Training Your Eyes to See-The Power of Visualization

Do you take the time to visualize how your painting will look when it is finished? Visualization is a skill and it takes practice. When we think of visualization we think of improving memory, restoring health, reducing stress, but do you ever use visualization to improve your paintings? Visualization is a powerful way to strengthen your ability to see shapes and images from chaos. Visualization for the artist is our way of pulling out objects or visualizing the finished painting. Visualization can make us better artists.

Here are some of the key visual competencies we need to develop as artists:

• Visualization is our ability to speedily locate and identify patterns
• Assign complex shapes to visual categories
• Reconfigure shapes into new objects
• Express concepts with visual means in a wide variety of ways
• Construct meaning by integrating different associated visual messages

One of my favorite exercises to help stimulate visualization is working from what I call a “canvas of chaos” and finding imagery deep inside it and then developing the idea. Almost immediately the mind begins to form familiar shapes and objects.

Exercise

Begin with an initial working image. For my examples I started by placing a number of watercolor textures on the canvas layer. I change the layer Composite method to Gel or Overlay so my pencil sketch marks will show through. Use an image or images that are not part of your artistic vocabulary or deliberation. Many times the patterns of the textures will begin to form ideas and from those ideas you can start to develop them further with paint. For me texture adds an element interest and color right away. Conversely, you can start by filling a canvas with random brush strokes or placing imagery such as you would when creating a collage or montage.

Beyond the exercise is always the possibility that a strong composition will form out of the chaos. The joy comes from having no preconceived notions of what you will be painting but just taking the time to find order in the chaos. In the examples posted below my visualization kept moving towards organic elements such as dragonfly and other insects all coming together in a garden of flowers that emerged from the paint dabs on my canvas.

To keep your visualization skills sharp practice this exercise weekly and take as much time as you need to find the hidden images within your imagery of brush strokes. Generally when you are painting, take time to close your eyes and see the end result. There is a kind of magic in it! Send me your examples! I would love to post them here!

Mantis

Dragonfly Dreams

Wild Horses

Open Studio Session 1-Painting Street Scenes

Classes begin: March 3rd, 2012

Registration: Spring Open Studio

Its time to for Open Studio once again! For my first session of the year I want to take you on a visual journey and paint some of the wonderful towns scattered across the Tuscan country side. Week one will set the discipline for the following three weeks. You will learn several helpful tools that will help to paint accurate street scenes by utilizing the horizon line and vertical and horizontal planes.

Open Studio courses are relaxed and critiques are always constructive. There is plenty of inspiration  from your instructor and the many talented Intermediate and Advanced students who regularly join our Open Studio sessions. Course work is a guideline for you but you are free to follow your muse which I encourage. New lessons and video are posted each week along with a live webinar session.

I will lead you through several exercises each week with one goal in mind, for the digital artist to learn to expand upon their skill set and continue to find inspiration in the physical world around them . I will supply you with many beautiful reference images to seek inspiration from. Photographic reference can be a great support for your artwork. It captures the mood of the moment, immobilize movements to allow you to analyze shapes and forms, and gives you the opportunity to capture a scene quickly.

Week One
Body Language and Concept
This week the class will all be working from the same reference image. Our focus will be on body language and working with some of the basic principles of perspective. A live session will be scheduled and Karen will demonstrate how she begins a street scene using the reference image as an example and how to determine where the horizon should be placed. This week students will participate in a live webinar session where Karen will demonstrate her technique for getting started with the reference image. The first week will set the discipline and fundamentals for the rest of the session.

Week Two

San Gimignano

This week you will seek inspiration from several images taken in San Gemignano and surrounding areas. Our live session will focus on questions, demonstration and group critique.Emphasis will be on Two Point perspective and finding the horizon line.

Week Three

Into The Past

Students will discover the past while using reference images from modern-day. Emphasis will be on research and depicting a scene how it may have looked 150 years ago. During our live session this week we will outline the steps to create our paintings of the past. Your goal will be to transform a modern-day scene into an old world scene. Start thinking now!

Week Four

Final Week Painting-Tuscany in Abstract Impressionism

Students will work on their final painting for the session.  Live session will include questions and group critique.

