This happened a bit faster than I realized. Karen has opened the registration for Discover New Features in Painter X3 at the Digital Art Academy. Karen listed the class as Open Enrollment, but I’m asking that it be changed to regular enrollment. That means you will need to register by the end of the first week of classes, or by Aug 2. Either way works. Regular enrollment means we all start at the same time. Open enrollment allows folks to enter at any time.
The class begins on July 27th. You can download a free trial version of Painter X3 at the beginning of the class. That way you will be able to discover what is new in X3 and then decide if you want to buy it. I am sure you will want it.
I am so excited. Corel Painter has announced the launch of the newest version, Corel Painter X3. There are some fabulous new features and enhancements. Let’s get to the videos. They are all short and meant to give you a quick overview of the new stuff, but they do not give all the details. Look for an announcement of my class taking you through the new stuff in detail. Registration will be open soon for my class at the Digital Art Academy, probably tomorrow.
Have you ever had trouble finding a brush. Not any more. Check out the new Brush Search function.
The next video describes the new Reference Image, which I particularly like. I am not cloning as much as I used to, so the reference image fits my work flow.
I find the enhance stroke preview very helpful when making brushes.
I really hope you like the next new feature. We have new mixer pads made by several artist, including one from me. Check it out.
There are wonderful new brushes in X3, using something called Universal Jitter. I’ll speak about that in the next video; in this one I’ll give you a taste of what the Jitter Brushes can do.
You’ve seen how the Jitter brushes work…here is what makes them tick…Universal Jitter.
If you adjust brushes, you are familiar with the minimum slider in the Size Brush Control Panel. Guess what? Added to multiple brush controls are minimum sliders. I love it.
I can’t help it; this is one of my all time favorite things in Painter X3. The Advanced Brush Control makes adjusting brushes so easy. I know you will love it.
OMGosh…the new perspective guide is incredible. Like the other quick videos, the functions of this tool are not shown in-depth. I will have a class that will give you all the new features in greater detail.
Enhanced Cloning is a misnomer. I think the new Clone Source Image will revolutionize the cloning work flow. If feel like a new feature, not an enhancement. I love this enhancement.
The development team improved layers; they are very stable. Also added is the ability to transform across layers, even groups. This is an amazing addition.
I think this is one of the coolest new features. Now when making a color set, you can set the number of colors you want returned. Created color sets are very useful.
And the final video concerns the return of Onion Skin when making movies or animation. But this video will also tell you about new papers, flow maps, and patterns. And, I do not want to forget that even though Mac users will not have a 32 bit version of Painter X3, an added memory extender allows Mac users to use extra memory.
OK…whew…that’s it for today. I’ve tried to give you a quick intro to all that is new in Painter X3. As I have mentioned, I will have a class at the Digital Art Academy called Discover What’s New in Painter X3. We are in the process of setting up the registration page. As soon as it is up…probably tomorrow…I’ll let you know. I hope some will join the class and learn the details of what’s new in Painter X3.
A week or two ago, Marie left a comment about the Traditional Colors of Japan. She posted two links; The Traditional Colors of Japan from Wikipedia and from Ki Do Raku Japan – Traditional Colors of Japan. They are both terrific but the first one gave RGB equivalents for the colors. That meant that I could create the color in Painter and add it to a color set. Why would I want to, I hear you saying. Good question.
I’m fond of the art of Japan and China, well all of Asia. The color is a major part of the attraction for me. So, when I saw a site that had all the colors listed, I had to make a color set for myself. I cannot tell you that the set is accurate. Color management on the Web is non-existent, which doesn’t matter in this case, as long as the RGB numbers are correct. I have no way of knowing if they are.
The Traditional colors of Japan have an interesting history. Apparently they date back to 603…that’s quite a history. That is all I know. I haven’t taken the time to research the colors.
Once I made the set, I tried a simple watercolor with colors only from the set. I can’t say the painting was a rousing success, but I can say that I do love the color set. While painting, I used several new brushes that have not been published. Last time that disappointed many folks because they wanted to follow along. So this time I provided a brush category that has all the brushes used. Look for all the downloads at the end of the post.
