OK, we have looked at the stuff that needs to be done before you start painting in Corel Painter. In my attempt to show you how I learn a new version of Corel Painter, Series Two will be looking at the new Fluid Brushes. I usually look at the description in the Help Files of what is new in the version. Then I jump in and start playing. Join me in my exploration of Corel Painter 2023’s new Fluid Brushes.
Fluid Brushes – First look
Fluid Brushes – 2nd Look
Fluid Brushes – 3rd Look
Fluid Brushes – 4th Look
Fluid Brushes – 5th Look
Fluid Brushes – 6th Look
Fluid Brushes – 7th Look
Fluid Brushes – 8th Look – I know – I said the seventh video was the last in this series, but I forgot about merge modes – this video takes care of it.
OK…give me a couple of days and I will have series three up. I hope you enjoy the videos. Please like on You tube and subscribe. If these videos are helpful, consider making a donation.
Corel Painter 2023 was released in June. Do you have your copy yet? Download your copy here!
It’s been a year since I last posted. Since April 2021, my life was difficult, but I think I see light at the end of the tunnel. I have been on sabbatical from Corel Painter, classes, and everything else. I am still on sabbatical, but I am gradually returning to life as normal.
As you know, I usually offer a class on the new Painter every year, but not this year. However, I do want to share what I know about the new version…or at least how I learn a new version of painter. This entry as well as the next few will focus on what I do to learn a new version of Corel Painter. I hope you enjoy the videos and if they are useful, please like them on You Tube and subscribe here and You Tube. Please feel free to comment and ask questions. And if the videos are especially useful, consider hitting the donation button.
I am dividing the information into series. The first series concerns opening painter for the first time and creating new workspaces and layouts. The following two suggestions are highly recommended:
Before you open Painter for the first time, hold down the shift key and then open painter with the shift key activated. This is called a Shift Start and gives you an opportunity to set all workspaces back to the factory default settings. Then make sure you do not have anything open in the background before you run Painter’s brush performance accelerator.
Create a workspace and layout from scratch. Yes, you can still import a workspace from an older version, but the possibility of a glitch happening is very high. The versions are more and more complex. Taking an hour or two and creating a new workspace is a very good idea.
If you are familiar with Painter’s workspaces and layouts, then feel free to skip this first series of videos. However, you may find the review useful. I will Shift Start, run the brush performance accelerator, and create a new workspace and layout from scratch. Enjoy the videos, Skip
Corel Painter 2023, Series One, The Setup
Corel Painter 2023, Series One, the setup continued
Corel Painter 2023, Series One, the setup continued
Corel Painter 2023, Series One, the setup continued
Corel Painter 2023, Series One, the setup continued
Corel Painter 2023, Series One, the setup continued
Corel Painter 2023, Series One, the setup continued
Corel Painter 2023, Series One, the setup continued
Corel Painter 2023, Series One, the setup continued
Corel Painter 2023, Series One, the setup continued
OK…that’s all there is to setting up Corel Painter 2023. I hope you enjoyed the videos.
OMGosh, you are going to love the new Painter. Don’t even think about it…buy it. In my opinion, this is the best version since Painter 2012-1. And as usual, I will have a “What’s New Class” called Corel Painter 2022, the Year of the Dab. You can register at :
The first thing you’re likely to notice in Corel Painter 2022 is the new brush library. It has been meticulously overhauled in every way. There are fresh, modern icons designed for every brush category. And the categories themselves have been renamed, reorganized, and streamlined to present a diverse set of brushes and tools in each singularly focused category.
New and enhanced! Cover methods
The versatile cover methods are the foundation of many popular brush categories, such as Acrylics, Chalk, Charcoal, Conte, Gouache, Pastels, and Pens. Cover methods are also used for some Oils and Blenders, and with many stamp-type brushes.
The Enhanced Cover methods, available only in Painter 2022, take advantage of the latest technology advancements for an improved brushing experience. For Flat methods, anti-aliasing support has been increased resulting in opaque dab rendering. Noise has been added for artifact reduction in all Enhanced Cover methods, and it is especially pronounced for Soft brushstrokes with feathered edges.
Alpha Blend technology has been added to improve color precision when blending adjacent brushstrokes, reducing the likelihood of unexpected color shifts near the edges. Grainy methods feature new options for grain control, opacity, and enhanced layer blending. In addition, brush loading support has been added to all Enhanced Cover methods to give your brushstrokes that smeary, oily look.
