Hey Y’all,
Here is something really new. I just noticed that Corel Painter has a new product available, Brush Packs. There are nine different brush packs created by professionals in specific fields. All look very interesting.
Don’t have Painter 2015, no problem, six of the sets are compatible with Painter X3 and 12. Three of the sets are particle brushes and those, of course, are not compatible with versions earlier than 2015.
I haven’t downloaded and played with any of the brushes, but I will. I’m reviewing them now to decide what I want to buy. There is a watercolor set; I must have those. 🙂 I am very curious about the Particle sets, so I am sure I will try one of those.
OK…go check the New Brush Packs out. As soon as I download one and give it a try, I’ll let you know what I think.
New Brush Packs for Corel Painter
Enjoy,
Skip
I noticed the brush packs the other day and thought I’d find one or two of yours. Of course we all know yours is a labor of love and generosity however I’d pay easily for your beautiful brushes.
Hey Banana,
Why didn’t you let me know. I just saw them. Thanks for the nice comment.
Hugs,
Skip
Oh man!!! Now I want them all! But you are still e king of brushes!!
Me too, Barb. Can’t wait to give them a try.
Hi Skip, I’m re-acquainting myself with Painter. So glad I stayed on your mailing list. Keep ’em coming! Thanks! Sue M.
Hey Sue,
Glad you stuck around, too. BTW, I have to reacquaint myself with Painter daily…I’m so old…LOL.
Enjoy,
skip
Skip,
Thank you for this post. I would have probably not even learned about the Brush Packs otherwise. I am going to purchase at least three of the brush packs today.
Don
Wow Don,
That’s great. Do let us know what you think about them.
Enjoy,
Skip
Can’t wait to see your reviews. You are the my best resource for Painter. Thanks!
Thomas W. Hillis LEED-AP, MArch
“The only real buildings are non buildings. The rest are theater.” Kevin Roche
Hey Thomas,
Thanks very much. I’ve just started one set. I’m not sure I can afford all of them; I may have to pick and choose or test them over a period of time.
Skip
Skip, What is the best brush to imitate a layer of paint actually being laid down? I am working on a likeness of Rembrandt and need to get the impasto scruffy look of one of his self-portraits. If it is (in fact) an impasto brush…please let me know which one you think would serve my purposes best and what settings would be applicable. Thanks for your time. Scott
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Hey Scott,
I’ve delayed answering because I am unsure how to proceed. Your question is very broad and there are lots of avenues you could take and many, many brushes that would probably do the job. Rather than try to find a brush for you, let me give you a couple of pointers and maybe point you in the right direction. I suspect that Rembrandt’s backgrounds were thin, but I do not know this for sure…I guess I am saying that I would not work with impasto in the background. Impasto or build up of paint traditionally happens on the highlights. Many folks have very good brushes out there…Karen Bonaker, Tim Shelbourne, John Lowther, Helen Yancy, Marilyn Sholin and Heather Michelle to name a few. If you want to work with my brushes, I think I would say use Bristly Dabs or Buttery Oils…with a preference toward Bristly Dabs…use the ones that do not have impasto. But, you could also get pretty good results with texture overlays. Heather Michelle and Malissa Gallo both have wonderful texture overlays. I’m sure there are others who produce very good brushes and overlays, who I am forgetting at the moment. I hope this helps, skip
Thanks for the heads up on this, Skip.
Always welcome Kerry!
Oh NOOES! I can’t find my art pen and these brushes SCREAM for rotation! I guess I better put more oomph into finding that pen!
Oh gosh…I wouldn’t be able to paint. I have two art pens. When I am working primarily with two brushes, which I find I do often, I select one variant for one art pen and the other variant for the other art pen. (This works with grip pens, too) The pens remember what variant you were using, and unless you go back to the Brush selector with that pen and select another variant, it will not change to another variant. That means I can have two pens in front of me and can pick the one up that I want to use…it seems quicker to me and more natural. And, remember those colored rings that come with the pens. You put those on the pens so you will be able to tell at a glance which pen is which. It’s really pretty awesome. Thanks for your support, likes, and kind comments. Enjoy, Skip
For a minute, Skip, I thought you were going to tell me you can paint with your left and right hand at the same time! That would be handy (bad pun).
