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ADVANCED LEVEL

Paint a portrait and get creative with brushes

ThissectioniscalledAdvanced,butthetitledoes not

reflect thetechnical complexityofthe final picture

alone. Insomeways, itis lessdifficult thanthe

Intermediatepicture.We havedeemed itmoredifficult

becauseof thepersonal creativechoiceswe havehadto

makeandwhich, to a largeextent, causethe pictureto

succeedor fail.Inparticular, theoverall stylefor the

picture andfor thebrushstrokes, and howto handlethe

compositionand especiallythebackground.Thereisalso

afair amountof free brushing inthisimage, allover but

again,especially inthebackground.Thesefactorsmake

itmoretrickybutalsoultimatelymoresatisfying.En

route,well bring inmost ofthecloningtechniqueswe

have coveredandafewadditional onesaswell.InsteadofusingWatercolorbrushes, wewill gobacktoopaq

ue

media likeOilsandAcrylicsandcover brush

customisation andhow tousethe Selection command.

ORIGINALPHOTO

FINALCLONEDPAINTING 2008 Corel Corporation. All rights reserved.

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HERES HOW...

2Painting in missing background. From theOils palette, use the Tapered Round Oils 15brush to roughly continue the existing greenbackground, as well as the patch of pinstripejacket into the white border areas. Although youprobably wont use the green background, it willensure that the values remain consistent. Increasethe Contrast a little to give the image some moreenergy.

1Saturation. Open the photo from the CorelsPainter X tutorial page. Its evident that thehead in the photo needs some room to breathe,so to begin with, add 200 pixels left and 100pixels right to produce the canvas dimensionsyou want. This puts the head slightly offcentre inthe frame.

3Changing the background colour. At thisstage, we decided that the green backgroundwasnt going to work for the image. Go toEffects>Adjust Selected Colours and use theDropper tool to select the green background.Then change H Extents to 20 per cent, H Featherto ten per cent, Hue Shift to 34 per cent, Valueto 16 per cent and Saturation to 91 per cent.This gives us a brown background that worksbetter.

5Set up the paper.Now you need to setup the paper that willprovide the surfacetexture for the clonedimage. Choose ArtistsCanvas from the dropdown list of papersaccessed from the Papersicon at the bottom of thetoolbox. Then launch thePapers palette using thePapers flyout. This willallow you to see all thepapers parameters andadjust them if you want.

4Setting up the colourcloning. To set up the colourcloning, head to File and click onClone. Then follow Select>All, andEdit>Clear. This will create a newClone of Josh image, whichshould be all white. Fill this with acool brown (H:40 per cent, S: fiveper cent, V: 55 per cent) using theFill tool.

6Customising the first brush. Were goingto use the Artists Sargent brush to lay downtexture onto the painting. This will require somecustomisation. First, select the Sargent brush inthe Artists brush category. Then open up theShow Brush Creator link, which is accessed fromthe flyout arrow to the right of the BrushSelector palette.

8Changing the Sargent Brush's Size

settings. Select Size from the left of theStroke Designer page. Change the brush profileto the pointed one topleft, Size to 37.8 per cent,Minimum Size to eight per cent, Expression toPressure and Size Step to one per cent.

7Customising the Sargent brush. Select theGeneral category from the list on the lefthand side of the Stroke Designer page in theBrush Creator and make the following changes:Stroke Type set to Rake; Method set to Cover;Sub Category set to Grainy Hard; Expression setto Pressure, and the Grain set to 18 per cent.Remember that the visible paper textureincreases as the value set reduces. Aim to useabout 16 per cent.

9Changing the Sargent Brush's Well

parameters. Open the Well settings andchange Resaturation to 76 per cent, Bleed to 0per cent, Expression to 0 and Dryout to 268.6.Finally, change Rake to ten and make sure thatImpasto, which gives depth to brushstrokes, isturned off.

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Saving the customisedSargent Brush. Youll need

to save the customised brush it iseasy to forget to do this! Open theflyout menu next to the BrushSelector and click on Save Variant.Name it Grainy Sargent and it willthen appear at the bottom of the listof brushes in the Artists category,without replacing the Sargent brush.

10Checking value relationships between the faceand the plain background. Before you start

painting, check how the face will fit in with the brownbackground. Use the Eye Dropper tool to confirm that thebrown for the background matches the tonal value of anumber of the background areas. If you want to let thebackground show through the painted image, you nowknow where to do this with the correct values.

11 Initial brushing with the customisedbrush. At this stage, make somebrushstrokes with the new brush with theoriginal image completely obscured by thebrown. This is always a very exciting part of theprocess as you see the image beginning toemerge. The later stages of restoring the facialfeatures following facial contours using the

image in semitransparent mode is a moretechnical exercise.

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Setting up the Bristle brush. Our aim is to try tokeep this portrait loose. To help achieve this, for the

next stage of painting, use the Bristle brush in the Artists Oilscategory. Use this as it comes, with the following settings:Size: 5.4; Opacity: 79 per cent; Grain: 17 per cent; Viscosity:50 per cent; Blend: 100 per cent, Wetness: 75.

