrast to Painter’s brushes, which IRnd are better for painting subtle, textured strokes.I enjoyed using Photoshop to paint David Derex’sphoto, which was a good candidate to be turned into apainting because of the strong contrasts created by inter-esting highlights and shadows.David’s photo is a perfect example of how a sourceimage with strong contrast makes the best painting.Notice how much more interesting thetorso is with the shadow patterns than ifit had been just one tone throughout.Even the most experienced artist wouldhave a difRcult time creating those shad-ows if they weren’t there in the sourcephoto for reference.Set up the photo to paint in Photoshop.1.Open the photo in Photoshop and

chose Image: Duplicate.2. Save and name the duplicate (File: Save As). Closethe original to have it intact.

3. Select the Rgure with the Magnetic Lasso tool (seepage 36 for instructions).

4.Make the selection a layer (command+j, Mac; ctrl+j,Windows).

5.Apply Filter: Blur: Smart Blur, making the Rgure lessdetailed and more painterly.

airbrushed portraits


Airbrushed PortraitPainting by Karen Sperling from a photo byDavid Derex.

layers.Click the eye next to the layer in theLayers panel on and off to make surethe edges in the painting line up withthe edges in the photo.Paint the eyelashes and pupils withthe Brush tool and a Hard Round pre-set. With a Soft Round preset chosen,paint the catchlights, raise the MasterDiameter a bit and paint the areasaround the eyes and add shading atthe top of the whites of the eyes.Paint based on the tones in thephoto, using lighter and darker ver-sions of the photo’s tones to add con-trast.Using a low opacity, you overlapstrokes and gradually build up paint.

torsoPaint the areas of light, medium and darktones with the Brush tool and a Soft Roundpreset on 30% opacity. Layer brush strokes tobuild up the smooth transition between tones.

lipsBlend the lips with the Smudge tool and theOil Medium Wet Flow preset with Strength on76%. Add tones with the Brush tool and a SoftRound preset on 30% opacity. In general,when painting the lips, the idea is to make theupper lip darker than the lower lip even ifthat’s not how it looks in the photo.See page 19 for art concepts for painting lips.

hair RaisingBlend with the Smudge tool and the OilMedium Wet Flow preset with Strength on76%. Blend to create areas of light and dark.Next, paint some strands with the Brush toolon 60% opacity and the Rough Round Bristlepreset selected. Press option/alt and click on acolor in the hair to pick it up and either paintwith it or choose a lighter/darker tone to em-phasize highlights/shadows.Then, with the Smudge tool, blend at the endsand edges of strokes to make them look morelike they’re part of the hair and not pasted on.This is a back-and-forth process.Paint some strokes, blend, paint, blend—keepgoing till you are happy with the result.

jawPaint some shadow on the jaw line and belowthe lips with the Brush tool and a Soft Roundpreset on 30% opacity. Layer brush strokes tobuild up the smooth transition between tones.

Hair-eticalPaint the skin, lips and jewelryusing the same tools.

Paint the jewelry and the light partof the face with the Brush tool and aSoft Round preset. Paint the edges ofthe jewelry with a Hard Round presetand use the Smudge tool to blend be-tween the hard edges and the softinner strokes.Paint the dark tones darker and lighttones lighter to create more drama.One of the differences between aphoto and a painting is that a paint-ing has less detail, so to paint thehair, blend individual hair strands tocreate large areas of highlights, mid-tones and shadows, then suggeststrands (see Hair Raising captionabove, left).

4

56 Karen Sperling’s Painting for Photographers Airbrushed portraits 57

with a smearTo extend the hair and toblend it with the background,

paint some hair strands with theBrush tool and the Rough RoundBristle preset.Press option/alt and click on a colorin the hair and either paint with it orchoose a lighter or darker tone of it,depending on what you see in thesource image. Pick up backgroundcolors and paint into the hair, also toblend the hair with the backgroundbetter. Use the Smudge tool and theOil Medium Wet Flow preset to blendsome of the background elements andto blend the hair with the backgroundeven more.

7

Brush UpFor the background, use theBrush tool and a Soft Round

preset on 80% opacity with a highMaster Diameter.Press option/alt and click on a darkblue in the girl’s top, click Back-ground in the Layers panel and painta few strokes.Selecting blue creates color har-mony—see pages 12-13 for art con-cepts for choosing colors.Meanwhile, because the skin tone ison the orange side, and blue is thecolor complement—or opposite onthe color wheel—of orange, the twocolors go together well.

5

A New LeafSwitch to an Airbrush SoftRound preset and paint more

blue in the background to keep someof the texture while eliminating thegreen because it doesn’t Rt into thecolor scheme.Choose the Scattered Leaves preseton 50% opacity, raise the Scatteringsliders in the Brushes panel and paintin the background with red and or-ange at various Master Diameter set-tings, creating more color harmony.Save, and then choose File: Save Asand create a new version.Then Satten (Layer menu: FlattenImage). Now you can do the Rnaltouchups.

6

Photorealistic Portraits 59

The eyes have itPaint the face with the art con-cepts on pages 18-19 in mind.

Begin painting the eyes using theChalk’s Sharp Chalk. Press option,Mac; alt, Windows, and click on adark brown in the image and paint anoutline around the irises.Next, press option, Mac; alt, Win-dows and click on the reddish brownin the right eye.Paint the irises of both eyes withinthe dark brown edges.Choose a darker tone in the Colorspalette and paint the pupils.Choose the Chalk’s Square Chalk,lower the Size slider and paint theeyelashes.Darken the area below the eyelashesby painting with the Chalk’s SharpChalk. Press option/alt and click on

1PhotoRealistic Portraits


The Photorealism art movement Rrstappeared in the late 1960’s.Its members created paintings thatwere so realistic, they could have beenphotographs.I call a digital portrait or landscapefrom a photo photorealistic if the paint-ing looks like the photo, as opposed toother portraits and landscapes that in-clude only some parts of the photo.Photorealistic portraits are very popularamong photographers offering paintedportraits to their clients.Photographer Jackie Hicks commis-sioned me to paint the painting on thispage from her beautiful photo.

Her instructions were: “Paint it lightly.”She wanted it to look just like herphoto, but with a painterly touch.To set up the photo to paint in Painter:1.Open the photo in Painter (File:Open) and choose File: Clone.

2.Name this clone copy (File: SaveAs).

3.Resize and reposition the originaland the clone so that they are sideby side on the monitor.

4.Choose the Underpainting palette inthe Window menu and use SmartBlur on the clone.

5. Save the smart blur version, thenchoose File: Clone and paint.

Photorealistic PortraitPainting by Karen Sperlingfrom a photo by Jackie Hicks.

colors already in the image and paintwith them.Blend all the transitions between col-ors by painting with the Blenders’ JustAdd Water.With the Digital Watercolor’s NewSimple Water chosen, with opacity setto 4%, paint a shadow at the top ofeach iris.Choose Layers menu: Dry DigitalWatercolor when done.With the Chalk’s Sharp Chalk, paintthe catchlights.Turn the Sharp Chalk into a blenderbrush and blend the eyelash shadowsand the irises.With the Square Chalk set up as ablender, add texture on the eyelidsand under the eyes.See page 24 for steps for creatingand saving blenders.

LipsUse the Chalk’s Square Chalkto paint the lips. Press option/

alt and click on the pink at the top ofthe bottom lip and paint over thewhite, shiny part to even up the tone.Choose a darker pink in the Colorspalette, paint the outlines and add thedark color in the shadows. With theBlenders’ Smudge, blend the strokesand smooth out the transitions.Continue to paint, adding tones andblending them based on the tones inthe photograph.Don’t blend too much—lettingbrush strokes show makes the imagelook more painterly.

2

Fine FeathersThe feathers got a little toosmooth in the blur step. To

paint some texture back into them,create a custom brush tip (see inset atright) for the Artists’ Sargent Brush—with the Sargent Brush selected, presslightly to get the thin strokes andpress heavily for the wider strokes.See page 27 for information aboutcreating a custom brush.Paint with the custom-tip brushwith the rubber stamp selected in theColors palette to pick up colors fromthe source image and with it dese-

3

Add a dash of white with the SharpChalk on the lower lip and blendwith the Smudge.See page 19 for art theories forpainting lips.That’s a good trick for lighteningareas in general—paint with the chalkthen blend with a blender.

lected to choose your own colors.Add strokes to the face with the de-fault Square Chalk and then blendthem with the Square Chalk on theblender settings you used earlier.Press option/alt and click on thecheeks, choose a lighter tone in theColors palette and paint on thecheeks to lighten them a bit.Add some brush strokes on a lowopacity throughout.Last, choose the Cloners’ Soft Clonervariant and paint lightly on some ofthe feathers to bring back a little de-tail, especially around the face.

Auto-Painted Portraits 61

Auto-PaintingAuto-Painting comes next.See page 25 for information for

working with Auto-Painting.Paint a custom stroke with theArtists’ Sargent Brush—you see thestroke at right—name it bd, thenAuto-Paint with it on various slidersettings in the Auto-Painting palette,with the check boxes below Random-ness deselected.Run Auto-Painting, change the slid-ers, run it again, change again.By adjusting all these sliders, run-ning Auto-Painting, stopping it, ad-justing the sliders, and runningAuto-Painting some more, the brushstrokes build up in a painterly way.

3

Effects: FillLike pastel artists using col-ored paper for their drawings

(see page 51), oil painters apply amidtone coat of paint to their can-vases to create color harmony and tosave painting time.Clone the photo (File: Clone). Thenchoose a medium beige in the Colorspalette and chose Effects: Fill (com-mand+f, Mac; ctrl+f, Windows). Clicknext to Current Color in the dialog ifit isn’t already selected, then clickOK. You now have a Rrst coat of beigepaint, technically called an under-painting in art terminology. You couldturn on Tracing Paper from here, butyou don’t need it, yet.

1

Auto-CloningNext, you’ll apply Auto Cloneto speed up painting.

Choose the Artists’ Impressionistvariant.Edit the Impressionist variant so thatits strokes go in one direction insteadof in multiple directions, which is thedefault setting, by moving Window:Brush Controls: Angle palette: AngRange and Ang Step sliders to 0°.Raise the Size slider and lower theOpacity slider in the Property Bar toget large, transparent strokes to buildup the effect gradually.Last, in the Colors palette, click therubber stamp icon, which will makethe brush strokes lift the color from

2

If Painting for Photographers were an album, then thispainting of mine, which everyone has named “DegasDancers,” would be the title song.I invited photographers to send their photos for me topaint for tutorials for both this book and for my e-zine,Artistry Tips and Tricks.Felicia Tausig, a professional photographer who hasstudied painting with me, submitted her photo with a

bunch of others, and I selected this one to paint origi-nally for an issue of Artistry Tips and Tricks.I chose this photo to paint because it was taken fromslightly above the dancers. This angle gave the dancersan interesting layout and it made them look like theywere touching, a characteristic of good composition (seepages 16-17 for others). And the dancers’ positionsformed interesting triangles, which, combined with the

other characteristics, made this photo agood one to turn into a painting.What also made this photo a goodpainting candidate was that it had a lim-ited number of colors and good contrast.I pushed the contrast even more bychoosing Effects: Tonal Control: Equalize(in Painter). I used the default settingsand clicked OK.I also chose Effects: Tonal Control:Brightness/Contrast and raised the topslider a bit and clicked OK.

auto-painted portraits


Degas DancersPainting by Karen Sperling from a photo byFelicia Tausig.

the source image.Choose Effects: Esoterica: AutoClone. Brush strokes appear, bringing

in the photo as a painting.To stop Auto Clone, click anywherein the image.

Auto-Painted Portraits 63

Last StepsAdd the background bycloning from a backdrop from

the Artistry Scenes Backdrops Volume1 CD (visit http://artistrymag.com/ fordetails) or from any other landscape.Resize the backdrop window andput it on the right-hand side of yourscreen, and resize the dancers win-dow and put it on the left (see image,left).Then with the Cloners’ Soft Clonerselected, press option, Mac; alt, Win-dows, click on a place to start cloningfrom in the backdrop image and paintin the dancers image.After you paint from the backdrop,extend the stage by pressing option,

9

Adding ColorIn some places, the Auto-Painting strokes bring the

wrong color into an area. Add theright color with the Chalk’s SquareChalk. Choose Brush Selector menu:Restore Default Variant to bring backthe brush’s original settings. Then ei-ther choose a color and paint, or usea color from the photo by clicking therubber stamp in the Colors palette.Then blend with the Square Chalk asa blender (see page 24 for steps).

7

Let’s Face ItNext paint the faces, hair,hands and shoes. First smooth

over the strokes by painting with theSquare Chalk as a blender with theSize slider in the Property Bar on alow setting to get a narrow stroke.With the Soft Cloner also on a verylow size setting, paint the eyes, nosesand lips from the original. Just paintthe photo in slightly—you don’t wantto lose the painterly look.Then, using the photo as your guide,add color with the Square Chalk,painting in lights and darks on theface where you see them in the photo.Last, blend the strokes with theSquare Chalk as a blender.This is a back-and-forth process. Youpaint the color a little, you blend a lit-tle, you paint with the Soft Cloner alittle, you blend a little. You keep re-peating till you’re done.

8CloningChoose the Soft Edge Clonerbrush in the Restoration

palette (which is a short cut to theCloners’ Soft Cloner variant, by theway).Here’s where art concepts come intoplay.Your Rrst thought might be to sim-ply paint back elements like faces.Instead, concentrate on restoringedges of contrast between light anddark because the more areas of con-trast that a painting has, the more in-teresting it is.In the bottom, right image, for in-stance, paint the edges between lightand dark on the dancer’s tutu.Turn on Tracing Paper to follow thephoto while painting, turn off TracingPaper to see the results.See page 27 for more informationabout Tracing Paper.Lower the Size slider in the PropertyBar to bring back a smaller amount ofthe original so that you don’t wipe outall the brush strokes.Don’t worry about painting backevery detail. A photo is more detailedthan a painting, so your image willlook more painterly if you leave outdetail. Just bring in enough to suggestyour subject.

6


ScribbleSwitch to the Scribble stroke inthe Auto-Painting palette.

Check the Randomness boxes for allthe parameters and run Scribble forawhile, stop it, adjust the Brush Sizeslider in the Auto-Painting palette,then run Scribble again, for justenough brush stroke variety.