New and enhanced! Smoothing
A new Jitter Reduction option joins the Smoothing controls, along with updated names for existing options that are more indicative of their respective effects. The panel also provides updated tooltips and graphics that make it easier to soften the appearance of brushstrokes.
New! Brush filters and favorites
Quickly build your very own list of favorite brushes, and then use the My Favorites filter to trim the brush library down to your personal essentials. Take advantage of the Painter Masters filter to experience a wealth of brushes curated by distinguished Painter artists. You can also quickly isolate stamp-type, Watercolor and Thick Paint compatible, and Cloner brushes.
New! Captured dab libraries
The new Captured panel provides boundless possibilities for experimenting with customizing the appearance of brush dabs. There are 12 new captured dab libraries to choose from: Bristles, Concept, Flat, General, Graphic, Hard Media, Hatch, Knives, Light, Natural, Splatter, and Sponges. You can instantly alter the dab shape of any brush, adjust settings, apply a new Dab Effect, and even capture your new dab for use with other brushes.
New! Import Photoshop Brush Stamps (ABR) as dabs
When you import Photoshop brush stamps with Painter 2022, you now have the option of importing only the brush stamps. They will be added to a new captured dab library so you can use them with other brushes.
New! Dab Effects
The new Captured Dabs flyout on the property bar offers Dab Effects that you can use to customize captured dabs. You can choose from Feather, Threshold, Blur, Dilate, and Erode effects, and adjust the strength of each applied effect.
New and enhanced! Dab profiles for Circular dab types
You can now experience improved anti-aliasing for Circular-type brushes by using the new Hardness slider in the Dab Options flyout. This lets you fine-tune the opacity of dab profiles so you can create brush marks with soft edges, or with crisp anti-aliased edges, or even somewhere in between. In addition, you can try the new Soft Profile that provides a strong core, with a large falloff area towards the edge. Last but not least, you have the ability to reduce the opacity in the center of Watercolor dabs, which produces a stronger-looking fringe along the edge of the stroke.
New! Rotate and Squeeze Static Bristle
You now have additional shaping options when you’re painting with a Static Bristle brush and a stylus. You can use the Angle controls to rotate and squeeze the brush, providing new, creative dab and brushstroke possibilities.
New! Watercolor compatibility
Painter 2022 breaks down boundaries for mixed-media creators who want to combine watercolor with other art forms. Many default brushes are now compatible with watercolor layers, letting you fuse dry media and watercolor brush marks on the same layer. Just look for the Watercolor Layer compatibility icon in the Brush Selector when you’re choosing a brush for mixing with watercolor media, or you can enable the Watercolor Compatible filter to see only those brushes. And for added creative flexibility, you can now transform watercolor layers while retaining special media capability.
New! Size selector and library
You can now choose brush size presets from the new Size library. Painter 2022 offers a new collection of dab sizes, and lets you create and manage your own custom size presets.
New! Navigator in grayscale
You can now switch the Navigator to grayscale, which is useful for doing color value studies of your compositions.
New and enhanced! Layer productivity
Painter 2022 introduces many layer productivity improvements designed to accelerate your work with layer-laden documents. It is now faster and easier to perform operations on more than one layer. You can lock, move, and convert multiple layers at once, as well as collapse visible layers. Plus, layer lock and visibility operations are recorded in your Undo steps, making it quicker and easier to change those choices.
Enhanced! Special layers compatibility dialog boxes
While many brushes are compatible with special layers, there are times when a chosen brush may produce brush marks that appear different than you would expect. There are also brushes that are simply not recommended for the current layer. In these cases, Painter will prompt you so you can choose how to proceed. We’ve redesigned these dialog boxes to present clear and concise options, so you can make a quick choice and get back to focusing on your art.
Enhanced! Performance optimization
The Painter team is continually updating the codebase to take advantage of rapidly evolving operating system technologies.
With Painter 2022, the new Enhanced Cover methods are optimized for CPU and GPU acceleration. The Brush Accelerator makes the Enhanced Cover methods up to 18x faster on Intel multi-core processors with AVX2 extensions, and up to 50x faster when combined with GPU acceleration. Click Window Search and type “enhanced cover” in the Search text box to find brushes that use Enhanced Cover methods.
Impasto brushes are also up to 2x faster on default layers, and 1.7x faster on Thick Paint layers. Plus, several other brush engines, plug-ins, and erasers perform up to 2x faster compared to Painter 2021.