Here is the image that I created. After finishing, I did use the default equalize and then faded it by 50%. I didn’t show that in the video. The flowers are forsythia.
Forsythia Flowers, Corel Painter 12.2, Watercolor
And for your viewing pleasure…or not…here is the video of painting process. Sorry it is so long; I hadn’t planned on it being over 25 or 30 minutes…oh well. I hope you enjoy it.
You can get the color set, the brushes used for the Forsythia Painting and the Airbrush Wet’s Paper category from the following links:
UPDATE: Sorry, but I forgot to take video 5 off private. I have set it correctly now and it is available for viewing. I can’t help it; I’m a dunce. LOL.
I follow Painter Factory, a forum for Painter users provided by Corel Painter. It is a great forum; you can ask questions or answer them; you can even suggest enhancements and new functions for future versions of Corel Painter.
I notice a thread that someone who is new to Painter asked if an art pen would be proper for a newbie. All the answers were terrific. But, it gave me the idea to follow my post about setting up the Intuos 5 with posts about the Wacom Art Pen and how you can tame it in Painter 12. It is a fabulous tool, and I would highly recommend it to traditional artists.
I have created 6 videos, each around 5 minutes long. This first video shows the enhanced brush ghost as the best cursor to use with Art Pen, and I explain the advantages of barrel rotation.
In this video, part 2, I take a look at a variant that doesn’t have any rotation function and try to change it to a variant that does have rotation ability, however, I found that Expression Rotation in the Angle Brush Control Panel doesn’t always work…why?
In this video, part 3, I find what dab types will work with rotation and which ones will not.
In this video, part 4, I discover the RealBristle brush control panel; I will explore it next.
In the fifth video we explore the RealBristle brush control panel. It has lots of sliders all geared to help you make the perfect variant based on traditional values.
In the last video, I review what I have learned. I also talk about sample multiple colors and how the realbristle brushes can use sample multiple colors…very cool.
Well, there you have it. My take on the Wacom Art Pen. I love mine and when not demonstrating, I use it exclusively. I hope you will give it a try.
I love Corel Painter and I love my Wacom Intuos 5 Touch. I have been rather busy of late, and since we have had several new Wacom Tablet Drivers, I messed up and lost my preferences. I hadn’t set them up completely anyway, and I had always planned to do a series of videos about how my settings, so now seemed the perfect opportunity to do a series of videos showing the how and why of my settings. I tried to keep each video under 5 minutes, but failed miserably. I don’t think I had one over 8 minutes though.
Please note, I am using a Wacom Intuos 5 Touch. If you are using an Intuos 4 or an Intuos 5 without Touch, I think the videos will still hold interest.
The first video is a quick introduction to Wacom Tablet Properties.
The second video talks about programing the Grip and Art Pens.
The third and fourth videos concern touch.
The fifth video is about Express Keys. Since we can only program functions that have shortcut commands, I needed to create shortcut commands for several functions. This video explains making shortcut keys.
The sixth video is also about Express Keys. I demonstrate how to make the Express Keys work only in Painter.
Video 7 is all about the Touch Ring
Video 8 explains the Radial Menu.
And the last video…number 9…wraps it up with saving the preferences.
OK, that’s it for this post. I do need to apologize for never finishing the painting using Painter Lite. I got sidetracked and simply lost interest in the painting. Then, everyday, I put pressure on myself to finish it. It was awful. I may or may not finish the painting. Right now I want to do some other stuff in Painter.
For those of you who enjoy hearing about Kevin from time to time, I have to report I haven’t seen him in a while. I don’t know where he is; I assume he is still living in my computer. I recently moved a whole bunch of stuff to an external hard drive; I hope he didn’t get lost in the move. Anyway, as soon as I can find him, I’ll give you a report on what he has been up to.
Take care my friends, and I hope you enjoy this post,
Skip Allen Paints 