For More Information and Registration

To find our more about this class or to register please click on the following link:

Open Studio-Painting Street Scenes

This class offers live webinar sessions each week. Sessions are recorded for those students who cannot attend. Register early as class size is limited.

Corel Painter-What’s New in Painter 12.1 Webinar

First! I want to thank everyone who took the time to join the webinar today and we hope to bring you more of the same soon. Skip and I will be adding new videos over the next couple of weeks to our blogs with more detailed information on some of the new features. Remember to use your Help files in Painter and do check out the great video resources at Corel Painter YouTube site as well. Some of the questions are covered in detail at Skip Allen’s blog Skip Allen Paints so be sure to visit his site.

To download the video directly please click on the link below.

What’s New in Painter 12.1

 

2012-01-16 10.00 What’s New in Painter 12-1

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Webinar-What’s New in Painter 12.1

THIS WEBINAR IS FULL- IT WILL BE RECORDED FOR YOU AND POSTED LATER IN THE DAY IF YOU MISSED IT.

Join Skip Allen and I as we take you through the new additions to Painter 12.1. We will cover many of the new features and take questions as well. Hope to see you there! Reserve early as seats are limited.

Date: Monday January 16th, 9am Pacific Standard Time

Topics Covered:

• Brush Management
• Brush Categories
• Exporting and Importing Variants, Categories, and Libraries
• Enhanced Brush Preview
• Workspaces
• Mixer Pad
• Plugins
• Cloning with Crosshairs showing

Click Here To Register

Painter 12.1 The Best Painter Ever

Corel Painter 12. 1 is now available for download.

Corel Painter 12.1 Update

Drag and Drop Variants into Brush Categories

Now you can simply drag and drop your variants or custom variants into the brush category of your choice or create a new one! One word of caution, dragging and dropping a brush means just that, it does move the variant you choose into the new or existing  brush category and removes it from the default one.  If you want to leave a copy of the brush you are moving behind , then simply hold down the Alt key or Option key in Mac.

Save Custom Variants into Any Brush Category

Painter 12 makes it easier than ever to save Custom Variants into any custom or default brush category. From the main menu or from the Brushes fly out option choose “Save Variant”. Save the variant with a new name and either assign a Brush Category or click on the ” +, plus ” symbol and give your new category a name. Finally, select OK and your variant is now saved in a new custom category.

custom_brush_category

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Add New Brush Categories

Painter 12-1 makes it easy to either add a New Brush Category or Remove a Brush Category. This can be done by clicking either on the Brushes menu tab or from the Brushes palette and opening the fly-out located in the upper right corner of the Brushes Library palette. If you are planning on creating some Custom brushes, it is a good idea to create a New Brush Category to store your brushes in. Watch the video for more on this subject. You can create a brush library by either exporting an existing library. This creates a copy of the contents in the library, then, you can import the copied library to create a new library. Now you have complete control over your work flow by creating new libraries for painting projects or for sharing brushes with your friends. And, if you no longer need the library you can simply delete it or remove it from within Painter. Painter will not allow you to remove the default Painter brush library or the Painter 11 brush library.

In Painter 12. 1 you can also change the brush category icon by right-clicking a category in the Brush Library panel and choosing Set Custom Icon, and choosing the image that you want to display as the category icon.

Export a Brush, Category or Brush Library/Remove a Variant or Brush Category

With Painter 12-1 you can now import/Export a Brush, Category or a Complete Brush Library. Think how easy this will make it for you to share your Custom Brushes with friends!

Importing and Exporting Brush Libraries, Categories, and Variants

You can import and export brush libraries, categories, and variants. This allows you to work with brush resources that were created by others, or share them with others. Note that you can share exported brush resources only with those who installed Corel Painter 12.1 Update. Do make sure you update soon to take advantage of the wonderful new resource in Painter 12. 1 .The brush source files of Corel Painter 12.1 Update are not supported in older versions of Corel Painter, including Corel Painter 12 and Service Pack 1.

To import a brush variant

1. From the main menu bar, click Brushes > Import Brush.
2. In the Import Brush Variant dialog box, browse to the folder where the brush variant is stored.
3. Choose the brush variant file, and click Open
4. In the Save Variant dialog box, choose the brush category where you want to store the variant from the Brush Category list box.