4Impressionist BrushChoose the Artists’ Impression-ist variant. Choose Brush Se-

lector menu: Restore Default Variantto get back the original settings. Clickthe rubber stamp in the Colors paletteand run Scribble with the Random-ness boxes checked. Run Scribble forawhile, stop it, adjust the Brush Sizeslider in the Auto-Painting palette,then run Scribble again, for evenmore variety. Repeat several times.

5

Mac; alt, Windows and clicking on apart of the stage in the image’s fore-ground and painting in the back-ground. You can see where the stagewas in the original photo and how Iextended it in the image on page 60.Last, touch up various parts of theimage.Press option/alt and click on a partof the image to paint from and paintwhere you want to do the touchup.For instance, I eliminated the dancerall the way to the left who was cut offand also eliminated some of the darkspots of color on some of the cos-tumes.I also added to the foliage in theback.

Impressionism began ofRcially in Paris in 1874 byartists including Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who painted how they perceived natureand how light affected their subjects.Take Monet’s Haystacks, for instance, which he paintedat different times of day, in different seasons and undervarying weather conditions (do a google.com search).The series is a perfect example of the philosophy pre-sented in this book that you’re paintingareas of light and dark, not objects.Monet was able to create great art from

a subject that might have been considered uninterestingby those who think art is about objects instead of lightsand darks.If you want your paintings from photos to really looklike paintings, take a cue from the Impressionists—thinkin terms of painting your perceptions of a scene, not thescene itself.The photo is the exact record of the scene.

impressionist Portraits


Impressionist PortraitPainting and photo by Karen Sperling. Phototaken at Butterfly House, Topanga, CA.

Impressionist Portraits 65

Bowers of flowersOpen a photo in Painter (File: Open), clone it (File:Clone) and name it (File: Save As).

To add Sowers, open other photos and clone Sowers intothis photo, using either the Cloners’ Soft Cloner or xScale2P variants. See page 26 for steps for using the xScale 2P.To clone with the Cloners’ Soft Cloner:1. Press option, Mac; alt, Windows.2. Click on a Sower or anything else you want to clone.3. Paint where you want the Sower to appear.Repeat Sowers from one part of the photo in other parts.Clone one of the yellow Sowers onto a stem next to theRgure’s hand to make it look like she is holding a Sower. Toplace the stem that is next to the hand into the hand,choose the Chalk’s Sharp Chalk variant, press option, Mac;alt, Windows and click on the hand to pick up the color,then paint over the stem, making it look like it is inside thehand. Blend the color a little with the Blenders’ Smudge.

Brush StrokesPaint the Rgure with the Acrylics’ Opaque Acrylicvariant with these settings in the Property Bar:

Opacity: 10%; Resat: 0%; Bleed: 49%.2

1Tone ControlPaint with the Chalk’s Sharp Chalk variant to addlights and darks to the hair; eliminate the shadow at

the top of the nose; and add some color to the lips. Pressoption, Mac; alt, Windows and click on a color in theimage, choose a lighter or darker tone in the Colors paletteand paint. Then blend with the Blenders’ Smudge variant.See pages 18-19 for the art concepts for painting faces andhair.

3


Chalk’s Square ChalkOpacity: 72%; Resat: 39%; Bleed: 73%; Jitter:2.49; Colors palette rubber stamp: checked.Paint a bunch of strokes for a texture effect.

Sponges’ Smeary Wet SpongeOpacity: 85%; Pull: 26%; Jitter: 2.15; Colorspalette rubber stamp: checked. Paint a bunchof strokes for another texture effect.

Acrylics’ Opaque AcrylicOpacity: 60%; Resat: 30%; Bleed: 49%; Colorspalette rubber stamp: checked. This bristlybrush adds a nice painterly touch.

Painting flowersTo paint the Sowers and thebackgound textures, use

many brushes—they’re listed belowand on the opposite page.I painted everything on the Canvas.I know some people like to use lay-ers, and I use them sometimes, but ingeneral, I Rnd painting without layersis easier—you don’t have to keeptrack of which layer is which.Instead of keeping experiments onlayers, I save them in separate images.That way, I can use something froma previous step and still avoid layers.To save an interim step, save (File:Save), then choose File: Clone, namethe clone (File: Save As) and close theprevious version you saved beforeyou cloned. Then you can borrow el-ements from the saved image.For instance, let’s say you have savedRve interim versions. And let’s sayyou like the way you did a Sower inversion three of the image.With the current version as the ac-tive window, and with version threealso open, choose File: Clone Source:version three.Once the Rles are attached in thisway, you can use the Cloners’ SoftCloner variant to paint in the currentversion whatever you like from ver-sion three.See page 26 for more informationabout clones and clone sources.

4 Different strokesContinue to paint, building upthe artwork based on where

you see highlights, midtones andshadows in the source photo.Use the brushes listed on this pageand on the opposite page.One way to make your photos looklike paintings is to use differentbrushes and strokes throughout.Exploring all the different texturesand effects created not only withPainter and Photoshop’s brushes, butalso with traditional oils, acrylics andother media, is one of the joys ofpainting.

5

Cloners’ Wet Oils ClonerFeature: 3.7. Bring in some details like leavesand the path.

Artists’ OilsPaint the bottoms of dresses and folds in cloth-ing with the Blender Palette Knife.

Blenders’ SmudgeBlend a little, leave part of the strokes showing.

RealBristle BrushesReal Oils Short. Opacity: 65%; Feature: 13.4;Blend: 13%. Paint grass and dress hems.

Impressionist Portraits 67

Artists’ ImpressionistLow size and opacity. Paint texture betweenthings like Sowers for the Impressionist look.

I discovered all the ideas and sugges-tions in this book by playing aroundwith tools and media.I appreciate it when artists, photog-raphers and teachers mention mewhen they use my techniques.Reading this book is a great way foryou to save time by using my ideas inyour own paintings.Meanwhile, take some time to playaround with brushes, variants andpresets in Painter and in Photoshopnot listed in this book.In addition, get a small canvas andsome of the acrylics and oils listedlater in the book and just experiment.You’ll discover media and techniquesand will have fun along the way.Just keep in mind: Write downbrushes and procedures that youenjoy as you test drive tools—youmay not remember the steps later!

Tonal Portraits 69

The Irises Have itPaint with Just Add Water toblend the line between the

darker top and lighter bottom of theeye. Then paint with the Photo’sDodge variant on low opacity tolighten the bottom of the irises.You can paint back a little color withthe New Simple Water if the dodgingmakes the irises too white, thenchoose Layers menu: Dry Digital Wa-tercolor.Paint with Just Add Water to blendthe corners of the eyes to eliminatedetails.Paint highlights on the face. Here’show:1. Choose Layers menu: New Layer.

3

The Perfect BlendStart the portrait by paintingwith the Blenders’ Just Add

Water and blending out details. Painton a lower opacity in the Property Baron the face and on a higher opacity inother areas.Blend the irises with Just Add Wateron a low size setting in the PropertyBar. Then paint out the highlights inthe eyes with the Chalk’s Sharp Chalkon low size and opacity settings in theProperty Bar. Paint the iris outline bypressing option, Mac; alt, Windowsand clicking in the iris to pick upcolor, then choosing a darker shade inthe Colors palette and painting.

1

In the ShadowsAn art concept for paintingportraits is that the eyebrows

and areas above the eyes theoreticallycast a shadow, so you paint a shadowacross the top of the eyes. Here’s how:1. Choose the Digital Watercolor’sNew Simple Water.

2. Choose low size and opacity set-tings in the Property Bar.

3. Press option/alt and click on theiris to pick up the color.

4. Choose a darker shade in the Col-ors palette.

5. Paint across the top of the eye.6. When Rnished painting with theNew Simple Water, choose Layersmenu: Dry Digital Watercolor.

2

I’ve been going to a lot of gallery openings here in LosAngeles recently, and most of the artists today, it seems,paint with light hues and tones.When I started this painting from Michelle Lamberth’sbeautiful photo, I had the idea that I wanted to capturethe light, airy feeling of the paintings I’ve seen recently.That’s why I called this chapter “Tonal Portraits.”You’re going to use a layer to lighten the photo’s tones,making the background lighter than the Rgure, which,

maybe or maybe not coincidentally, is a popular look forpainted portraits nowadays.As you learned in the Tones and Focal Points chapteron pages 14-15, the focal point, or subject, is the area ofgreatest contrast between light and dark.Since in a portrait you want the Rgure to be the sub-ject, then you will make the subject either lighter ordarker than the background—in this painting, darker.In Painter, check your photo’s tones with Effects: Tonal

Control: Adjust Colors. Move the Satura-tion slider all the way to the left to shutoff the photo’s colors, revealing thetones. Choose Edit: Undo to get the col-ors back again when you’re done.I started this painting by opening thephoto in Painter (File: Open) and thenchoosing File: Clone and naming theclone (File: Save As).The Rrst step was painting the Rgure,as you’re about to see.See pages 18-19 for the art concepts forpainting facial features and hair.

Tonal Portraits


Tonal PortraitPainting by Karen Sperling from a photo byMichelle Lamberth.

Deselect Preserve Transparency inthe Layers palette.

2. Choose the Airbrushes’ Digital Air-brush variant; lower opacity in theProperty Bar.

3. Press option/alt and click on ahighlight to pick up the color.

4. Choose a lighter tone of it in theColors palette.

5. Paint where you see highlights inthe photo to lighten them.Then blend the paint.1. Choose the Blenders’ Just AddWater. Lower the Opacity slider.

2. Check Pick Up Underlying Colorin the Layers palette.

3. Paint to soften edges and blend.4. Flatten the layer (Layers: Drop).

Tonal Portraits 71

Oh VeilPaint the veil using TracingPaper as your guide. See page

27 for steps for using Tracing Paper.With the Airbrushes’ Digital Air-brush variant chosen, press option/altand click on the blue-green in theCanvas and paint on the veil in theRgure layer to make the veil looktransparent.Paint the white highlights with thePhoto’s Dodge and blend themslightly with Just Add Water.Reveal some of the background inthe veil, and clean up the Rgure’sedges, by painting in a layer mask —see the steps for using layer masks onpage 31.

Light FantasticUse layers to make the back-ground lighter than the Rgure.

Here are the steps to do so.1. Click in the Canvas in the Layerspalette.

2. Choose Select: All.3. Press option, Mac; alt, Windowsand choose Select: Float. You get alayer copy of the Canvas.

4. In the Layers palette, choose Over-lay to reveal the bride and loweropacity to turn down brightness.Here’s how to get the texture:1. Shut the eye next to the new layerin the Layers palette.

2. Click Canvas in the Layers palette.3. Choose white in the Colors palette.4. Choose the Chalk’s Square Chalk.5. Choose the Auto-Painting palettein the Window menu. SelectMedium Dab in the Stroke menu.

6. In the Property Bar, raise the Sizeslider and lower the Opacity slider.

7. Click the green arrow to run Auto-Painting. Click in the image tostop. See page 25 for more infor-mation about Auto-Painting.

8. Click the eye open next to the toplayer.Click the Rgure in the Layers paletteand darken tones in the eyes, lips andhair by painting with the Digital Wa-tercolor’s New Simple Water. Whendone, choose Layers menu: Dry Digi-tal Watercolor.Paint highlights in the hair with thePhoto’s Dodge variant.

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Layer effectOpen the painting in Photo-shop, select the Rgure with

the Magnetic Lasso tool, then openthe painting in Painter and make theRgure into a layer. See pages 30 and36 for steps. Click the Canvas in theLayers palette and choose Select: Alland delete, Mac; backspace, Win-dows, which clears the background.Then reattach this image to the photofor Tracing Paper—see page 26 forthe steps.As for colors, the main color in theskin is red-orange, therefore, useblue-green—the complement, orcolor opposite the color in the colorwheel—for the background.

6


Lips ahoyWith the Digital Airbrush onlow size and opacity settings,

press option/alt and click on theupper lip, choose a darker tone in theColors palette and paint on the upperlip.Then Press option/alt and click onthe lower lip, chose a lighter tone andpaint.Lower the size even more and painta darker tone between the lips andaround them as outlines. To Rx edges,press option/alt and click on a coloroutside of the lips, like the chin, forexample, and paint next to the lips toadjust the lips. Then paint with JustAdd Water to blend.

4

Hair and thereFor the hair, paint broad areasof highlights, midtones

and shadows and just suggest individ-ual strands.Start by blending strands with JustAdd Water on low opacity, creatingtonal areas based on the photo.Then with the Oils’ Smeary Roundvariant, press option/alt and click ona highlight, choose a lighter tone inthe Colors palette and paint. Do thesame with shadows and darker tones.Then blend some more with Just AddWater. Repeat the process till youhave areas of color with suggestionsof hair strands, as you see in theimage at right.

5

GradientsFill the background with a gra-dient. See page 29 for steps

for creating and editing gradients.Here’s how to get the circle behindthe bride’s head (see image at right):1. Click in the Canvas in the Layerspalette (the bride is a layer).

2. After you create your gradient,click the sphere icon in the Gradi-ents palette.

3. Click on the paint bucket in thetoolbox. Click on the bride’s face inthe image. The color goes behindthe bride forming a halo aroundher head. If you don’t like the gra-dient’s position, choose Edit: Undoand try again.

7 9 Paint the dress using the RealBristleBrushes’ Real Oils Short variant. Pressoption/alt and click on the colors andpaint to create sharp edges betweenareas of light and dark. Then Pressoption/alt and click on colors; chooselighter and darker versions in the Col-ors palette; and paint to enhancehighlights and shadows.Paint the Sowers with the Chalk’sSharp Chalk. Press option/alt andclick on a color in the image, choose alighter or darker version of it in theColors palette and paint.Blend with the Blenders’ GrainyWater.