To get the best possible performance from Painter on your system, you need to run the Brush Accelerator. This utility starts by analyzing your processor (CPU) to detect how many cores are available and whether it supports extensions, such as AVX2. It also analyzes any available graphics processor (GPU) to determine its compatibility with Painter, as well as how much memory (RAM) is installed on your system.
Don’t forget to register for my new class: Corel Painter 2022, The Year of the Dab.
I am excited to announce my new class called Modern Calligraphy Made Easy. Several folks have asked me to do this class and I am glad that they did. I love to do traditional style calligraphy, but modern calligraphy is even more fun. It can be a lot looser that traditional calligraphy. To join the class or find out more information go to the following link; Modern Calligraphy Made Easy. Price is $35.00 USD.
Following is a short video that quickly describes the class:
Calligraphy can be used as a design element to create an image or it can be added to enhance an image. Either way, there is something very satisfying about calligraphy. My penmanship is awful, but I love my calligraphy. Here is a caveat. Practice is key to learning calligraphy. I am saying that practice makes or breaks a person’s ability to do calligraphy. There is nothing hard or impossible to do; practice makes it easy.
I teach one basic style and from that you will be able to expand your base. Using modern calligraphy is a very creative experience. Bouncing letters, adding flourishing, and writing with a base color, gradients or patterns is easily accomplished. The following images uses flourish, bouncing, and various colors, gradients and patterns.
I provide a custom Corel Painter variant called modern calligraphy pen – 18 that is compatible with Painters 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. Along with the pen, I provide practice sheets and two images with guide lines suitable for starting a project. The class consists of 26 videos, which can be downloaded to your computer.
Corel Painter announced a new version today, Painter 2021. This is a very robust version with many new things that are extraordinary. It is definitely worth the price to upgrade. You can find out all about it, buy your copy, or try the trial version by following this link:
As usual, I have a “What’s New” class for the latest version. The class starts Jun 27th. I call it Painter 2021, Loads of New Stuff. You can find out the details and register for the class with the following link.
I can’t wait to show you Painter 2021. Enhanced layer control is my favorite new feature. We can lift the canvas layer to a thick paint layer, similar to what we could do with watercolor. Not only can we lift, we can simply convert any layer to default, thick paint, or watercolor. Prior to this version, we could only paint on a thick paint layer using thick paint variants. Hundreds of variants can use a thick paint layer in this version. To make it easy, Corel added a Thick Paint compatible category. Most impasto variants work on Thick Paint layers. Painting with thick paint and various compatibles adds incredible richness to Painter’s thick paint look.
Thick Paint variants with thick paint compatibles
I love using watercolor in Painter and lately have been combining watercolor and thick paint. That process is so easy with the new Painter. The following image was created using watercolor, but I changed it to a thick paint layer and added texture and thickness to the watercolor paint. I finished up with thick paint compatible brushes. See the tutorial here:
Blue trees, watercolor and thick paint in Corel Painter 2021
In the next image I am using watercolor, liquid ink, thick paint and thick paint compatibles. The possibilities are endless…I love this new Painter.
Watercolor, Liquid Ink, Thick Paint, and Thick paint compatibles…Painter 2021
Another new feature that is very useful is called Clone Tinting. Don’t let the name fool you. It can be used with cloning or not. It is very versatile. The following image was an ink wash landscape in grayscale. I used the landscape as the clone source and then tinted the grayscale to achieve this image. See the tutorial Here:
Another new feature with lots of promise is AI-based Art Styles. This isn’t just a copy and paste function. The artist has control over the strength, detail, color matching, smoothing. Each style can be altered in multiple ways. The styles can be applied to any image, photo, original art…whatever. The results can be used as a finish piece or a starting point for an image. Following is a Work in Progress.
Work in Progress, Original painting with AI style added. Thick Paint strokes show at the base of the image.
Do you love photo-art. Painter’s creative cloning is even more versatile with the enhanced features. Here is an original photograph of mine.
Country Driveway near my house.
The next two images are cloned from the photograph.
Cloned image using thick paint and various thick paint compatible brushes. Painter 2021
This version uses Clone Tinting.
Using Clone Tinting while cloning a photograph., Painter 2021
I have to say again, I am really loving the fact that you can use multiple media on a single layer. This image has watercolor, liquid ink, thick paint, and real wet oils.
Big Tree, Painter 2021, mixed media, liquid ink, watercolor, thick paint and compatibles.
There is so much more to share. I hope to see you in my class. Click the link below for information and registration.