I did go hunting again and did find that art pen. I only have one art pen but i have about 3 standard grip pens too (for all the Wacoms in my past). And in all that time, I never even tried to use two pens simultaneously .. well, at least not on purpose! Of course the colored rings make sense now.
You are so right that it would feel more natural. When I draw on paper, I often find myself with 3 or 4 pencils, pens, markers .. I guess I could actually use 3 or 4 hands.
Thanks for that great tip. I’m going to give that a try.
As a side note, I loved your watercolor paint chips videos and want to do that not just for color, but also for brush strokes. It’s such a meditative activity.
That’s too funny, Regina; I can’t paint with both hands, but I can manage using both feet. I’m glad you found your art pen. I had some extra nibs and can’t seem to locate them. I’m fond of the hard plastic pointed nibs.
I wish I lived closer to Northern Virginia. I would love to join your sketching group at the Smithsonian…sounds wonderful. There are a number of groups in Atlanta and I’m not too far from there. It would be fun to take my Surface Pro 3 with Painter and do the session digitally.
Glad you enjoyed the paint chip video. I don’t usually make brush stroke samplers, but Tim Shelbourne makes wonderful ones.
Thank you for your wonderful note,
Skip
Hi Skip Love your site. Question? Do you know if there is anyway to save work, when a window in painter pops up and says close painter, painter has stopped working. I don’t want to close it until I have exhausted all avenues.
Hope you can help.
Donna J.
Hi Donna,
Sorry for the delay in replying…i am out of town and not able to monitor easily.
There are two possibilities. The first is the easiest. When Painter crashes it tries to save your file for you. Painter will create a folder in your documents called Painter 2015 Recovered Files. Find that folder, if you are lucky you will find your file there. in my experience Painter recovers the file 95% of the time.
If you do not find the folder or your file, look and see if you can find a .temp with the same name. If you find one, change the .temp extension to .rif. That has worked for me some of the time.
Hope this helps,
Skip
Yes it did help YEA! thank-you very very much Skip and getting back with me so quickly.
Donna
Yippeeee! 🙂
just purchased the coral portiat brushes, so far i am finding them super to work with,just what i needed. thank you skip for letting me know about this
Great news. Thanks for letting us know. I hope others will enjoy them.
Cheers,
Skip
portrait. sorry for the spelling mistake
Skip,
I’ve enjoyed your posts for quite some time. I was wondering if you might have an answer to a brush problem I’m having. My computer died recently and I’ve re-installed Painter on my new one. Problem is, my custom brushes (self made) are gone. Do you know any way to retrieve these preferences from the old hard drive? Thanks for any info.
Dave
Hi Dave,
Sorry for the late reply; I have been out of town.
I see you have a Mac. I am not a Mac person, so telling you where to find the files is somewhat problematic. I have explained where the files are located in a previous post, though. You can find that post here: Brush Management. Go to the link and read the part about the path to the user files. That will tell you where the files are located. Once that is done, if you will search my site for other information about brush installation and management, I believe that you will find all the information necessary to recapture your brushes. If you are still confused, please let me know and I’ll see if I can help.
Enjoy,
Skip
Skip,
Re: my previous question… I neglected to tell you the old computer is a Mac Pro. I am able to get into the hard drive, but I haven’t been able to find my brush preferences.
Thanks, Dave
Skip,
Success! Thank so much! I found my brush variants and was able to copy them into the new brushes folder. The biggest obstacle in doing that is finding the hidden “Application Support” folder. Your article pointed me to it. Once again, you are DA MAN!
Dave
Great news Dave. It has been a while since I wrote those articles, but they still seem to be relevant. I know they are popular and get 15 to 20 hits a day. I do plan to update all the information at some point soon. Your note made me realize that I need to keep the stuff in about the hidden files in Macs. PCs also hide files. I find that so strange.
Anyway, I’m so glad you were able to recapture your brushes.
Thanks for letting me know,
Skip
Skip,
It is very valuable information. Computers aren’t intended to last forever and if they did, they would become dinosaurs within 6-7 years anyway. My advice to everyone is to prepare now for that inevitable day. Have your software disks or DMGs backed up, record your serial numbers., and learn how to retrieve your personal preferences. Because it’s not “if”, but “when.” Thanks again for your advice and your informative blog. -Dave
Hi Skip, I have Painter 2015 and love the particle brushes. First a comment: I often find myself painting on a layer and after a number of strokes, I want to clear the layer using my Wacom tablet. This is much faster than using undo. I came up with a method to program a tablet button. Maybe you have covered this in the past but if not, I could give you the method to publish here. (contact me by email if you like). This clears the layer and does not delete it.