Painting Backgrounds 73

Add PixelsFirst, add pixels by choosing Canvas: Canvas Sizeand typing 300 pixels on the left, right and top.1

I like to look at web sites to see what people are doingwith painted portraits nowadays.A lot of the web sites I’ve visited show portraits withpainted backgrounds like you see here.In this chapter, you’ll Rnd out which brushes to use inPainter to create painterly backgrounds for portraits.Once you know which brushes to use, it’s easy to ex-periment with different looks and techniques.The portrait on this page is just one example of whatyou could do with the brushes listed in this chapter.Experiment with the strokes and textures to deviseyour own creations.If you feel a little stumped about how to design yourown backgrounds, seeing how otherartists handle brush strokes can help.Visit galleries and museums, or look atbooks and web sites.Then play around with your ownlooks—you’ll be surprised how easy it is.Meanwhile, about this photo of

Oprah—I had in the back of my mind that I wanted toinclude a celebrity portrait in this book, and while surf-ing the internet looking at art, I came across this photo,which I thought was one of the best I’d seen of her.The photo had a byline, Evan Agostini.I did a google.com search and found Evan on Face-book.I requested permission to use the photo and he agreed.Thanks, Evan!For the painting, start by opening the photo in Painter(File: Open). Choose File: Clone and name the clone(File: Save As). Close the original to keep it intact, andpaint in the clone.

Painting BackgroundS


Painting BackgroundsPainting by Karen Sperling from a photo byEvan Agostini.

Select the figureIn Photoshop, select the Rgure using the MagneticLasso. It was a little tricky—I needed to lighten the

photo to see the hair to select around it, but I didn’t wantthe lightened Rgure. The solution was to make a layer(command+j, Mac; ctrl+j, Windows); lighten the layer(Image: Adjustments: Brightness/Contrast); make the selec-tion and save it (see page 36 for instructions); delete thelayer; and save the image in the .psd Rle format.

2Color SchemeGive the image a uniRed color scheme using a layer.Open the Rle in Painter, choose Select menu:

Load Selection. Choose Select: Invert and press delete,Mac; backspace, Windows to clear the background.Choose Layers menu: New Layer. Press option, Mac; alt,Windows and click on the clothing to pick up a color.With Preserve Transparency deselected in the Layerspalette (the layer should be highlighted, too), choose Ef-fects: Fill. The layer Rlls with the color. Move the Opacityslider in the Layers palette to 44% and choose Color in thedrop down menu, and you now have a color scheme.Choose Layers: Drop to Satten the layer, load the selectionagain and choose Select: Float to make the Rgure a layer.

3

Painting Backgrounds 75

Custom SpongeAfter Sattening the Rgure layer, use the Cus-tom Sponge (see opposite page) to create a softtransition from the hair to the background.

Custom SpongeWith the Custom Sponge, add highlights andshadows in the dress using the photo as yourguide, then blend with the Smudge.

5

Chalk’s Square ChalkPaint color on the skin with the Square Chalk,then blend—see page 24 for steps for settingup and saving blenders.


Adding TextureClick the Canvas in the Layerspalette and paint the back-

ground. On this page are the brushesto use.The basic process is: Paint color,then blend it.Create new brushes and edit existingones to build up the textured effect.As you paint, keep in mind that theRgure is the focal point, or area ofgreatest contrast between light anddark. That means that the area next tothe Rgure is light. You could alsomake the adjacent area darker thanthe Rgure—as long as it contrasts.

4

Custom SpongeCreate a texture brush by adding a new tip(pictured above) to the Sponges’ Smeary WetSponge. Name it Custom Sponge. Create thetip with lasso selections Rlled with black. Seepage 27 for instructions.

Artists’ ImpressionistGood for texture. Soften the effect by paintingwith the brush as a blender—see page 24 forsteps for setting up and saving blenders.

Chalk’s Square ChalkPaints “Sat” strokes with a little texture. Usethis brush for blending, too—see page 24 forsteps for setting up and saving blenders.

Blenders’ Water RakeProperty Bar: Opacity 22%, Grain 13%, Resat8%, Bleed 49%, Jitter 0.63. Window: BrushControls: Rake: Contact Ang: 40°, Brush Scale:273%, Turn Amount 5%, Bristles, 20, SpreadBristles and Soften Bristle Edge: checked.

Blenders’ Just Add WaterBlend without texture by painting with the JustAdd Water. Lower opacity for a more subtle re-sult. Paint with the Blenders’ Smudge to blendwith texture. To blend with medium texture,paint with the Blenders’ Grainy Water variant.

Cloners’ Soft ClonerNo need to paint all background strokes fromscratch. When an area that you’ve paintedlooks good to you, press option, Mac; alt, Win-dows and click on it with the Soft Cloner cho-sen, then paint elsewhere. Repeat many timesin different areas to build up the background. Pens’ Scratchboard Tool

Paint jewelry highlights and shadows with thePens’ Scratchboard Tool.

Chalk’s Sharp ChalkBlend with the Water Rake to create light anddark areas. Then paint a few strands with theChalk’s Sharp Chalk, then blend again.

Airbrushes’ Digital AirbrushPaint the eyes and the lips with the Digital Air-brush. Add a little texture to the lips with theSquare Chalk. See page 18 for art tips for faces.

Figuratively PaintingClick the Rgure layer in theLayers palette and paint the

face and hair using the techniques de-scribed in the previous chapters.Use some of the background brushesto paint the clothing and skin.Use colors from the background inthe Rgure and from the Rgure in thebackground for color harmony—press option, Mac; alt, Windows andclick on a color to pick it up, thenpaint with it.When the Rgure is done, chooseLayers menu: Drop to Satten.Paint with the background brushesto blend the Rgure with its surround-ings by roughening up the Rgure’sedges and painting to extend some ofthe hair.

Painterly Portraits 77

Hair TodayContinue to paint tones basedon where they appear in the

photo, using the brushes mentionedabove.When painting hair, the idea is topaint broad areas of lights and darks.Then, lower the size setting andpaint suggestions of hair strands.Paint the creases above the eyelidsusing the Sharp Chalk. Then blendwith the Blenders’ Just Add Water.Paint the shadows at the top of theeyes with the Digital Watercolors’New Simple Water on a low opacityand choose Layers: Dry Digital Water-color when done.

3

Filling and ableWith the photo open inPainter, choose (File: Clone). A

clone of the photo appears. Choose amedium pink in the Colors paletteand choose Effects (Edit in Painter11): Fill (command+f, Mac; ctrl+f,Windows). Click next to CurrentColor if it isn’t already selected, clickOK. You now have a Rrst coat of pinkpaint, technically called an under-painting. Turn on Tracing Paper (seepage 27 for instructions). Choose adarker tone of the pink and start bypainting dark areas with the Acrylics’Real Wet Brush (in Painter 11-inPainter X use the Acrylics’ Dry Brush)on 17% opacity.

1

My ComplementsSwitch to green and the Artists’Oils’ Blender Bristle on

43% opacity and continue to paintdark tones. Painting with a comple-mentary color in the shadows is a wayto add color harmony, where you re-peat colors throughout the painting.Choose a light tone of pink in the

Colors palette and start to paintwhere you see highlights in thephoto.Paint the eyes and lips with theChalk’s Sharp Chalk and blend withthe Blenders’ Just Add Water. You’renot painting objects, you’re paintingwhere you see light and dark tones inthe photo.

2

PAINTERLY PORTRAITS


Painterly PortraitPainting by Karen Sperling from a photo byZarek.

Many photographers prefer painting photorealistic por-traits, I guess because they think they’re easier to dothan portraits painted from scratch.The thought of painting a blank image intimidatesthem.Despite the popularity of photorealistic portraits fromphotos, there are those who prefer the look of thepainted portrait created on a blank canvas.Using Painter’s Tracing Paper to guide you and keepingin mind the art concepts that you’ve learned in this sec-tion and in the one on art theories should make paintingportraits without photo elements pretty easy!In case you’re wondering, yes, this is a self-portrait. Ichose to paint this photo because I wanted to feel free toexperiment—I didn’t want to have toworry about how someone else wouldfeel about the results. I like the way itcame out, and since I’m the subject, theportrait was a success!After deciding to paint this photo, Ilooked at the colors and thought they’dlend themselves to an adjacent colorscheme (see pages 12-13 for informationabout choosing colors).

As for the tones, you now know that you want thebackground to be either lighter or darker than the Rgureto make the Rgure the subject, or focal point, or area ofgreatest contrast between light and dark.In the photo, there was contrast between the face andthe hair, but the hair blended into the background.In the painting, the subject is still the face, which is thearea of greatest contrast between light and dark.However, I made the background lighter to contrastwith the hair and sweater, which made the paintingmore interesting—the fewer colors and the more con-trast you have, the more dramatic your paintings will be.See pages 14-15 for information about working withtones.

Painterly Portraits 79

Last stepsIn the Rnal steps, add somemore colors to the sweater and

hair. Also, edit the tones in the facebased on the tones in the photo bypainting with the Chalk’s Sharp Chalkand then blending with the Blenders’Just Add Water.Paint deep tones around the teethwith the Sharp Chalk and blendedwith Just Add Water.Then choose Layers menu: Drop,which Sattens the Rgure layer.Paint on the hair with the SharpChalk and Blender Bristle to blend itin with the background.And that’s how I painted a“painterly” portrait in Corel Painter!

9

Random actsAdd some more color harmonyby painting with the green in

the face and adding shades of red inthe background.Paint in the background with theImpressionist brush and the Chalk’sSquare Chalk.Raise the Jitter slider in the PropertyBar to get the randomized strokes yousee in the background at right.Use the brushes to paint with colorand also to blend (see page 24 for in-formation about setting up brushes asblenders).Paint with the idea of keeping thearea around the head lighter than therest of the background.

7

Hue BetAdd yellow-orange in the hair,sweater and background to

liven things up.Choose yellow-orange because it isin the adjacent color scheme, or col-ors next to each other in the colorwheel.Paint with the Blender Bristle on theRgure and with the Square Chalk andImpressionist brush on high jitter set-tings in the background.Add more tones to the face by paint-ing with the Blender Bristle and Sar-gent Brush. Blend a little with theSquare Chalk as a blender, but mostlyblend by scribbling with the BlenderBristle.

8

building up tonesUsing the same brushes, con-tinue to paint with colors

and tones in the color scheme on thehair and on the sweater.Continue to paint, following theareas of light and dark that you see inthe photo with Tracing Paper turnedon; turn Tracing Paper off to checkyour progress; then turn it back onagain and proceed to paint.Add some red, the complement ofgreen, in the sweater shadows.Also add a darker tone of green inthe shadows, lower the Size sliderand paint some lines around the col-lar. Still think of them as tones—no-tice they’re in the photo!

6


More ColorsAlternating between theArtists’ Oils’ Blender Bristle

and the Artists’ Sargent Brush, addmore colors in the adjacent colorscheme to the sweater, face, hair andbackground, continuing to paintwhere you see lights, darks and mid-tones in the photo with Tracing Paperturned on. Turn off Tracing Paper tosee the results and turn it on again topaint.If you can’t tell how the tones look,use Effects: Tonal Control: AdjustColors and lower the Saturationslider, click OK. When done, chooseEdit: Undo to get back the colors andkeep painting.

4

Figure PaintingAt this point, make the Rgure alayer by selecting with the

lasso—it doesn’t have to be an exactselection because you are going to bepainting the edges anyway—andchoose Select menu: Float.Click Canvas in the Layers paletteand, using the Blender Bristle, theSargent Brush and the Artists’ Impres-sionist brush, add colors to the back-ground using adjacent colors in thecolor wheel (see page 12).Click the Rgure layer and continueto add colors, painting lights anddarks where you see them in thesource photo.

5

CityscapePhoto and painting by Karen Sperling, featured in theApril 2007 issue of Artistry Tips and Tricks.http://www.artistrymag.com/

LANDSCAPES

4P ainting landscapes should be easy. You take

a photo and you clone it into a painting,right? Nothing to it!The trouble is, not every photo lends itself tobeing painted.Once you know which landscape photos are thebest candidates for being painted, and how to Rxthem if they’re not, you’ll be painting landscapesquicker than you can say Winslow Homer.In this chapter, you’ll discover what to look forin your photos to turn them into landscapes, howto edit them if they’re not ideal and then whichCorel Painter and Adobe Photoshop brushes touse for oils, watercolor and pastel effects.

81

oil-painteD Landscapes 83

Painting highlightsEliminate the front, left-handbushes by painting with

the Chalk’s Square Chalk variant.Press option, Mac; alt, Windows,click on the color next to the bushes,then paint on top of the bushes, mak-ing them disappear.Blend the Chalk strokes using theBlenders’ Smudge variant to create anoil-painted effect. When you don’tblend, the strokes look like pastels.Paint the highlights and shadows onthe walks and lawns with the SquareChalk, making distinct edges betweenlight and dark areas.Use the methods described in step 2above for keeping the lines straight.

3

Made in the ShadeChoose File: Clone to save theoriginal photo intact. Close the

photo.Give the clone a new color schemeby using Express in Image, explainedon page 29.At right you see the way the Colorsand Gradients palettes were set up toget the result in the image.Next, save this version and chooseFile: Clone again, and name this newclone (File: Save As).The previous version is now thesource image and this new clone isthe painting.

1

blue-Green skiesExpress in Image does a prettygood job of Rlling in colors,

but it made the sky yellow.Paint the sky blue-green using theAirbrushes’ Digital Airbrush. I preferto stay away from selections and lay-ers when I can, so to paint edges,lower the Size slider in the PropertyBar and draw outlines as you see inthe image at right, then raise the Sizeslider and paint in between the out-lines to Rll the areas with color. Topaint or draw with a straight line,type v, click one end of the line, thenclick the other end of the line. To Rn-ish the line, type b. You can also pressShift, then paint, which constrainsyour stroke to a straight line.

2

Oil-Painted Landscapes


The more tonesyou have and thefewer colors, themore dramaticyour paintings willbe. This paintingfrom a photo that Itook in Tacoma,WA, is a perfect ex-ample. I have ex-hibited thispainting in gal-

leries, and collectors have bought it.I used an adjacent color scheme—com-pare the painting to the color wheel onpage 12 and you’ll see that I used thecolors next to each other starting withyellow-orange and moving clockwise

through yellow, yellow-green, green andblue-green.I used the tones in the photo, which Itook late in the day, creating strong high-lights and shadows, which I painted, in-cluding the crisp divisions betweentones, like the highlights on the grass.Another art concept that I used to paintthis painting was the idea that a paintinghas less detail than a photo.Notice that I eliminated the Rrst house,all the way to the left, made the treeshorter, eliminated all the shrubbery inthe lower left-hand corner and paintedout the branch on top.I got the idea to make all the foliagegeometric shapes by looking at theworks of Hopper and Cézanne.