To rename the brush variant, type a name in the Save Variant As text box.

Click Save.

Enhanced Brush Stroke Preview

Now you can preview your brush stroke with selected color and brush attributes such as color, paper texture, nozzle type, pattern and clone source.

Workspace Management

Now you can delete work spaces. Removing the current workspace will prompt you to select another workspace to proceed. When a workspace is deleted, it deletes it permanently. Remember to always back up your brushes, papers and other custom options should you want to restore them at some point.

Enhanced Color Mixer Pad

This is a terrific new function especially if you enjoy mixing your own paint colors on the Mixer palette. Now in Painter 12 you can save the Mixer pad from the library menu in either .MXS ( Corel Painter Mixer Palette File) or PNG format. To pick colors use the Alt key (PC) or Option key ( Mac).

The most exciting addition is the ability to open an image to use in the Mixer palette to mix of pick color from. Mixer pad images can be loaded using RIFF, PSD, JPG, PNG or TIFF file formats.

painter-12-1_mixer_pad

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New Improved Drag and Drop Support Panels

Organizing your workspace is important for the digital artist. Painter 12 makes it easy for you to drag and drop existing panels and organizing them in a way that makes sense to you. Nest and organize layers, Channels,

New Panel Resizing and Panel Presentation Options

Panels can now be moved and re sized without affecting other nested panels. Panels that display 3 dots at the bottom of the panel are capable of being re sized without affecting the other panels attached to it.

Photoshop Plug-In Support

You can now take advantage of 3rd Party Photoshop Plug-Ins for Mac (32bit) and 32 or 64 bit for Windows OS. Those who enjoy Topaz Plug ins will now be able to utilize them in Painter 12-1 once again.

How to Load Plug-ins in Painter 12-1 (and other versions)

1. Go to Corel\Painter 12\Support Files.

2. Create a new folder in Support Files and name it “Plug ins”.

3. Copy and paste your 8bf files into that folder. In the case of most of the paid plug-ins such as Topaz, you will have to actually install them, but you need to make that folder first.

After the plug-ins are loaded, launch Painter 12 and open an image for testing. Go to Effects>Other. Current Plug-Ins will be listed under the “Other” category.

Other Enhancements:

• Scale Feature to Brush Size calculations are now correct.

• Settings in the Clone Source Panel are maintained between PC and Mac.

• Crosshairs are now displayed when performing offset cloning.

Painting With Gold-Leaf in ©Corel Painter 12

It is the time of year to paint with Silver and Gold and you can do it in Corel Painter 12! One of my favorite natural media projects is embellishing my prints with Gold-leaf appliqué. Layering gold leaf over a surface is called gold leafing or gilding. We can enjoy the same brilliant look of gold-leaf in Painter using the Color Variability tool.

Color Variability

Color variability allows you to create brushstrokes of more than one color. Color variability can be set for HSV or RGB mode, and it can be based on the current gradient or color set. For Gold-leaf painting we want to take advantage of the Current Gradient setting. To display the Color Variability panel

Choose Window > Brush Control Panels> Color Variability.

Let’s take a look at how to set color variability based on the current gradient .

In the Color panel, choose a main color.

1. Choose Window Brush Control Panels Color Variability.
2. Choose “From Gradient” from the list box.

Color variability is now based on random colors from the current gradient. But there is more to creating that lovely metallic look of gold and sliver. The secret lies in the Gradient and your selected Paper texture. In combination they make a beautiful pair!

You can get started with gold-leafing with one of the default Gradients called Light Streak. Light Steak imparts a radiant gold look to your image or selection.

Gradients along with paper textures are the recipe for this lovely affect in ©Corel Painter. So get on over to Skip Allen Paints and check out how to use brushes and gradients to create some wonderful paintings! In the examples above I used a custom gradient along with Messy paper and the wonderful SA Impasto 10-M-N brush variant from Skip Allen’s Bristly Dabs brush category.

You will want to experiment with all kinds of brushes, that is part of the fun with this process.

Pull out some of your old paintings just like Winifred did for this lovely image she created in our current Holiday Open Studio at Digital Art Academy. Notice how she applied the gold-leaf to embellish the painting.

Happy Christmas and a Very Merry New Year!

