I received an annual report about my blog from WordPress. I’m thrilled! If interested, do click to see the full report. According to the report, visitors to the blog represented 177 countries. Last year I had visitors from 169 countries. My mind boggles at those numbers. WordPress started tracking the countries in Feb of 2012, and since that time I have had visitors from 183 countries. The world is a smaller place today.
Happy New Year and thank you so very much for visiting and following my blog.
Love you all!
Skip
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 290,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 12 days for that many people to see it.
I was looking through a folder where I save test or experimental images and noticed an image of a Rose that I cloned from a beautiful photograph by Melissa Gallo.…thank you Melissa for allowing me to use your photograph. I didn’t mean to finish this image; it is just a test piece. I was testing a cloner brush, and I discovered what I needed to know and stopped working on the image.
Test image created in Corel Painter X3, Custom Oil Cloner Brush
As you can see, the image is a bit rough, but interesting I think. I wondered if I could do something to the image that would complete it. I decided to video the process and share with you.
In the first video, I duplicated the canvas layer and changed the composite method to gel. Gel composite method is transparent and over the canvas layer it tends to darken the image and add richness to the colors, but the values darken. Using a layer mask, I show how to reclaim some of the lighter values.
The image after video 1
In video two I use Adjust Colors from the Effects Menu. This function allows you to change hue, saturation, and value similar to the way the Underpainting Panel works. But Adjust Colors has an extra powerful feature; it can use Uniform Color, Paper, Image Luminance, or Original Luminance as guides. Using Image Luminance is my favorite way to use Adjust Colors. Adjust colors is global, unless you use a selection and then only the area within the selection changes.
The image after video 2. Notice the subtle color changes?
Another great function under the Effects Menu is Adjust Selected Colors. It is different from Adjust Colors because you can select a single color or range of colors to change…it isn’t global. And, like Adjust Colors you can constrain the changes to within a selection, which I did not demonstrate. Video 3 will show you how to use Adjust Selected Colors.
Adjust Selected Colors I believe is more powerful than Adjust Colors. This is the image after Video 3
In the last video, I use Stroke Attributes, which is a brushes function. Not all brushes can use Stroke Attributes, but the most can. It is like painting with composite methods constrained to the brush stroke instead of covering the layer. It is a little difficult to explain verbally, but easy to explain in a video and very easy to use. After doing this video, I believe Stroke Attributes is a technique that fits well into the cloning workflow. Check out the last video.
The last painting after video 4
I think I said somewhere in one of the videos that when demonstrating I some of the time overwork an image or don’t notice a flaw. As I was posting this image, I realized that I should have reduced the scale of the Artist Canvas paper. It doesn’t look right at the present scale…so if you try these techniques…do check your scale setting on your paper to see if it looks correct with the size of your image.
OK, I guess that’s it for this post. Thanks again to Melissa Gallo for allowing me to use her wonderful photograph. Check out her site; you will be glad that you did.
I want to thank all you for visiting my blog this year. I want to especially thank folks who have thought enough of the blog to donate; I appreciate you more than you know. You encourage me to keep blogging.
I wish you all good health, good fun, prosperity, peace and happiness in the coming year. Happy, Happy New Year!!!
There are new drivers available from Wacom. It appears that I missed the ones posted on 10/15/13 for Macs. There is a new set posted on 12/10/13 for Window Users. The drivers are for Cintiq Companion Products, Cintiq Products, Intuos Pro, and Intuos. There is a driver posted 12/19/13 for Bamboo Tablets. Like I said, all the ones posted in December are for Windows users, the October posts are for Macs.
I did update to the latest driver because I was having a couple of issues and I am on an Intuos 5. If you are not having issues, I’m not sure you would need to update your driver if you are on an older tablet.
Don’t forget to back up your preferences before you uninstall and install.
I have made a new brush set called HOS 2013 Florals for Painter X3. PLEASE NOTE: These brushes are for Painter X3 only; do not try to install in any other version of Painter. I had planned to introduce the brushes to the blog first, but I was having so much fun with them, I decided to introduce them in the Holiday Open Studio class at the Digital Art Academy, which is why I named them, HOS 2013 Florals. HOS stands for Holiday Open Studio.
Anyway, I am making them available here, too, plus I have added 10 videos showing how I use some of the brushes to create this painting.
Painting created in Painter X3 using watercolors, specifically my new set called HOS 2013 Florals
I hope you enjoy the videos. I tried to make them around 5 minutes long, but toward the end, I did get a bit verbose. In the first video, I set up the paper layer and added a beautiful painting by Monet to the mixer pad, which allows me to use the color scheme of Monet’s painting.
I create a simple sketch in the second video.
Next, I create the background. Here is video 3.
In video 4, I am using two new brushes, Basic Watercolor and Basic Watercolor 2
In video 5 I show the use of a layer mask.
I create another layer mask in video 6. In both video 5 and 6 I use a new brush called Channel Painter.
In video 7 I use a new brush called Dark Edged Wash. I brought back several older favorite brushes and added them to this category. Thick and Thin 17 from Cool Springs is an example.
I use a layer command called Lift Canvas to Watercolor Layer in the eighth video. This command is a must for working in watercolor in Painter.
Finally, I bet you are tired of waiting, I use Flower Maker and Flower Painter; the two flower brushes included in HOS 2013 Florals. And, guess what? You find out that it was the paper making the flowers all along.
The tenth video shows finishing touches. I hope you enjoyed the series.
There are three downloads for this post; the brushes, the suminagashi papers, and a flow map library. I didn’t use a flow map in this demonstration, but several of the brushes can use flow maps. I would use the Paint Jam 2 Flow maps provided in a earlier post.
The suminagashi papers would not have been possible without David Gell’s wonderful Suminagashi 2 Brushes. David has a new site devoted to Painter X3 called Jitter Brush – X3 and Beyond. Thank you David for all that you do for the Painter Community. I have learned more about brushes from you than anyone else.
OK friends, I think that about covers it for this post. Enjoy and I hope each and every one of you have a Happy Holiday and a fabulous New Year.
Skip Allen Paints 