Oil-Painted LandscapePhoto and painting byKaren Sperling.

oil-painteD Landscapes 85

Grand FinaleIn the Rnal stage of the paint-ing, adjust tones some more,

referring to the lights and darks in thesource photo to guide you as youpaint.Use more intense colors in the high-

lights in the foreground. Having lessintense colors in the background cre-ates the illusion of distance.Paint with a dark green in shadowsin the trees and shrubs.Make the tree and bushes fuller andmore deRned.Paint straight lines as described onpage 83 in the lawn and walk to makethem crisper.And that’s how I turned a photo intoan oil-painted landscape in Painter!

Tree’s CompanyAfter you have a few patternsand strokes in the tree, blend

using the Artists’ Impressionist vari-ant. Continue to paint, switching tothe default settings for the Artists’ Im-pressionist variant to add color, thenblend again with the blender version.See page 24 for information aboutturning brushes into blenders, savingthe changes in variants and restoringdefault variants.With the Chalk’s Sharp Chalk vari-

ant chosen, use the straight line paint-ing technique described on page 83to clean up the house’s edges. Paintwith whitish yellow on the front ofthe house to make the bright areascrisper.

6

7

Now you see itPaint out the tree and thehouse on the left and the

branches on the house next to themthe same way that you eliminated thefront bushes, that is, with the SquareChalk selected. Press option, Mac; alt,Windows, click on the color next towhat you want to eliminate, thenpaint on top of the objects, makingthem disappear.Blend the Square Chalk strokes withthe Blenders’ Smudge variant to createan oil-painted effect.

Now you don’tAfter you Rnish painting outthe extra branches and the

house, paint the tones on the roof todarken them using the Square Chalk.Paint tones based on the lightsource. In this case, the light is com-ing from the right, so the areas facingaway from the light, like the roof, aredark.Then paint the large tree on the leftusing the Artists’ Impressionist brush.In general, when you paint land-scape areas like trees, mountains andboulders, you paint patterns createdby the highlights and shadows, usingthe colors in your color scheme. Thewavy pattern that you see in the treeis in the photo. Emphasize it bypainting lighter tones where you seehighlights and darker shades whereyou see shadows.Once you have a few colors that youlike, press option, Mac; alt, Windowsand click on them to pick them upand paint with them elsewhere.

5

4


Watercolor Landscapes


Ken Partington took this photo of alighthouse that may be the victim of avanishing coastline.“Here in England we have a problem

around the coast of Norfolk with seaeroding the coastline,” Ken notes.“About a yard per year in some places.Happisburgh (pronounced Hazebor-ough) is one such place on the east coastof Norfolk. I took this photo because thelighthouse may not be there in a fewyears’ time. I have fancied this adorningmy wall for a while now.”Before painting the photo, I adjusted

the tones and colors and moved thingsaround a little, as you’re about to see.I also added clouds from photos I had

taken where I live in southern California

to add interest to the sky, based on tradi-tional English landscape paintings (seepage 20).That’s my idea of a good time—driving

around, taking photos!If you haven’t already done so, take

your own “stock photos” that you canpull from when you need things likeclouds, Vowers, trees, birds, etc.Open the lighthouse photo in Painter.Choose File: Clone, name the clone

(File: Save As) and close the original.The clone is the new source image.I save in the .psd format if I have lay-

ers, or if I’m going to open the Ule inPhotoshop. Otherwise, I save in .tif.The next step is to clone in clouds, as

you’re about to see.

Watercolor LandscapePainting by Karen Sperling;photos by her (sky) and by KenPartington (lighthouse).

watercolor Landscapes 87

Varied-source cloneResize the cloud photos so thatthey and this new source

image are visible on the screen at thesame time.To resize a window, click and drag inthe lower right-hand corner. To movea window, click and drag at the top ofthe window on the title bar.Next, bring some cloud formationsinto the lighthouse photo.Rather than clone directly, clone alittle from here and a little from there.I based my cloning choices on theart concept that the subject, or focalpoint, is the area of greatest contrastbetween light and dark.The lighthouse was logically thesubject, so I wanted to make sure thatit contrasted with the background.That meant I’d clone in a dark areaaround the lighthouse that was darkerthan both the light and the dark areason the lighthouse.The images are different sizes, so usethe Cloners’ xScale 2P variant, whichscales as you clone.See page 26 in the Corel PainterTools chapter for information forusing the Cloners’ xScale 2P variant.Paint around the lighthouse, bring-ing the clouds in from the variousphotos.To paint next to the lighthouse, Urstpaint an edge on a low size setting,then Ull in paint next to this new edgeon a high size setting. This eliminatesthe need for selections and layers.The dark area that comes in as youpaint contrasts well with the light anddark areas of the lighthouse.

1 On the moveThe image was looking prettygood except for one thing—al-

though the lighthouse wasn’t in themiddle of the image, the little build-ing and road were, resulting in an un-desirable composition (see page 16for composition art concepts). There-fore, I adjusted their position. To doso, choose Canvas: Canvas Size, typein -400 in the pixels to left box and400 in the pixels to right box.This crops the image on the left andadds some space on the right, therebymoving the lighthouse, building androad over to the left, a quicker Uxthan solving the problem using layers.Then, using the Cloners’ SoftCloner, press option, Mac; alt, Win-dows and click in an area to the left

of the space and then paint on thespace to the right to Ull in the blankarea created by the added pixels.

Color SchemeTo give my painting a colorscheme, I opened Croyland

Abbey by John Sell Cotman and Iused the Color Scheme menu in theUnderpainting palette to add the Cot-man colors to my newly compositedimage. See page 29 for informationabout using the Color Scheme menuto transfer colors between images.When done, save (File: Save) andthen choose File: Clone, name thisnew Ule (File: Save As) and close theprevious one so that you’ll have acopy of this composition intact incase you need to go back to it later.

same-source cloneOnce your have some cloudsthat you like, use the Cloners’

Soft Cloner to repeat them in otherparts of the image. Press option, Mac;alt, Windows and click where youwant to paint from and then paint.You can also use the Airbrushes’Digital Airbrush to paint clouds.On a low opacity and high size,press option, Mac; alt, Windows andclick on a color to pick it up andpaint. Notice clouds are lighter on topand darker on the bottom. Paint thesetonal differences with the Digital Air-brush—the strokes look like clouds!

2

3 4

sky’s the limitPaint the sky in several steps, using the tonesin the source image to guide you, adding tex-ture along the way.Paint with the Loaded Wet Sponge with therubber stamp selected in the Colors palette,then blend with the Grainy Blender and theSmeary Wet Sponge.When blending, turn on Tracing Paper so thatyou can see the edges separating light and darkareas and blend to make these edges distinct.Next, paint with the Airbrushes’ Coarse Sprayon low opacity to add more texture.Choose colors to paint with by pressing op-tion, Mac; alt, Windows and clicking on themin the image. Paint with the same tones orpaint with lighter or darker versions chosen inthe Colors palette to pump up contrast.I Und it helps to see how artists in the pasthandled things, and I did google.com searcheson English landscape artists to see how theypainted skies to guide me in painting mine.

GrassI used many different brushes to create thegrass.First paint with the Sponges’ Loaded WetSponge with the rubber stamp selected in theColors palette.Blend these strokes by painting with theBlenders’ Grainy Blender variant.Add a dash of Artists’ Impressionist brushstrokes with the rubber stamp selected in theColors palette and the Jitter slider in the Prop-erty Bar turned all the way up.Then blend again with the Grainy Blender.Add more texture by painting with the Air-brushes’ Coarse Spray on low opacity. Pressoption, Mac; alt, Windows and click on colorsthen paint with them.Painting with colors already in the image cre-ates color harmony, where colors repeatthroughout the artwork.Blend using the Grainy Blender with opacityturned down and size turned up.Repeat these steps to build up the effect.

TonesPaint distinct light and dark tones like on thelighthouse based on where you see them in thephoto using the Artists’ Impressionist brushwith the rubber stamp selected in the Colorspalette and the Size and Jitter sliders in theProperty Bar turned down.Then blend the color with the Blenders’ GrainyBlender variant.Painting these light and dark tones with dis-tinctive edges between them gives the image itspainterly look.Add highlights in the sky using the Pens’Scratchboard Tool.Press option, Mac; alt, Windows and click on alight color in the painting, choose a lightertone of it in the Colors palette and paint thehighlights with Tracing Paper turned on. Turnoff Tracing Paper to see the results (see page 27for information about Tracing Paper).Then blend the lines a little with the GrainyBlender so that they look like they’re part ofthe painting, but don’t overdo the blending.

Finishing UpFrom here, continue to paintwith the same brushes.

Painting is a back-and-forth process.You paint a little with one brush,paint some more with another, goback and paint with the Urst brushsome more, and keep repeating.As you go along, following the tipsbelow for painting tones, grass andskies, bring in details like edges of thehouse and the lighthouse from theprevious image by painting with theSoft Cloner.To soften the edges after you paintthem with the Soft Cloner, paint withthe Blenders’ Grainy Blender.I get a lot of compliments about thisimage, and it was included in thegallery in the Painter 11 software.I think that the painting appeals toeveryone because it includes the basicart concepts of a limited color palettewith color harmony, a clear focalpoint and a subject that is off-center.

8

Watercolor Landscapes 89

Wash Over MeNext, use the Watercolor’s SoftRunny Wash variant with the

rubber stamp in the Colors palette se-lected.Paint the house and the tree andsome of the lighthouse.When you paint with the Watercolorvariants, they create layers.Before you move onto your nextbrush, choose Layers menu: Drop Allto Vatten the layers. If you don’t, andthen try to paint with a non-Watercolor variant, you’ll get aprompt telling you that you can’tpaint with other brushes in the water-color layer.

7


Adding textureTo eliminate details and createareas of color, set the Smart

Blur slider in the Underpaintingpalette on 100%.Save this image, then clone theimage, clear the contents of the cloneand turn on Tracing Paper. See page27 for the steps for clearing the imageand for activating Tracing Paper.Then add texture by painting withthe Airbrushes’ Coarse Spray.Click the rubber stamp in the Colorspalette so that the brush will pick upthe color from the source image asyou paint in the cloned image.

5

A Daytime SmearyNext, paint color with theSponges’ Loaded Wet Sponge,

with the rubber stamp selected in theColors palette to pick up color fromthe source image.Blend the current strokes and addnew ones using the Sponges’ SmearyWet Sponge with the rubber stampselected in the Colors palette.To get the edge of the lighthouse,Urst paint on the area next to thelighthouse, then paint on the light-house.The more you paint next to an ob-ject and then on the object, thecleaner the edge between the objectand the area next to it will be.

6

Pastel Landscapes 91

Painterly TonesContinue to paint, choosingsaturated tones from the Col-

ors palette to make the image morepainterly.After you have painted some colors,you can pick up colors in one part ofthe image by pressing option, Mac;alt, Windows and clicking and thenpainting them in other areas ratherthan choosing them in the Colorspalette.Using existing colors creates colorharmony, where, as you’ve seen, col-ors are repeated throughout the art.Make up the colors using your colorscheme. Try to follow the tones thatyou see in the photo, as you can seein the image at right.Getting better at painting means get-ting better at recognizing which tonesto paint.

3

Slightly RearrangedWith the photo open inPainter, choose File: Clone and

File: Save As to keep the originalphoto intact. Close the original photo.In this clone, rearrange elementsusing layers so that the white plantis near an imaginary intersection ofthe canvas if it were folded in thirds.Spread out the beige plants to runalong the bottom of the image.I wasn’t trying to make the sourceimage perfect. If you look closely atthe image at right, you see the layers.Since I was going to paint it anyway, Iwas only interested in giving myself arough basis for the painting—sort of aUrst draft of the Unished image.See page 30 for information aboutworking with layers in Painter.This is now the source image. Save,then choose File: Clone and File: SaveAs. The clone is the painting.

1

Chalk one UpStart adding colors using theChalk’s Square Chalk. Add

brush strokes to the image based onthe colors that are in the photo andbased on the color scheme.Paint where you see lights and darksin the photo, adding even lighterstrokes where you see highlights anddeepening the darker tones whereyou see shadows.

2


Pastel Landscapes

I created this pasteldrawing in CorelPainter from this photothat I took in SoledadCanyon, which is northof Los Angeles.The white plant in the

lower left would make agood focal point if itwere closer to the imag-inary intersection of thecanvas folded in thirds,

but it was too far down to Ut the bill.I knew this while I was taking the

photo. I tried framing the photo differ-

ently when I shot it, but below the whiteplants was the road I was standing on, socomposing the photo differently wasn’tan option. I’d have to Ux it later.Also, the photo’s colors didn’t add up

to a color scheme.I consulted the color wheel on page 12

and decided that the yellow, green andshades of orange (beige tones) couldstay. I just had to add shades of red-or-ange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, greenand blue-green, and I’d have an adjacentcolor scheme.See page 13 for information about ad-

jacent color schemes.

Pastel LandscapePhoto and painting byKaren Sperling.

Pastel Landscapes 93

Tonal AdjustmentLast, adjust tones. Paint withthe Square Chalk on a very

low opacity to tint strokes.Add yellow and orange to the moun-tains for color harmony.Darken tones using the Digital Wa-tercolor’s New Simple Water on lowopacity. Choose Layers: Dry DigitalWatercolor when done.Paint with the Photo’s Dodge tool onthe rear mountain to make it look fur-ther away and paint with the Burntool on the foreground to make itlook closer.

9

Nice ShadesAdd some shading to themountains in the back by

drawing with the Chalk’s SquareChalk and add outlines with theChalk’s Sharp Chalk.Use a low opacity setting for both inthe Property Bar.Use for the shading and outlinesblue-green, which is the comple-ment—or opposite on the colorwheel—of the tone of red-orangeused as the mountain’s new basecolor.Add beige highlights and darkbrown shadows—both beige anddark brown are tones of red-orange.

7

Blending inAdd deUnition using theArtists’ Impressionist brush.

Lower opacity and size, press op-tion/alt and click in the image to pickup colors and paint, following areasof light and dark that you see in thephoto.Create a custom palette to access thebrushes more quickly than using theBrush Selector.See page 25 for information aboutcreating custom palettes.Raise the Size slider and paint on thepart just below the mountains withthe Artists’ Impressionist brush.Doing so adds texture, suggesting allthe plants without actually paintingeach plant.Turn the Square Chalk, Sharp Chalkand Impressionist variants intoblenders, blend and save the settingsas variants—see page 24 for steps.