Second is a question. I have created a number of new Particle brushes that look pretty good. How would I go about selling the pack without creating a website? Corel seems to be selling their own and its not an open marketplace. I would be willing to split the selling price with the website owner. Just exploring the idea. ..Ron
Hi Ron,
I have discussed clearing a layer using shortcuts on my Wacom Cintiq, but the same concept could be used on any of the Wacom tablets. You can find it here: How I Set Up My Wacom. LOL…I think there are 9 videos covering the subject…way more than the average person wants to watch. Anyway, I set up one of my express keys with Ctrl + A + Backspace, for my PC. For a Mac, you would use Cmd + A + Delete. But, there are many ways to skin a cat…so your solution may be different from mine.
I am not sure what to tell you about selling brush packs. You could contact any of the folks who do sell packs and see if they are interested in selling yours. I don’t sell anything, but I am working on another web site that may have the ability to sell stuff. I hate to do it, but I seldom get donations and the costs of running a blog is rising…sigh. I’m hoping I will never have to sell, but that may change. Wish I could give you more information, but I’m afraid I don’t have the expertise.
Enjoy,
skip
Hi Skip, I use a PC but when selecting all (Ctrl A) and pressing Delete nothing happened. I then set the Painter keyboard shortcut for Clear to use the Delete key. Its odd that Corel doesn’t have that set already since it is used in Photoshop. I had forgotten about the backspace key. So the total keystroke sequence for the tablet on a PC is: Ctrl A Backspace Ctrl D
Thanks for your reply….Ron
Hey Ron,
Actually on a PC all you need is Ctrl + A + Backspace. You do not need to do Ctrl + D to remove the Marquee, it is removed automatically with that sequence. If however, you have added a shortcut key to Clear and use that, you would need to do Ctrl + A + Clear + Ctrl + D. I have added a bunch of shortcut keys to Painter so that I can use my radial menu exclusively. But, I started running out of keys to use. Since Ctrl + A and Backspace are already available to use with Wacom, there was no need to program a shortcut for Clear. And, as mentioned before, on a Mac, all you need is Cmd + A + delete…and again the marquee is deleted with the sequence.
If you find it works differently, please let me know.
Thanks,
Skip
Yep, your right, the selection goes away after the backspace. Thanks.
Great news…I was worried that something was amiss and we were getting two different results, which isn’t all that unusual. Thanks for letting me know…Skip
Skip,
Saw a snippet of this lady’s work and went to her site.
http://www.hollymonroe.com/portfolio.php
She does amazing calligraphy. She did calligraphy in the shape
of a dog and a cat and she does much more. Don’t know if you
have heard of her but thought of you when I perused her site.
Thanks,
Sheila Lile
Thank you Sheila,
I took a look at her work and it is wonderful. There are many calligraphers out there; she is one of the best I’ve seen. I often wonder what the traditional calligraphers would think about using Corel. I know there would be an initial resistance, but it does work similar to the traditional methods. One of these days, I think I am going to write one of them and see what kind of response I get. Thanks again for the link. Skip
The brush pack is no longer available. Any idea where to get them?
Thanks for the great website!
Hi…
I’m not sure what to tell you. I have sent a note to someone at Corel asking if they will be available again, but I haven’t heard back yet. As soon as I do, I’ll let you know.
Enjoy,
Skip
I have heard from a friend at Corel that said the new brushes will be available soon. I’m not sure if the same ones that were available will be available again.
Thanks, Skip
Thank you, Skip!
Hi Skip, I just purchased Painter 2016 and noticed it didn’t have my favorite palettes from Painter 12. Any way I can import the Dry Palette Knife and the Blender Palette knife to the new program?
I need them.
Joe
Hi Joe,
All of the brushes from previous versions are in Painter 2016. It comes with 4 brush libraries, Painter 11, Painter 12/X3, Painter 2015, and Painter 2016. To access your favorite brushes from Painter 12, click on the Brush Selector and then the option button in the upper right corner of the brush Library panel. From the list, click on Brush library and then select Painter 12/X3. That brush library will open and you can use your favorite brushes from Painter 12. Hope this helps, Skip