Just a quick reminder that Aaron Rutten and I are going to have a live painting event. It will be today, Friday, 8 May 2020, at 9:30 AM, PDT. PDT is Pacific Daylight time and it is the same time zone as Los Angeles, CA, USA. To join click this link.
Aaron Rutten has invited me to one of his artist’s chats. We did one before and I enjoyed it. This one will be on Friday, May 8th, at 9:30 PST time. To join, just click this link:
OK…that’s it…come on and join us. We have no idea what we are going to do…you will have to join us to find out.
I wish you a joyous season and a very happy New Year.
At the Digital Art Academy Community, Karen and I were doing some videos and giving away a few brushes. I decided to add a bonus brush to my group. For something different, I made three variants using Audio Expression painting. I was actually surprised at the results. The first attempt was a little on the funky side. I wasn’t sure how to control the variants. You can get a bit of control, but the excitement of these variants is to let them run wild and play off what the music brings to the table.
In the following video you can see me paint the above image.
After I posted the image and video, I heard from some that they couldn’t get the variants to work like they did for me. I did a few test and realized it had to be a difference in resolution. I provided this video.
Following are the three new variants I created to make these paintings. To load them, you need to open Painter, decide which category you want to put them in, then go to Brushes > Import > Brush and navigate to where you saved the variants. The brush will be installed in the currently active brush category. These variants are for Painter 2020. (EDIT) After posting, the variants have been altered to work with 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Any new brush set comes with a learning curve and Skip’s Ultimate Thick Paint is no exception. Plus, when I make variants, I make them for me and hope that you like them or can use them. Most brushes can easily be manipulated especially in Corel Painter 2020. Everything I do in the following videos can be done in Corel Painter 2018 or Corel Painter 2019, but I will access the brush controls differently than in 2018 or 2019. Just remember all Brush Control Panels can be found under Window > Brush Control Panels regardless of your Painter version.
OK, so what might you want to change in a brush control panel? I love texture. My brushes will always show maximum texture. I suspect too much texture for most people. Not a problem, dialing back texture is easy. I like brushes to be wet and mix easily and quickly. Again, more than necessary for most people I venture. All you need to do is change the bleed slider to the setting that works best for you. Those are the types of things I show you in this set of videos.
I am brave, too. Most of the images posted are of work done while creating the variants and should never see the light of day. They are not excellent examples of the paintings, but show you that I struggle, too. I have the same learning curve you do…sigh. Let’s start with this one. I was using 012 Thin Stiff Worn Bristle. It didn’t take very long to complete, but it served a purpose. It began to address the learning curve. Don’t be afraid; paint and have fun. Allow yourself the freedom to fail.
OK, you are hurting my feelings now. I told you I have a learning curve, too.
I like brushes that can create single stroke imagery or flowers. Karen Bonaker is teaching a fabulous course at the Digital Art Academy called Romantic Roses. I love the class and thought I would try to see if thick paint could work. Thick paint can definitely paint romantic roses. However, I can’t. I know I will, but this type of work really takes practice and tweaking the brushes will be necessary. This first attempt is very clunky.
Skip’s Ultimate Thick Paint, Single Stroke Thick Paint, Oh boy…lots of practice needed.
I love abstracted landscapes. Thick paint works well I think. Little by little, I am coming to grips with it.
Skip’s Ultimate Thick Paint, Back Bay, 002 Thin Wet Bristle, 016 Grainy Opaque Knife, 022 Grainy Edgy Knife
I have also been in a dark mood. Painted this one Halloween night.
Skip’s Ultimate Thick Paint, River Moonlight, several variants, sorry don’t remember which ones.
Here is a work in progress. The previous too images started like this. If and when I finish it…I will post it.
Work in Progress, Skip’s Ultimate Thick Paint, 002 Then Wet Bristles.
Now it’s your turn. Give the brushes a try and post your work someplace I can see it. Hey…let’s post some on my blog. If you are willing to post an image using these variants, tell me in the comments below and I’ll contact you to make arrangements to get the digital version. I hope somebody will send me some images.
Several folks wanted the variants for earlier versions of Painter. Thick Paint was introduced in Painter 2018. I was able to take the brush category back to Painter 2018. I changed the name to Skip’s Ultimate Thick Paint 18. If you have Painter 2018 or Painter 2019, you can upload this category and use it in either version. If you have 2020, it will work in it, too, but I would recommend that you download the version I made in 2020. That version will work best in 2020. You can download the category below. Click on the red type.
Skip Allen Paints 