8

Selection ProcessNext is the mountain in theback. You’ll make it lighter and

less saturated than the elements in theforeground to create the illusion ofdistance.Since it has a unique color, it is easyenough to select the mountain withthe magic wand in the toolbox.Deselect Contiguous in the PropertyBar to select all the color-related pix-els in the image area.To select more pixels in the range,press shift and sort of scribble on allthe areas to add to the selection.Then edit the color. To do so:1. Select Effects: Tonal Control: Ad-just Colors. The Adjust Color dia-log box appears.

2. Move the Hue Shift slider tochange the color.

3. Move the Saturation slider to theleft to make the color less “juicy.”

4. Move the Value slider to the rightto lighten the color.

5. Click OK.The mountain is now lighter and adifferent color.

6


deep backgroundPaint the middle ground next,still using the Square Chalk

variant.A traditional painting technique is toshow more details in the foregroundand fewer details in the middleground and in the background to cre-ate the illusion of distance.Therefore, to make your paintingsfrom your photos look more painterly,make backgrounds less detailed.

4

With a TraceHave the painting and thephoto open side by side while

you draw so that you can see theareas of light and dark in the photoand paint them in the painting.Also use Tracing Paper to help yousee these contrasts to paint them.See page 27 for information aboutworking with Tracing Paper.After you have some colors in themountains, paint with the Chalk’sSquare Chalk on a low opacity settingin the Property Bar to tint colors. In-clude some blue-green in the moun-tain to create the illusion of distance.

5

photorealistic Landscapes 95

SaturateIn Painter’s Underpainting palette (found in theWindow menu), choose Saturate in the Photo En-

hance menu, click Apply, then choose Increase Contrast inthe same menu and click Apply again.The result is not only colorful, but also falls into an adja-cent color scheme, starting with blue-violet and goingclockwise to green. See pages 12-13 for information aboutchoosing colors and about adjacent color schemes.Save this version, then choose File: Clone and File: SaveAs.The previous version is now the source image and thisnew clone is now the painting.

Paint out DetailsOne of the differences between a photo and a paint-ing is that a painting has less detail.

Paint out details using the Blenders’ Water Rake.Choose the following settings in the Property Bar:Opacity 26%Grain 23%Resat 24%Bleed 49%Click the rubber stamp in the Colors palette.Using these settings means the strokes will have a little bitof color brought in from the source image and a little bit oftexture.Lower the Bristles slider to 7 in the Window menu: BrushControls: Rake palette.This creates a little space between the bristles so that bris-tles show up in the brush strokes.

21

Not surprisingly, many photographers want theirpaintings to look like their photos.They like their photos, why can’t the paintings look

like them?The reason is that usually the photograph doesn’t have

the qualities that go into a painting, namely a clear focalpoint and a chosen color scheme.See pages 12-13 for information about color schemes

and pages 14-15 for the lowdown on focal points.Yet, it is possible to shoot a photo that lends itself to a

painterly treatment.Once in awhile, if you think about your

imaginary folds and your tones, and ifthe colors happen to fall into a colorscheme, you can take a photo that willlend itself to being turned into a paintingwith very little preparation.The photo on this page is an example.I took this photo in Palos Verdes, CA.

The white roof, the paths and the horizonwere the focal points, or areas of greatest

contrast between light and dark.I increased saturation and contrast slightly, and I was

able to use the colors in the photo for my painting.That’s why I call this a photorealistic painting, because

the painting is pretty much like the original photo, ex-cept with brush strokes.The following pages show how I painted the painting.With the photo open in Painter, choose File: Clone and

File: Save As. Close the original—the clone is now thenew source image.

PhotoRealistic Painting


Photorealistic LandscapePainting and photo by Karen Sperling.

Painting in the GrassPaint the paths and the grassareas some more with the

Artists’ Oils’ Dry Bristle and BlenderBristle variants to build up colors,using the tones from the photo toguide you and colors from the colorscheme.Your images will look even morepainterly if you have many tones andcolors within areas like grass.Use the Cloners’ xScale 2P variant topaint a few extra red plants in frontbecause having just the one plantlooks out of place. It’s such an inter-esting plant that, rather than delete it,repeat it.See page 26 for instructions forusing the Cloners’ xScale 2P variant.Add the green Vowers on the left bypainting with the Scratchboard Tool.Press option/alt and click on a lightgreen in the grass, turn on TracingPaper and paint where you see theVowers in the photo. See page 27 forinstructions for working with TracingPaper.

Trees a CrowdPaint the sky by Urst addingcolor with the Artists’ Oils’ Dry

Bristle and Blender Bristle variants.Use green and yellow because theyare part of the adjacent color schemeand adding them improves color har-mony.Add white for the clouds using thecustom brush on a low size setting.Add white in the paths and on theroof of the house using the Artists’Oils’ Dry Bristle and Blender Bristlevariants for color harmony and tomake the house and paths the focalpoints.Also add the trees in the back,which, contrasted with the light sky,create another focal point.Last, choose the Acrylics’ CapturedBristle variant, reduce opacity to 9%,click the rubber stamp in the Colorspalette and paint on the trees andshrubs to blend the leaves a little.

6

5

photorealistic Landscapes 97

Custom FormsUse custom brushes to add fo-liage and shrubbery and to

add to the yellow stalks. See page 27for information for customizingbrushes in Painter.Press option/alt and click to pick upcolors from all over the image andpaint them everywhere else. Repeat-ing colors throughout an image cre-ates color harmony.Also, paint in the upper right-handside of the image with the custombrushes. Compare the photo andpainting on page 94, and you’ll seewhat I mean.The upper-right hand part of thephoto wasn’t recognizable. Since I de-cide to keep details based on whetherthey add to our knowledge of whatwe’re looking at, I decided that whatwas in the photo could be eliminated.Foliage worked just as well, and waseasy to paint with a custom brush.Paint out the tree in the middle ofthe image by painting over it with theArtists’ Oils because it is standing byitself, unrelated to anything else.

Bring back detailsAfter painting out details,bring some back in a painterly

way. Paint the yellow plant lines withthe Pens’ Scratchboard Tool on a lowsize setting. Press option, Mac; alt,Windows and click in the image topick up colors and paint.Also paint the little Vowers with theScratchboard Tool. Turn on TracingPaper (see page 27) to see where theVowers are in the photo, then paint amidtone, like pink, then a lightercolor like white, and then a darkertone of the middle color to add a littledepth.Paint the grass areas, paths andplants with the Artists’ Oils’ Dry Bris-tle and Blender Bristle. Get a few col-ors at once using the Mixer, found inWindow: Color Palettes. Press op-tion/alt and click in the image to pickup a color and with the brush icon se-lected in the Mixer, paint the color inthe white space. Pick up anothercolor and paint. With the tool withthe circle, click at the intersection ofthe colors and paint in the image.

3

4


stroke of luckFirst, create a custom brushstroke that you will use with

the Auto-Painting tools.1. Open the Auto-Painting palette(Window: Show Auto-Painting).

2. Choose the Artists’ Sargent Brush.3. Click the rubber stamp in the Col-ors palette, which tells Painter touse colors from the original photo.

4. To create a custom stroke, choosethe triangle in the Brush Selector.In the drop down menu, chooseRecord Stroke.

5. Paint a short stroke like the one inthe image at right.

6. Choose Save Stroke in the samemenu and type in a name for thestroke in the dialog box that ap-pears. Click OK.

Automatic DeviceNext, you’ll use this strokewith the Auto-Painting tools.

1. Choose this new stroke in theStroke drop-down menu in theAuto-Painting palette.

2. In the Auto-Painting palette, dese-lect the check boxes underneathRandomness, and set the sliders asfollows:Randomness: 80%Pressure: 85%Length: 88%Rotation: 354°Brush Size: 75%

3. Lower the speed slider a little andthe strokes will come in moreslowly.

4. Click the arrow in the Auto-Painting palette to run the strokes.Run until you have large areas ofbrush strokes like the ones in theimage at left.

5. Click the red button in the Auto-Painting palette or anywhere in theimage to stop the strokes.

2

1

Auto-Painted Landscapes 99

Auto-Painted landscapes


As you saw in the portraits section,Painter’s Auto-Painting takes a little man-ual tweaking to create great effects.I painted this painting with Auto-

Painting using aphoto I took inTopanga, CA, atButterVy House,with some addi-tional paintingfor details andtones.I took this

photo late in theday, so the suncreated greatareas of lightand dark to

paint in the painting.Unfortunately, as you can see in the

original photo, the sun didn’t hit thesteps in the best way to make them thefocal point.It was easy enough, though, to edit the

tones in the Unal painting.When painting from photos, using the

art concepts to guide you helps!To start, open a photo in Painter (File:

Open) and clone it (File: Clone). Thensave the clone (File: Save As).The photo is the source image and the

clone is the painting/destination image.Use Tracing Paper while painting.See pages 26-27 for information about

source and destination images and usingPainter’s Tracing Paper.

auto-painted LandscapePhoto and painting by KarenSperling. Photo taken at But-terfly House, Topanga, CA.

Auto-Painted Landscapes 101

See the LightIn the Unal stage, paint withthe Photo’s Dodge on the

steps and with the Photo’s Burn onthe grass next to the steps to makethe steps the clear focal point, or sub-ject, or area of greatest contrast be-tween light and dark.Also paint with the Digital Watercol-ors’ New Simple Water variant on alow opacity setting on the grass andon the wall in the foreground todarken them a little.After painting with Digital Water-color variants, choose Layers menu:Dry Digital Watercolor so that youcan paint on top of and blend theDigital Watercolor strokes using otherbrushes.Add highlights on the steps bychoosing white in the Colors paletteand painting with the Oils’ FineFeathering Oils variant where you seehighlights in the photo.Paint with light pressure on the sty-lus for a more subtle result.

8

Attention to DetailPaint some details in the fore-ground while leaving the

background less detailed.Though you might see details in thebackground in the photo, a tradi-tional art concept is that you leave thebackground more vague to suggestdistance.Add details in the foreground likethe dark lines around the stones bypressing option/alt and clicking on adark color to pick it up and thenpainting with the Chalk’s SharpChalk.Blend a little with the Smudge.Lower opacity for more subtle blend-ing strokes.

6

On the SurfaceAdd some texture using Ef-fects: Surface Control: Apply

Surface Texture. Choose Image Lumi-nance in the Using menu.Turn down the Amount and Shinesliders for a more subtle result, thenclick OK.

7

Brush UpNext, turn on Tracing Paperand paint details with the

Cloners’ Smeary Bristle Cloner andthe Chalk’s Square Chalk with therubber stamp clicked in the Colorspalette.Turn Tracing Paper off to see yourprogress, then turn it back on again toproceed.Paint the edges to emphasize wheredark tones meet light tones.Blend some of the strokes with theBlenders’ Smudge.This is a back-and-forth process. Youpaint the color a little, blend a little,paint a little, blend a little, etc.The art will look more painterly ifyou use a variety of brush strokes,like you see in traditional paintings.View paintings in local museumsand galleries, in books and online, forideas for your own brush strokes.

5


A New directionNow you’ll apply some morestrokes with Auto-Painting for

a more painterly look.Adjust the Rotation, Length andBrush Size sliders in the Auto-Painting palette. The settings don’tmatter, try all different ones to getyour own results. Run Auto-Paintingagain, stop it, adjust the sliders, andrun Auto-Painting some more. In thisway you build up the brush strokes ina painterly way (see image at right).

3

Random accessNext, you’ll make the strokes alittle more random and less

mechanical for a hand-painted look.1. Choose the Scribble stroke in theAuto-Painting palette.

2. Check the Randomness boxes forall the parameters and run Scribblefor awhile.

3. Stop the strokes, adjust the BrushSize slider in the Auto-Paintingpalette, then run Scribble again forjust enough randomness.

4. Switch to the Artists’ Impressionistvariant, click the rubber stamp inthe Colors palette and run Scribblesome more, stop it, adjust theBrush Size slider in the Auto-Painting palette, then run it again.Do this several times.

4

Impressionist landscapes 103

Brush Size ShortcutI Und that using the shortcutkeys to resize the brush is the

quickest way to get a lot of different-sized brush strokes. Press control+op-tion, Mac; right click+alt, Windows,click and drag. You see a circle thatrepresents the stroke width. Adjust bydragging, then let go and paint.

3

Interface SetupWhen you choose a panel inthe Window menu, it brings

up a bunch of panels. I Und it’s easierto close the ones I’m not using.1. Click and drag out the panel thatyou wish to close from the group.

2. Click the close button.This leaves the panels you’re using.Click on the panel’s name, and itVies out for you to adjust. Whendone, click the double arrows and thepanel gets tucked away again.

1

Brush PresetsClick the Brushes panel (A.)and you see the controls for

editing presets. Click the little triangle(B.) and choose Text Only in thedrop-down menu to see names ofpresets. Click the choices underBrush Presets to reveal settings on theright-hand side.I edited Shape Dynamics and Scat-tering to create my landscape.Each brush stroke is made up of abunch of individual dabs, thereforeSize, Angle and Roundness in ShapeDynamics refer to the shape of indi-vidual dabs. Jitter means randomness,so the more you move the sliders tothe right, the more random the dabsare when you paint. Choose Pen Pres-sure in the Control pop-ups for styluspressure to affect the results. Mini-mum Diameter controls stroke width.Move the slider to the left, and press-ing lightly on the stylus gives you anarrow stroke and pressing heavilygives you a wide one. The more youmove the slider to the right, the widerthe stroke is when you press lightly.Scatter in Scattering controls thespace between brush dabs, count de-termines the number of dabs.Click the locks to keep the changesafter you change presets.

2


impressionist landscapes

I took this photo in DanaPoint, CA.I thought it was a good candi-

date to be turned into a paint-ing because when I turned thecolors off in Painter using Ef-fects: Tonal Control: AdjustColors and moving the sliderall the way to the left, the treesand the mountain were the

focal points, or areas of greatest contrastbetween light and dark. And they fell ap-proximately at the imaginary intersec-tions of paper folded in thirds. See theart lessons starting on page 10 for more

information about deciding if a photo isa good candidate to be turned into apainting.Next, I gave the photo a color scheme

in Painter by borrowing colors fromMonet. See the steps on page 29.I opened the color scheme image in

Photoshop and chose Image: Duplicateand named the duplicate (File: Save As).I resized the windows so that the two

images were side by side, then I paintedon one, using the other as reference.I made several adjustments in Photo-

shop to make the painting go moresmoothly, as you’re about to see.