13 Using the Bristle brush. Open the photo from theThe Bristles brush stroke has a streaky nature to it, itsown bristly character. Now, begin to make the brushstrokesfollow the contours of the face. This means togglingfrequently back and forth between Transparency and Opacityusing the Transparency icon. Dont worry too much aboutdetail at this stage.

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Closeup on the eyes. Even though the image isbeing cloned, and should in theory replicate exactly

what is in the original photography, the marvellous thingabout some of the Corel Painter brushes like the Bristle isthat they do not deposit paint with photographic precision,but with some randomness. This is crucial to making animage look painted. Eyes should not be painted identically

eyes are not identical, so it is important to paint them withtheir own character.

15 Developing the picture. Now you need to begin todevelop some ideas for the background. Work upsome detail too, using a smaller Bristle brush. Make sure thatthere are a few lost edges where the face and backgroundseem to merge this helps to integrate them and avoid astuckon effect.

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Brush sizeIt sounds obvious,but always makesure you pick thecorrect brush sizefor the job. In ourcase, we wanted tokeep a loose styleso that means

picking the largestbrush you can getaway with. The ideais to giverecognisable formwithout enteringinto photoqualitysharpness. If youwanted more detail,then obviously gofor a smaller brushsize. We've givenguidelines here, butyou may feel morecomfortable with adifferent size.

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More work on the headand background. Using

the Grainy Sargent brush again, butwith a larger Size (25.3) andOpacity (82 per cent), restore theunderpainted brown, letting someof the original photos dark brownshow through to give thebackground some energy.

17 Fixing the background.Still using the GrainySargent, introduce some blockedindark olive into the background. Thiscolour is a darker value of thesubjects iris colour. The dark tonehelps to model the face byintroducing an element ofchiaroscuro. Use a Size of 37.8,Opacity of 57 per cent and Grain of18 per cent. The dark patch isobviously not cloned and itsdeveloping shape, tone and colour

just works.

18Bringing back more detail in the face.For the details, first select Oils>Thick Wet

Oils 10 (Size: two, Opacity: nine per cent, Resat:ten, Bleed: 65 per cent, Jitter: 0.02. Also checkthat Impasto is off) to block in the key features.Then use the Tapered Round Oils 15 to restoremore precise details, set to a Size of 2.6, anOpacity of 87 per cent, Resat set to 100, Bleed to83 per cent and Feature set to 2.3.

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Painting the hair. Still using the Tapered Round Oilsbrush, bring back the hair from the dark brown

underpainting. Dont paint all the hairs individually, just those

strands that are crucial to getting the illusion of hair. In thiscase, the hair is tricky because there are not many settled,even areas, but lots of spikes instead. The hair is actuallyemerging from the dark background which helps to integratethe picture into it.

21Developing the eyes. You can see that the

brushstrokes making up the eyes are adding to thefeatures with streaks and slabs of colour, and not justreproducing the photograph precisely. Now make generalstrokes with the original photo showing through thetransparency. Stay with the largest brush you can. Using verysmall brushes will quickly remove looselooking brushstrokes,so stay away from them!

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Finishing touches. At thisstage, you may decide that

the background needs somethingmore. We tried various shapes andcolours to create harmonies andinterest, but went for a light bluewhich was complementary for someof the skin colours. It created tensionand helped bring alive thebackground and push forward theface. This is a decision you have tomake for yourself you cant clone it.

22 Final adjustments. To givethe picture a little more

contrast, follow Select>All, andEdit>Copy>Paste in Place. This willduplicate the first layer. Thenchange the composite method toGel and reduce the Opacity of thenew layer to six per cent. Under thePhoto menu, use a little Dodge andSaturation Add on the irises toreveal them a little more.

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Finished work. For some lastminuteadjustments, add some colour Saturation

to the skin (Adjust Selected Colours Sat: 30), anda little sharpening (0.88).

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Merge formsWhile the focus ofthis feature is aboutusing photography asthe foundation for apainting, don't beafraid to go freestyle!

You can achieve veryrealistic results if youleave the CloneColour environmentand paint in coloursover the clonedareas. In our examplehere, we manuallypainted in parts ofthe background tocomplement thecolours in the face. Itdidn't take great skill,but helped elevatethe image beyond astraight clone.

Layer choicesTraditional artistsapply layer afterlayer of paint tobuild up depth. Allyou have to do isduplicate a layerand then

experiment with thecompositemethods! Theseallow you to darkenor boost a paintingand you can controlthe effect using theOpacity slider. Weused the Gelcomposite methodin this tutorial, butother good ones areDarken, Multiply,Lighten and Screen.It all depends onyour painting's

colours and theeffect you want, sotry them out to seewhat works.

www.corel.co.uk/painter

TMThis tutorial was written by David Cole for the Official Corel Painter Magazine. For

more tutorials subscribe to the magazine at www.paintermagazine.co.uk.