This painting was done from a stained glass window which I added gold-leaf paint to for a highly textured appearance.

Victor Lund-Rotcliffe’s version of the Leonardo cartoon of Virgin and Child sketched on a plaster wall and some remnants of gold leaf or gold paint showing through. Another extraordinary use of gold-leaf painting with Painter.

Creating Fractal Pattern Paper Textures

Last week we talked about how to use the Make Paper feature in ®Corel Painter 12. In this video, we’re going to go ahead and create a Fractal Pattern Based Paper.  First, navigate to the Window menu and choose the Media Control Panels, and select Patterns.  The short cut key is Ctrl -8 for PC or Cmd -8 for MAC. For this lesson, I want to talk about one of it’s fly out Menu Options,  Make Fractal Pattern. If we  go ahead and click Make Fractal Pattern, we’re going to be greeted with the Make Fractal Pattern Dialog. Make Fractal Pattern is really  a Perlin Noise Generator, and it  has many options and is a powerful tool in Painter.If you use Photoshop it is similar to the Clouds filter.

The first feature that we’re going to be looking at is the Power setting. The Power setting controls the general size and shape of the Perlin Noise,  on either spectrum we can get something that’s either very noisy, or something that’s very cloudy.

The Feature size is going to control how big those objects are.  I want the feature size to be fairly small here, because I’m going to try to create a relatively natural or organic  paper grain,  such as you would imagine in a watercolor paper.

The next setting  is Softness, and what that’s basically doing is, applying a blur to the texture.

We can control the Angle, which  rotates the pattern  around 360 degrees for varying effects.

Next option is Thinness. Thinness is basically a blur effect, but it’s a motion blur effect. It stretches the texture. This can be really useful for generating things like brushed metal effects for instance, or the look of driving rain.

Next we have Size, these settings are all going to be uniform sizes, for example, 128 by 128, 256 by 256, 512 by 512, 1024 by 1024, and 2048 by 2048. We will use 256 as our size, and below that we’re going to have the option, of outputting Height As Luminance, Gradient Bearing, or the Surface Normal. For what we want to achieve here, we’re going to select Height As Luminance. You could use the other two options as well, and I will show you how using Surface Normal can create some wonderful Watercolor  paper textures for Skip Allen’s Cool Spring brushes.

I’m going to go ahead and use Height as Luminance, and select OK.  We are presented with a brand new document, and we can close the Patterns Palette as we do not need it open  anymore.

Next we want to go to our Paper Libraries, and we want to choose Select All, or use the Ctrl-A Keyboard shortcut, and we’re  going to select “Capture Paper” from the Papers Library. Remember that the Capture Paper icon is located at the bottom of the Papers Library palette in Painter 12.

Next, name the paper. I like to call it Fractal Temp or Fractal Test as a reminder to me that it was created using the Make Fractal Pattern dialog.  Next week I will show you how to take this pattern one step further.

Leave the Cross Fade at 0% because these textures are created out of a Fractal Pattern, as seamless, so you don’t need to be concerned with Cross Fade. It’s one of the nice advantages of using these Fractal Patterns to create paper textures.

I’m going to select  OK, and now you can see that we have Fractal Test paper  in our Papers palette library. I will make the Fractal Test paper my Active Paper by clicking on , and turn on the Directional Toggle; you can now see our new Fractal Pattern based paper . This opens up lots of possibilities for creativity in ®Corel Painter 12.

Creating Fractal Paper Textures

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Getting Creative

fractal pattern overlays

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Let’s take another look at some of the possibilities for using Fractal patterns in our creative process. I mentioned that we can get very creative with the use of these patterns. Recently I was finishing a painting of a street scene from my recent trip to Italy and decided that what it needed was some additional atmosphere. I knew that I could paint in the look of rain coming down by recording a brush stroke or applying a paper texture, however another idea was to generate the look of rain by creating a Fractal pattern and then applying it the painting.

 

Additional Resources Paper Textures and Fractal Patterns

Skip Allen Paints

Painter 12 Paper Textures 101-Make Paper Dialog

In this series of post we will take a look at creating paper textures from the simplest and most basic way to more advanced techniques. We can begin bringing in external gray-scale files that we can use as paper grains, remember that these files can be anything from photos to existing textures. In this series we will learn just how powerful Painter is for creating some amazing textures that you can go on to use with your various variants as well as applying them non-destructively.