Impressionist LandscapePhoto and painting byKaren Sperling.

a. B.

Impressionist landscapes 105

Dark ShadowsPaint deep green everywhere you see darktones in the photo using the Brush tool and aSpatter preset on high Shape Dynamics andScattering settings. With the Scatter slider allthe way to the right, paint with white to sug-gest Vowers for color harmony with the whitein the sky.

Hard-EdgedAdd edges with the Brush tool and a HardRound on 50% opacity; build color gradually.

Bristle While you WorkFor bristly strokes, use a custom side strokespreset (opposite page) with the Smudge tool.

Paintin’ in the GrassPaint the grass with the Brush tool, using botha custom preset—I used the top, left silhouetteon the opposite page—and a Hard Round pre-set. Paint the bottom of the grass strokes withthe Smudge tool to connect them.

Final StepsPaint the clouds with theBrush tool and a Spatter preset

with high Shape Dynamics and Scat-tering sliders settings and opacity on70%. You paint a dark stroke at thebottom, then paint a lighter strokeoverlapping that and then a whitestroke at the top. That’s how to paintthe different tones for the mountains,too. Add tones based on where theyare in the photo. Add yellow and redon 10% opacity in the sky to createcolor harmony, where colors repeatthroughout the painting. Also add adarker tone of the sky’s blue-green inthe mountains and in the shrubbery.Use the Dodge to lighten up the skyto increase contrast with the moun-tains and the trees.

7Eye on HueI found another way to speedthings up was to choose HSB

(Hue, Saturation and Brightness) Slid-ers in the Color panel.Press option, Mac; alt, Windows andclick on a color in the image, thenchoose a lighter or darker versionusing the HSB sliders.Keep painting with the Brush tool,choosing various custom presets, ad-justing the sliders in Shape Dynamicsand Scattering. Paint where you seelights and darks in the source imageopen in another window next to thepainting.The three images on this page showmy progress as I painted more tones.

6


On a BlenderAfter I set up my panels foreasy access, it was time to

paint. I wanted the painting to looklike the photo, but in a colorful, im-pressionistic way.I created the painting by adding col-ors from my color scheme based onwhere I saw lights and darks in thephoto.Start by blending out details to cre-ate patterns of light and dark basedon where you see them in the photousing the Smudge tool with the Char-coal Large Smear preset chosen. Moveup all the sliders in Shape Dynamicsand Scattering with Pen Pressure cho-sen in the Control pop-up menus andwith Smoothing checked.

4

custom-BuiltI created several custom pre-sets from the silhouettes you

see at left—page 35 has the steps. Iused them with both the Brush tooland the Smudge tool with the ShapeDynamics and Scattering sliders invarious positions. I set up a shortcutkey for the Smudge. Here’s how:1. Choose Edit: Keyboard Shortcuts.The Keyboard Shortcuts andMenus dialog box appears.

2. Choose Tools in the Shortcuts Forpop-up menu. Scroll down andclick Smudge Tool. Type Y.

3. Click OK. Now you can type B toaccess the Brush tool and Y to ac-cess the Smudge tool.

5

Horse portraitPainting (opposite page) by Karen Sperling from photosby Renata Spiazzi (this page, top) and Susan Sexton (thispage, bottom), featured in the November 2006 issueof Artistry Tips and Tricks http://www.artistrymag.com/.

Pets5

P erhaps I should have included the follow-ing paintings in the portraits chapter. After

all, pets are people to those who love them.If you’ve read through the book so far, it will

come as no surprise that you’ll use the same artconcepts and Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshoptools to paint pets as you used to paint people andlandscapes.That’s because, as you now know, when you

paint, you’re painting highlights, midtones andshadows, not objects.In this section you’ll Und steps for painting dogs,

cats and horses.

107

Stormy Brush StrokesMake the image more painterly using some Distor-tion variants with Auto-Painting.

First run Auto-Painting with the Hurricane variant se-lected and then use Auto-Painting with the Turbulencevariant. Alternate between the two brushes, running thestrokes, stopping them, changing brushes, running themagain. Raise the Size slider in the Property Bar very high forboth brushes.

Feeling squeegee-ishMake the strokes a little Vatter and a little more liketraditional brush strokes by running Auto-

Painting with the F-X’s Squeegee variant chosen.Choose File: Save to save this version of the background.Then choose File: Save As and create a copy of the back-ground. This way, you have the Urst version of the back-ground if you need it later. This copy is now the paintingand you should still have the source photo open.

43

Ellen Roije-Pauwels sent me this photo of her dog, Ce-line, who passed away last summer. “I hope you can doa tutorial for painting pets with long hair in oils,” shesaid. And here’s my painting of Celine.I started the portrait by checking the tones in the

source photo in Painter.To do so, choose Effects: Tonal Control: Adjust Colors

and move the Saturation slider all the way to the left.With the colors turned off, the dog was lighter than the

background, making the dog the clear subject or focalpoint, or area of greatest contrast between light anddark. I decided to keep the dog lighter than the back-ground to emphasize that contrast in thepainting.Choose Edit: Undo (command+z, Mac;

ctrl+z, Windows) to get the colors backagain.Next, I thought about colors.I looked at the color wheel on page 12

and looked at the colors in the photo tosee if they Ut into a color scheme.It turned out the dog had a red-orange

tone and the background had a blue-green cast. Thesecolors are complements, or opposites on the colorwheel, and therefore good choices for a color scheme,and I decided I would emphasize them in the painting.Once you decide on how you will paint the tones and

colors, you’re ready to paint.With the photo open in Painter, choose File: Clone and

name the clone (File: Save As).I started by creating the background, then I painted

the dog into the background.This portrait is a good example of painting areas of

light and dark and just suggesting details, as you’ll see.

Painting Dogs


Dog PortraitPainting by Karen Sperling from a photo byEllen Roije-Pauwels.

Painting dogs 109

Make the gradientFor the background, start by creating a gradient. Seepage 29 for instructions for creating gradients in

Painter.You can see in the image (above, right) how I set up thecolors to get the resulting gradient.Click the round icon in the Gradients palette to make theUll circular.To Ull the image with the gradient, choose Effects: Fill,click next to Gradient and click OK (above image).

Brush HourAdd some painterly strokes using the Artists’ Sar-gent Brush and the Auto-Painting palette. See page

25 for instructions for using Auto-Painting.Choose Fade In/Out in the Stroke pop-up menu.Deselect Rotation under Randomness so that the brushstrokes go in one direction. Choose a light blue-green andrun this stroke for a little while, till you have some strokes.You see the results in the above image.

21

Painting dogs 111

Final StepsContinue to build up toneswith the Square Chalk and

blend with the Smudge.Use the Cloners’ Soft Cloner to paintin the eyes, nose and mouth.Switch to the Chalk’s Sharp Chalkand draw some lines to suggest hairstrands where you see them in thephoto. Blend a tad with the SquareChalk blender that you just created.Add red-orange to the backgroundwith the Square Chalk for color har-mony. Last, crop with Painter’s croptool. After you select the area youwant to keep, click inside the selec-tion to crop. Check page 108 to seehow I cropped the Unal image.

10

Still more definitionNext, turn the Square Chalkinto a blender and blend the

areas that you just painted. See the in-structions on page 24 for turningbrushes into blenders and for savingthem as variants.Using the photo as your guide,blend next to where light areas anddark areas touch, and keep edges be-tween these tones distinct.Switch back to the original SquareChalk and paint in additional color,then choose the blender version ofthe Square Chalk that you just cre-ated and blend.

8

Change ColorsMake the dog more red-orangeand the background more

blue-green because these complemen-tary colors create a more painterly re-sult than using the photo’s colorsstraight out of the box. I also decidedto darken the background a little. Tochange the color and tone:1. Choose Effects: Tonal Control: Ad-just Selected Colors. The AdjustSelected Colors dialog appears.

2. Click on an area in the image.3. Click and drag in the Preview tillyou see the same area.

4. Move the Hue Shift slider to adjustcolors; move the Value slider toalter tones. Click OK.

9

More definitionOnce you have the basic areasof light and dark, once again

choose the Chalk’s Square Chalk vari-ant, deselect the rubber stamp in theColors palette, and paint, emphasiz-ing the areas of light and dark basedon where you see them in the photo.Press option, Mac; alt, Windows, clickon a color in the image, then choose alighter or darker version of it in theColors palette and paint in the image.You see my progress at right.

7


Bring in the dogTurn on Tracing Paper—seepage 27 for information about

using Tracing Paper.Choose the Chalk’s Square Chalkvariant. Click the rubber stamp in theColors palette to pick up colors fromthe photo. Choose a medium settingin the Property Bar’s Size slider andpaint to bring in the dog.The image at right shows my setupas I painted. I had the photo next tothe painting (far right) and I had Trac-ing Paper turned on as I painted (nearright).The secret to painting hair is to paintbroad areas of light and dark and tojust suggest the strands. Paint strokesin the direction that the dog hairVows, but instead of thinking of it asbringing in strands of hair, paint tobring in areas of light and dark.At this point you’re creating thedog’s general shape by painting tones.

5

Define the dogAfter you bring in the dog, cre-ate deUnition between light

and dark areas by painting with theBlenders’ Smudge variant. Leave someof the background color showing inthe dog to create color harmony,where colors repeat in the foregroundand in the background.Turn Tracing Paper on and off to seeyour progress.

6

Painting cats 113

TextureTo add some texture to the brush strokes, choose Ef-fects: Surface Control: Apply Surface Texture with

Image Luminance chosen in the Using menu.Paint yellow-orange with the Digital Watercolors’ NewSimple Water on a low opacity on the gray part on thebody to warm it up a bit.After painting with Digital Watercolors, choose Layers:

Dry Digital Watercolor.

FurTo create fur around the head, lower the Size sliderin the Property Bar and paint little strokes

with the Sargent Brush with the rubber stamp selected inthe Colors palette.Paint a hint of whiskers using the Soft Cloner on a lowSize slider setting.

43

Auto-PaintingStart by selecting the Artists’ Sargent Brush, clickingthe rubber stamp in the Colors palette, choosing a

medium-high Size slider setting and running Auto-Paintingwith Fade In/Out chosen in the Stroke menu.See page 25 for Auto-Painting instructions.

DetailTurn on Tracing Paper and with the Sargent Brushstill selected, lower the Size slider and paint details.

Click the rubber stamp in the Colors palette to paint col-ors from the photo and deselect to choose colors.Turn Tracing Paper off and then on again frequently tocheck your progress. See page 27 for Tracing Paper steps.Paint with the Cloners’ Soft Cloner a little to add somedetail in the face.

21


Painting cats

I took this photo on a hot day here insouthern California. It was late after-noon, a great time for stark contrastswith tons of highlights and shadows cre-ated by the setting sun.The star of the photo shoot, Norton,

the cat, was hiding in the plants in theshade.We tried to coax him into the sunlight

with his toys, but he was no fool.Finally, as luck would have it, Norton

noticed the fountain, which was in thesun, and pouring water. He ventured outof the shade to take a look. I got myphoto! It had good composition, and thetones were right for a painting. Part ofthe face was in light, part was in shadow,

and the body, background and fountainall had interesting lights and darks. Allthis contrast would lend itself to a paint-ing. Of course, it helped that the expres-sion was very cute—cat stalking itsprey—a metaphor for me as the photog-rapher stalking mine! It didn’t matterthat the photo was slightly out of focusbecause when I painted, the brushstrokes would be in focus.Another good thing about this photo

were the colors—they were all in the yel-low-orange family, making them usefulfor the painting.To start, open the photo in Painter

(File: Open). Choose File: Clone andname the clone (File: Save As).

Cat PortraitPhoto and painting byKaren Sperling.

Painting horses 115

Progress reportUse the areas of light and darkin the edited photo to guide

you in the painting.The illustrations on this page showthe progression as I built up the col-ors and tones based on the lights anddarks in the edited photo.Notice how much more interestingthe face and neck looked as the darksand lights became more emphasized.Use the Scratchboard Tool on a lowsize setting and the Real Oils Short ona high feature setting to paint themane.At the end, use Levels in Photoshopto add contrast.Add green/blue-green next to thehorse by editing the brush strokesusing Hue/Saturation, Color Balanceand Selective Color in Photoshop.That’s how I created a horse of a dif-ferent color in Painter and Photoshop!

3

come to lightOpen the cropped photo andthe edited copy in Painter. At-

tach the Ules and turn on TracingPaper (see the instructions for turningon Tracing Paper with layers on page27).Next, paint the lights and darks inthe image using these brushes:Pens’ Scratchboard Tool for outlines.Acrylics’ Captured Bristle for wideareas of solid color.Artists’ Oils’ Blender Bristle forblending strokes.RealBristle Brushes’ Real Oils Shortfor bristly brush strokes—lower theFeature slider in the Property Bar forsolid strokes, raise it for more bristles.

1

Lift offPaint color with either theScratchboard Tool (the white

outlines) or the Captured Bristle (thered strokes in the wood) and thenblend them with the Blender Bristleand Real Oils Short variants.The Blender Bristle and Real OilsShort variants work in a similar way:You paint and lift, paint and lift, toget pure color, and you scribble toblend the colors. The red strokes onthe neck are examples of painting andlifting with the Blender Bristle.

2

Painting horses


I went to the Traditional EquitationSchool in Burbank, CA, to take aphoto to paint for this book.I had in mind a photo of a horse

running free, but since it was a school,the horses that were out and abouthad riders.I went to the stalls and looked

around. All the horses were inshadow, till I rounded a corner, andthere was this horse, with the sunshining brightly on his face.I waited till he turned his head, and

now the light face was contrasted withthe dark wood—I had my photo!Start by opening the photo in Photo-

shop. Choose Image: Duplicate andname this copy (File: SaveAs) to keep the original.Crop the copy to include justthe horse and the woodpanel. Save—this is yournew source image—then du-plicate—this is your paint-ing. With the Magnetic Lassotool, select the horse andmake it into a layer (see page36 for instructions).In Image menu: Adjust-

ments, use Hue/Saturation,Color Balance and SelectiveColor to edit the head, thenthe background, creating ared/red-orange/green/blue-green color scheme. File:Save As in the .psd format.See pages 12-13 for infor-

mation about choosing acolor scheme.

Horse PortraitPainting by Karen Sperlingfrom her photo taken at theTraditional Equitation School,Burbank, CA.

Post-Printing

6

PrintThis is a print of the Degas Dancers painting. It’s 20" x24" x 1.50", one of the most popular sizes for canvasprints. The printer was Jacksonville, IL-based J VeeGraphics www.jveegraphics.com. Painting by KarenSperling from a photo by Felicia Tausig. Photo of canvasprint by Karen Sperling.

The subject of printing—and all of the con-siderations about printers, inks and pa-

pers—is a vast one, and beyond the scope of thisbook. Besides, there are already plenty of sourcesfor these topics, both in print and online.Not as widely covered is the subject of painting

on top of the printed canvas, a technique that isgaining in popularity.This section covers how to apply paint to the

canvas after it’s printed.Of course, you can print to watercolor-type

paper instead, and you don’t have to add paint tocanvas prints.But if you want to paint on canvas after it’s

printed, this section is for you.The following chapters will help you get started

with painting with traditional media.Meanwhile, get some canvas boards in an art

store and play around with acrylics and oils to getcomfortable with them before trying to paint onprinted canvas.I Und painting both on the computer and with

traditional paint is more about conUdence thananything. Getting used to the materials will helpyou feel more conUdent.Remember: If you think you can paint with tra-

ditional media, you probably can!

117

Applying a First Coat 119

First LookHere’s what the canvas lookedlike when it arrived from theprinter, J Vee Graphics.Painting by Karen Sperlingfrom a photo by Felicia Tausig.Photo of the printed canvas byKaren Sperling.

applying a first coat


SpraysHere’s a look at the protec-tive coating sprays. Photo byKaren Sperling.

You have painted your photo in CorelPainter or Adobe Photoshop.The next step is to print to canvas.Canvas is the most popular choice for

printing out paintings from photos be-cause then you can apply acrylic or oilpaints on top of the print.Photographers have two choices for

printed canvases: Either send the Ules toan outside printing source, or buy aprinter and do the printing themselves.Printing yourself might be more cost-

effective monetarily, but you pay theprice in terms of quality and time. If youwant to print yourself, be ready to notonly learn how to do the printing, butalso how to do the post-printing.After the print comes out of the printer,

you have to apply a protective coating,whether you’re going to hang the printas is or paint on it with acrylics or oils.I asked three professional printers with

whom I’ve worked what the do-it-your-selfer should do to the canvas after it’sprinted.The Urst thing to do once the print is

out of the printer is to let it “cure” or dryfor at least 24 hours, says J Vee of Jack-sonville, IL-based J Vee Graphics.“By ‘curing’ I simply mean drying at

room temperature next to a fan set tolow. This lets the colors and tones trulystabilize” as well as allowing the surfaceto accept whatever you apply next, says JVee.The next step is to apply a protective

coating.“The easiest method of Unishing a can-

vas is to spray it with a preservative,usually acrylic based,” says Alan Zarterof Lawrenceville, GA. “The purpose ofthe spray is to add durability and displaylife to the print. I use PremierArt PrintShield, which doesn’t alter the look ofthe print,” notes Zarter.“You can also use Krylon matte, satin,

or glossy Unishes. Whichever youchoose, make sure it is compatible withyour canvas and ink and that it also haswhat are known as UV inhibitors tolessen the long-term effects of exposureto light because your canvas will not bedisplayed behind glass.”Santa Monica, CA-based Jack Duganne,

who invented the term giclée, counselsthe do-it-yourselfer to either “use a spraycoating like Krylon Workable Fixatiffrom your local art store or get waterbased PremierArt ECO Print Shield androll it on with a foam roller.”Spraying Urst makes the rolling easier,

but it isn’t necessary, adds Duganne.

“I’ve done it both ways and just re-cently discovered that spraying Urst waseasier, but both ways—spraying Urst, orjust using the roller—work exceptionallywell.”Meanwhile, I’ve used both Krylon

Crystal Clear, which is a glossy acryliccoating spray and the PremierArt PrintShield spray.Using these sprays isn’t as simple as

you may think.As Zarter notes, they’re smelly and get

in your lungs.I sprayed small portions of a canvas

one at a time, letting each one dry, tominimize the amount of spray Vyingaround the room. This can get pretty te-dious, though, for a 30" by 40" canvas,which is a common size nowadays.I have then painted on the sprayed

areas after they were dry with good re-sults, so really, this is all you need toknow to print your own canvases.But the canvases I’ve gotten back from

the professionals have an extra depth orfeel to them because of additional stepsafter this Urst protective coat, or insteadof it, not including the actual enhancingof the canvas with acrylic or oil paints.J Vee, for instance, uses a spray gun

found in body shops to apply three coatsof varnish after the spraying.Zarter, meanwhile, will either spray or

apply his “favorite Unishing technique,which involves coating the canvas with aliquid acrylic either by hand with a rolleror sprayed with a compressed-airsprayer.”One of the ways that Duganne treats

canvases “is to silk-screen a photo-poly-mer UV coating onto the canvas piecesand run them through a UV reactor topolymerize and harden them. They areincredibly durable this way and the levelof gloss to matte can be controlled ex-tremely well.”The bottom line is, the post-printing

process can be as easy as letting the print

dry and spraying it, or as complex ashaving it printed professionally andcoated by hand, varnished or silk-screened.I think you can “get away” with doing

it yourself the simple way, but either get-ting the canvas printed professionally, orlearning to do a professional job your-self, will show in the quality of the re-sult.The experts quoted in this chapter and

the next one include:J Vee-J Vee GraphicsJacksonville, ILwww.jveegraphics.comJack Duganne - Duganne AteliersSanta Monica, CAhttp://www.duganne.comAlan Zarter-Alan Zarter Fine ArtLawrenceville, GAwww.azUneart.com

Painting with Acrylics 121

MediumsMediums come in differentthicknesses and in either glossor matte. Use them by them-selves or add to acrylic paint.Mixing the various mediumscreates unique effects. Photoby Karen Sperling.

a cool, unique texture.Use sgrafUto, a painting technique

where you scratch designs into the wetpaint to reveal what’s beneath it withsomething sharp like the other end of apaint brush.Other things you’ll need for painting

are rags, paper towels, water, a dropcloth and masking tape to mask off areasto protect them.Cover an area with masking tape, paint

the area next to it, remove the tape, re-peat—the result is an unusual work ofart. To paint straight lines, apply tape,paint overlapping it, remove the tape.Make sure you wash painting tools

right after you use them.Acrylics dry quickly, so you can’t leave

things with acrylics on them, especiallybrushes—the paint will dry and thebrushes will be ruined.I use plain soap and water and a little

dab of a brush cleaner from an art sup-ply store, any one will do, really. Whenyou clean a brush, hold out one handand push the brush into your palm sev-eral times. This releases built up paintnext to the ferrule (the metal thing) andmakes the brush last longer. Wash withwarm water, not hot; rinse with cold.Next is the paint.I use the acrylics that come in tubes.

Golden and Liquitex are the best-knownbrands.Then there’s medium. Medium is the

generic word for something you mixwith the paint.First, water is a medium for acrylics.

You can thin out acrylics simply by mix-ing them with a little water.Other, store-bought mediums come in

various thicknesses.Medium is also a product and it is the

thinnest (following water, that is).Gels are the thickest.Medium comes in all sorts of varieties

and thicknesses in between.Art supply stores have sample cards

with examples of all of the thicknesses.Mediums also come in matte (no shine)

and gloss (shine).I mix matte and gloss mediums be-

cause I like a semi-gloss effect.You’ll need something to pour medium

into and to mix with paint. You can get apalette in the art store, or you can useold dishes. Sometimes I use plasticplates bought at the grocery store. You’llalso need an easel. I got an inexpensiveone, but they have big furniture-like ex-pensive ones, too. They also have table-top easels.OK, you have all the materials, you’re

ready to paint.If you just want to add a coat of shiny

paint, do what Jack Duganne and AlanZarter recommend.“My favorite Unishing technique in-

volves coating the canvas with a liquidacrylic,” says Zarter.“I use Glamour II Giclée Veneer from

Breathing Color. I apply the liquid witha roller, but it can also be applied with abrush or compressed-air sprayer de-pending on the volume you are coatingand the Unish you prefer. You canchoose Unishes from matte to glossy ormix them as I do to achieve just the Un-ish you like.”Jack Duganne uses a similar technique

to coat the canvas.

Painting with Acrylics


Painting toolsUse ice scrapers, brushes,rollers, palette knives—any-thing—to paint with acrylics.Photo by Karen Sperling.

I love painting with acrylics.They’re versatile and forgiving.Make a mistake and wipe it off the can-

vas with a wet paper towel or rag.Just do it before the paint dries.Painting with acrylics, you can paint

with any object, paint with any thick-ness. Brush strokes can be Vat or raised.Throw in tinsel, confetti, sparkles, any-

thing, the acrylic is like glue and every-thing sticks.You can paint with brushes or anything

that will make a mark.Brushes range in price depending on

whether the hairs are synthetic, naturalor a combination of the two.When you’re starting out, you can get

by with the less expensive variety.I have some synthetic brushes, some

natural ones and some combinations ofthe two.Besides brushes, I use anything else

that will create an effect. In fact, for me,like Jean Dubuffet, the abstract expres-

sionist who was one of the early users ofacrylics and loved to experiment withthem, half the fun is coming up with anew look with a new device.In addition to brushes and rollers, I’ve

used palette knives; the ridges of card-board ripped in half; combs; naturalsponges; toothbrushes; plastic trowels;paint scrapers; spatulas; credit cards; carwindshield scrapers; squeegees; icing ap-plicators; and squeeze bottles.I have also used clear plastic wrap to

rub on acrylics to get a wavy effect likewater.Acrylics are not just added to canvas,

but also subtracted.While paint is still wet, moisten a natu-

ral sponge, or a paper towel, and thendab the canvas—some of the paintcomes off and some is left behind, creat-ing an interesting textured effect.Let the paint dry a little and then wipe

it up with a wet cloth or paper towel—some remains and some is lifted, leaving

Painting with Acrylics 123

Painting Techniques1. For flowers, moisten a natu-ral sponge with water; dip iteither in paint, paint mixedwith medium or just medium;and dab the canvas. 2. For thetutus, paint a coat of mediumwith a brush or a palette knifeto create texture, then spat-ter with a toothbrush, thendab on highlights with thesponge. Let each coat dry be-fore doing the next one. 3. Forthe floor, paint a coat of glosssuper heavy gel medium usingswooshy strokes with a paletteknife. After they dry, dabpaint on with the sponge.Photo by Karen Sperling.

Accent Brush Strokes

An interesting accent and one of my fa-vorites is spattered paint. Mix acrylicswith water to make them watery, dip atoothbrush in the resulting “soup,” holdthe toothbrush next to the canvas, andrun your Unger along the toothbrush,


First coatMix gloss and matte gel andpaint textured strokes on thebackground with a brush.Photo by Karen Sperling.

“If you are just interested in putting anice gloss or satin Unish, I would suggestgetting the water based Premier Art ECOPrint Shield. You can get the coating ingloss, satin or matte and I have foundthat the best satin is achieved by mixinghalf gloss and half satin to create a greateggshell Unish,” Duganne says. “Roll iton with a foam roller. The best rollers arethe ones from a house painting supplystore that sells packs of six. They have aroller bearing core which allows thecoating to go on smoothly without theroller sticking and dragging on theprint.” To get the best result, “roll onecoat one way and then, while it is stillwet, keep rolling the other way and thenback to the Urst direction and back andforth until the print seems fairly evenand smooth,” Duganne notes. “You don’thave to worry about leaving ridges be-cause they all dry out smoothly in thatyou are essentially just letting the weightof the roller itself be the only pressure onthe piece as you roll.”He adds, “the coating also comes in a

spray can if you wish to go that route.”If you want more than just a Vat Unish,

that’s where the painting comes in.What follows are examples of the kinds

of things you can do with acrylics.You can choose any or all of them and

in any combination. Don’t be afraid toexperiment. You’ll eventually Und the ef-fects that you like best.

Clear Brush StrokesOne way to add texture to the printed

canvas is to paint clear brush strokes.Use gloss medium or matte medium, or

a combination of the two.Use plain medium for Vat strokes and

gel medium for tall strokes. Mix them to-gether for strokes in between. Paint acombination of heights for variety.Apply the medium with one of the pre-

viously mentioned tools or one that youUnd works well for you.

You can stop at this step if you like theresult, or you can go to the next one.And by the way, you can use this stepalone or in combination with any of thenext steps as a basis for oil painting, cov-ered in the next chapter.

Translucent BrushStrokesAdd acrylic paint to medium and paint

translucent strokes with a brush.You can either paint colors where you

see your highlights and shadows, or youcan ignore the highlights and shadowsand add brush strokes abstractly.Or you can add a glaze, which is a coat

of paint over an area of the painting orthe whole thing.

Opaque Brush StrokesPaint undiluted paint with a brush ei-

ther as tones based on what’s already onthe canvas, or add strokes in a more ab-stract way, ignoring the canvas imagery.

spattering color on the canvas.The best technique of all is to use all of

the above and create a unique artwork.These are just some examples of some

of the things you can do with acrylics onyour canvas.The joy is to come up with your own

ideas, effects and looks. Have fun!