Let’s begin by creating a basic paper texture using the “Make Paper” command in Painter 12.

Next week we will look at creating paper textures using the Fractal command in Painter 12 and finally we will finish the series by creating fractal patterns that can be used as seamless paper textures to create great runs and flows with watercolor variants especially suited for Skip Allen’s Cool Spring brush variants.

paper texture 1

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New Classes at Digital Art Academy

Digital Art Academy Course Offerings 2012

Digital Art Academy registration will open December 31st 2011
Classes start January 28th, 2012

Digital Art Academy registration will open December 31st 2011
Classes start January 28th, 2012

Please watch for new course offerings!

Session One-Course Offerings:

®Corel Painter 12

• Introduction to ®Corel Painter 12 Part-I- with Elaina Moore-Kelly

• Introduction to ®Corel Painter 12-Part II with Elaina Moore Kelly

• Painter 12-A New Beginning with Painter Master, Skip Allen

• The Basics of Brush Making in Painter 12 with Painter Master, Skip Allen

• The Basics of Watercolors in Painter 12 with Skip Allen

• Watercolors Part II with Painter Master, Skip Allen
• Painting the Watercolour Landscape with ®Corel Painter 12 with Joan Hamilton

Painter 11: Self Paced Courses

• Introduction to ®Corel Painter 11- Skip Allen

• Corel Painter Beyond the Basics-Skip Allen

• Painter 11 -III ( This course applies to Painter 12 as well)- Skip Allen

ArtRage

• ArtRage Watercolors-Introduction to Art Rage-New Features! with Karen Bonaker

Happy Holidays Open Studio-Registration is Now Open

Holiday Open Studio at Digital Art Academy begins on November 19th 2011. Registration is now open! The video link above is from our 2010 Holiday Open Studio called, Let it Snow!

Welcome to Week One of Holiday Open Studio! If you are new to Holiday Studio you are in for a treat.  Each week a new lesson will be posted for you written by your instructors, Skip Allen, Elaina Moore-Kelly and me, Karen Bonaker. With this line-up you are going to have some fun and also learn something new along the way. Open Studio courses are relaxed and we encourage constructive critiques. There is no competition in this class only inspiration that I hope you will take from the instructors as well as the many talented students who regularly join our Open Studio sessions. Course work is a guideline for you but you are free to follow your muse which I encourage. The emphasis of this class is to have fun and enjoy the Holidays as we create and paint the season. Enjoy your class!

Open Studio classes are held four times each year. Each session last four weeks. Open Studio classes are held online and students have the flexibility to join the coursework any time day or night to download their lessons and videos. Your instructor is always there to support you through then entire course. This is the last session for 2011 so don’t miss the fun.

Course Syllabus:

Week One
Instructor, Painter Master Karen Bonaker

Flower arranging has been a popular art for centuries with many considering the ability to create a perfectly balanced arrangement a great skill. While styles vary across the globe, many cultures seem to enjoy using floral symbolism, whereby each flower or aspect of an arrangement has a specific meaning. While this is a fascinating and often sentimental concept, flower arranging in the main stream is becoming a lost art as people have less time to nurture their gardens and arrange the blooms they provide. Our goal in lesson one is to learn about how you can create and paint a perfectly balanced Holiday flower arrangement.

Week Two:
Instructor, Painter Master Skip Allen

Skip will take you through the steps of painting snow scenes using Watercolor and custom Watercolor brushes in Painter 12. White space in a watercolor is very important, but a hard technique to master.  Concentrating on snow scene landscapes is an easy way to build white space skills.  This week we will focus on leaving lots of white space on the canvas and developing simple yet sophisticated winter scenes.   Painter IX – 12 will work nicely.

Week Three:
Instructor, Painter Professional and Expert Elaina Moore-Kelly

Have some fun as Elaina demonstrates how to create beautiful greeting cards with Corel Painter 11 and 12.

Week Four:
Instructor, Painter Master Karen Bonaker

Karen will demonstrate how to paint beautiful holiday wreaths using Painter. Final class project will be a review of how to paint snow and to paint a final winter scene.