1

2

3

Painting with oils 125

knives, if you enjoy them—I do!You can use the soft brushes you got

for acrylics for painting thin coats of oilpaint. Get stiffer brushes like those madeof hog hair to paint thicker coats of oil.As for the oil paint, get artist grade, not

student grade. Get the best brand yourwallet will allow. The art store can guideyou in your purchases, even if you orderfrom online stores.You’ll also need a palette to mix col-

ors—you can get a wooden one or youcan get a pad of paper palette sheets.And get metal cups at an art store, or

use old cans, for cleaning brushes withturpenoid, a substance that has replacedturpentine nowadays.Traditional artists like oils because of

their slow drying time—several days andmore—allowing for easier correctionsbecause oils stay wet longer thanacrylics, which dry quickly.The down side is, oils are too slow for

me—I like to see the results and moveonto something else.It’s possible to speed up oils’ drying

times in a couple of ways.The Urst is to use Winsor & Newton

GrifUn Alkyd fast-drying paint.Another is to mix regular and fast-dry-

ing paint with a fast-drying mediumcalled Liquin.I have found that the quick-drying

paint, and oils mixed with Liquin, dry inabout 24 hours, while regular oils notmixed with anything take days to dry.A traditional method for oil painting is

to paint in layers.To paint the painting on the opposite

page, I did two coats.I painted the Urst coat with oils mixed

with turpenoid to thin them out. Mixingwith turpenoid made the paint moreVuid and easy to work with, but it didn’tspeed up drying time. It took severaldays for this Urst coat to dry. To check tosee if the paint is dry, touch the canvas—it’s dry when no paint comes off.

I painted the second coat with regularoils and fast-drying paint, both mixedwith Liquin. This coat was thicker thanthe Urst coat, but dried more quickly.For the Urst coat, squeeze out a little

paint onto your palette. Pour a littleturpenoid into a tin cup. Dip your brushin the cup, then dip your brush intoyour paint on your palette and paint.Make sure you let this coat dry com-

pletely before you paint the next coat.For the next coat, put some more paint

on your palette with a little Liquin nextto it, mix some paint and Liquin withyour brush and add another coat.Let this coat dry for about 24 hours,

longer if you want to be sure it’s dry.You could add more coats of paint, but

I painted just the two.If you’ve read this book from the be-

ginning through now, you have probablyguessed that you’re painting with the oilsto emphasize the lights and darks in thepainting.I painted light and dark tones in the

tutus, around the girls and in the Voor.I emphasized the light patterns in the

Voor, adding lighter paint to create thehighlights and darker tones to enhancethe shadows.I also added colors and tones to the

Vowers in the back.The Urst coat of oils established the

tones better. The second coat also em-phasized the tones, and additionally,added texture with thicker strokes.See page 123 for the previous version.Don’t be afraid to paint with oils—

they’re very forgiving. You don’t like astroke that you painted? No problem—wipe it off with a rag and try again.When done painting, rinse your

brushes right away in turpenoid andthen wash them with soap and water.Don’t leave them lying around with paintin them because the paint will dry andruin the brushesMost important-have fun!

Painting with Oils


I painted with oils in the last century, andthen didn’t touch them again until last year,when I exhibited my art during Art BaselMiami—the gallery with whom I showedwanted my work to be done in oils.As a result, I did a lot of research, and came

up with a basic workVow.Painting with oils is trickier than painting

with acrylics because it’s possible the oils onthe canvas will eventually crack if you’re notcareful.The guidelines in this chapter are what I

found out during my research, and if youfollow them, your paintings will be Une!Before you paint on the print with oils, you

need to apply several coats of paint to sealthe print to prevent the ink from running

and to avoid the oils bleeding into the can-vas. This is normally a job for gesso, but youcan use the coatings and acrylics discussedin the previous chapters as this base coat.Be sure to have several coats, including the

Urst one where you spray the canvas with aUxative, and allow plenty of time in betweencoats so that the acrylics are dry before youstart painting with oils.Depending on the thickness of the coats, a

couple of days should be enough time.You can’t paint acrylics on top of oils,

though, only oils on top of acrylics.OK, so you have your canvas print with

several coats of acrylics on it, and you’reready to paint with oils!You need brushes and maybe palette

Oil paintingPaint oils on acrylics,but don’t paintacrylics on oils.Paint tones with theoils using the photo asyour guide—comparethe floor and tutus inthis version with theone on page 123. Thehighlights and shad-ows have been en-hanced in thisversion.Photo byKaren Sperling.

Paint bucket 29, 70Pastel 5, 50, 51, 53, 61, 81, 90, 91, 93Patterns palette 33Pens 45, 75, 89, 96, 115Photo Enhance menu 29Photo’s Burn 15, 53, 101Photo’s Dodge 15, 43, 53, 69, 71, 93, 101Photorealistic 5, 58, 59, 76, 94, 95, 97Preserve Transparency 28, 31, 69, 73Preset 34, 35, 37, 55, 56, 57, 104, 105Property Bar 24, 25, 30, 31, 32, 33, 47, 49, 61, 62, 63, 65,

69, 71, 74, 79, 83, 89, 92, 93, 95, 109, 110, 113, 115.psd 37, 73, 86, 114Real Oils Short 43, 44, 45, 67, 71, 115RealBristle Brushes 43, 45, 67, 71, 115Rear square 29, 32Record Stroke 25, 52, 99Resat 24, 52, 65, 66, 74, 95Restore Default Variant 24, 62, 63.rif 47, 49RIFF 32, 47Round Water Blender 48Rubber stamp 25, 28, 51, 59, 61, 62, 63, 66, 88, 89, 95, 97,

99, 100, 110, 113Sargent Brush 25, 59, 61, 78, 79, 99, 109, 113Save Selection 37Scatter 103, 105Scratchboard Tool 45, 75, 89, 96, 97, 115Sharp Chalk 31, 43, 44, 45, 50, 53, 59, 65, 69, 71, 75, 77,

79, 85, 93, 101, 111Smart Blur 37, 42, 54, 58Smeary Wet Sponge 27, 66, 74, 88, 89Smudge 34, 35, 49, 50, 53, 55, 56, 57, 59, 65, 67, 74, 75,

83, 84, 100, 101, 104, 105, 110, 111Smudge tool 35, 55, 56, 57, 104, 105Soft Cloner 33, 44, 45, 52, 59, 62, 63, 65, 66, 74, 87, 89,

111, 113Soft Round 35, 37, 55, 56, 57Source image 26, 29, 32, 45, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 59, 61,

83, 86, 88, 89, 91, 94, 95, 98, 104, 114Spot Healing Brush 35Square Chalk 24, 33, 43, 44, 45, 50, 51, 52, 53, 59, 63, 66,

71, 74, 75, 79, 83, 84, 91, 92, 93, 100, 110, 111.tif 86Tonal Control: Adjust Colors 15, 45, 68, 78, 92, 102, 108Tools panel 34, 36, 55Tracing Paper 27, 42, 45, 46, 47, 52, 53, 61, 62, 70, 71, 76,

77, 78, 88, 89, 92, 96, 97, 98, 100, 110, 113, 115Underpainting 28, 29, 42, 44, 51, 58, 61, 77, 87, 88, 95Vignette 44Wacom 4, 5, 7, 23, 38, 39, 47Water Rake 74, 75, 95Watercolor 5, 20, 33, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 59, 69, 71, 77, 81,

86, 87, 88, 89, 93, 101, 113, 117Wet Eraser 48, 49xScale 2P 26, 65, 87, 97

IndexAcrylics 5, 7, 9, 19, 65, 66, 67, 77, 97, 115, 117, 118, 120,

121, 122, 123, 124, 125Adjacent color scheme 13, 15, 20, 76, 78, 79, 82, 90, 95, 97Aerial Perspective 13Airbrushes 31, 39, 69, 71, 75, 83, 87, 88, 89Apply Layer Mask 31Apply Surface Texture 33, 101, 113Art concepts 7, 9, 18, 19, 42, 56, 57, 59, 62, 65, 68, 76, 87,

89, 98, 107Artists’ Oils 44, 45, 67, 77, 78, 96, 97, 115Auto Clone 51, 61Auto Playback 52Auto Select Layer 30, 32Auto-Painting 24, 25, 32, 44, 61, 62, 63, 71, 98, 99, 100,

109, 113Backgrounds 5, 21, 26, 35, 48, 72, 73, 75, 92Bleed 24, 52, 65, 66, 74, 95Blender Bristle 44, 45, 77, 78, 79, 96, 97, 115Blenders 43, 44, 49, 50, 53, 59, 65, 67, 69, 71, 74, 75, 77,

79, 83, 84, 85, 89, 93, 95, 100, 110, 111Brush Controls 38, 39, 47, 61, 74, 95Brush Selector 24, 25, 27, 32, 52, 63, 93, 99Brush tool 35, 37, 55, 56, 57, 104, 105Brushes panel 34, 55, 57, 103Canvas 7, 9, 19, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, †42, 52, 53, 66, 67,

70, 71, 73, 74, 76, 78, 87, 90, 91, 117, 118, 119, 120,121, 122, 123, 124, 125

Capture Dab 27Capture Paper 33Captured Bristle 97, 115Charcoal Large Smear 35, 55, 104Cintiq 38, 39Clone source 26, 27, 28, 66Cloners 26, 28, 33, 44, 45, 52, 59, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 74, 87,

97, 100, 111, 113Clothing 21, 35, 48, 53, 67, 73, 75Clouds 20, 49, 86, 87, 97, 105Color Complements 12Color harmony 13, 39, 42, 51, 53, 57, 61, 75, 77, 79, 89, 91,

93, 96, 97, 105, 110, 111Color panel 37, 104Color scheme 7, 12, 13, 15, 20, 21, 28, 29, 42, 50, 51, 57,

73, 76, 78, 79, 82, 83, 84, 87, 90, 91, 94, 95, 97, 102,104, 108, 114

Color wheel 12, 13, 50, 57, 70, 78, 79, 82, 90, 93, 108Colors palette 25, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 43, 44, 47, 51, 52, 59,

61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 69, 70, 71, 77, 88, 89, 91, 95, 97, 99,100, 101, 110, 113

Color complements 12, 13, 39, 50, 57, 70, 78, 93, 111Composition 5, 10, 12, 16, 17, 21, 60, 87, 112Crop tool 33, 46, 111Custom brush 32, 35, 59, 96, 97, 99Custom palette 25, 93Custom presets 104Custom tip 27DeUne Pattern 33

Destination image 29, 32, 98Digital Airbrush 31, 39, 69, 70, 71, 75, 83, 87Dress 12, 13, 45, 50, 53, 67, 71, 75Drop to Vatten 31, 73, 75Effects: Fill 27, 28, 29, 33, 51, 61, 73, 109Express in Image 29, 51, 83Eyes 10, 17, 18, 19, 43, 44, 48, 55, 59, 63, 69, 71, 75, 77,

111Face 11, 12, 13, 16, 21, 42, 43, 47, 48, 52, 53, 55, 56, 59,

62, 63, 65, 69, 70, 75, 76, 78, 79, 112, 113, 114, 115Feather 35File: Clone 25, 26, 27, 42, 46, 50, 51, 58, 61, 66, 68, 72, 77,

83, 86, 87, 91, 94, 95, 98, 108, 112Flatten 31, 57, 69, 73, 75, 88Float 30, 71, 73, 78Flowers 32, 44, 45, 65, 66, 67, 71, 86, 96, 97, 105, 123, 125Focal point 5, 14, 15, 16, 20, 42, 68, 74, 76, 87, 89, 90, 94,

97, 98, 101, 102, 108Gradients 29, 51, 70, 83, 109Grain 24, 32, 33, 47, 48, 53, 74, 95Grainy Blender 89Grainy Water 71, 74Hair 10, 11, 17, 18, 19, 21, 31, 35, 37, 42, 43, 44, 47, 48,

52, 53, 56, 57, 63, 65, 68, 70, 71, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79,108, 110, 111, 125

Hard Round 35, 39, 55, 56, 105Image hose 5, 30, 32, 33, 36, 49Impressionist 5, 25, 27, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 74, 78, 79, 84,

85, 89, 93, 100, 102, 103, 105Intuos 38, 39Jewelry 45, 53, 56, 75Jitter 24, 55, 66, 74, 79, 89, 103Just Add Water 43, 49, 59, 69, 70, 71, 74, 77, 79Lasso 27, 30, 32, 36, 42, 44, 52, 54, 70, 73, 74, 78, 114Layer Adjuster tool 30, 32layer mask 31, 37, 71Layers menu 28, 30, 31, 32, 47, 59, 69, 71, 73, 75, 79, 88,

101Layers palette 28, 30, 31, 32, 37, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 78Layers: Dry Digital Watercolor 44, 49, 77, 93, 113Library Palettes 29, 33Lips 17, 18, 19, 43, 44, 56, 59, 63, 65, 70, 71, 75, 77Load Selection 37, 73Loaded Wet Sponge 88, 89luminance 29, 33, 52, 101, 113Magnetic Lasso 30, 36, 42, 52, 54, 70, 73, 114Menu icon 27, 29, 33, 37Mixer 96New Simple Blender 48New Simple Water 43, 44, 47, 48, 59, 69, 71, 77, 93, 101,

113New variant 24, 27Noses 18, 19, 63Nozzles 30, 32, 36, 49Oils 5, 7, 9, 19, 24, 43, 44, 45, 67, 70, 71, 77, 78, 81, 96,

97, 101, 108, 115, 117, 118, 124, 125

Index

Index 127126 Karen Sperling’s Painting for Photographers

About the Author


Karen Sperling wrote the Urst Paintermanual when the program debuted in1991.She went on to write the manuals for

the next several versions of Painter andwrote several published Painter books.

Painting for Photographers is her fourthPainter book.A graduate of Ithaca College, Karen has

been a journalist for 30+ years, havingworked freelance and on staff as a writerand as an editor for various magazinesand newspapers.Karen published the Urst printed

Painter magazine, Artistry, and the UrstPainter e-zine, Artistry Tips and Tricks.Karen’s Painter tutorials have appeared

in many publications including SBS De-sign, PEI magazine, Professional Photog-raphers magazine and RangeUnder.Karen has taught Painter for over 18

years all over the United States at com-

panies such as Disney and AmericanGreetings, and at institutions includingthe New School for Social Research inNew York. She has given Painter talksand demonstrations at American FilmInstitute, Macworld, Seybold, SIG-GRAPH, Professional Photographers ofAmerica and WPPI.Karen creates abstract art both in

Painter and with traditional media, andshe has associations with galleries in LosAngeles, New York and London.A photographer and an artist since

childhood, Karen has exhibited her ab-stracts in New York’s prestigious Chelseasection and during Art Basel Miami.Her commissioned portraits and art are

held in private collections internation-ally. Her Une art site ishttp://www.karensperling.comand her tutorials site ishttp://www.artistrymag.com/.

Magical Mystical ToursKaren Sperling with herpainting, Magical MysticalTour #15, on display duringArt Basel Miami.

painting for photographers: steps and art lessons for painting photos in corel painter and adobe...

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