A Painting Made of Love Hearts
Using the Underpainting and Auto-painting features in Corel Painter IX.5
September 2006
by Jeremy Sutton
Here is the completed digital painting (above) with a detail (below). This is a portrait of David and Denise Boyce created as part of an all day workshop in Lansing, Michigan. I was struck by the loving looks they gave each other and wanted to express that love in the brush stroke texture. I was able to achieve that using the Auto-painting palette introduced in Painter IX.5. The Underpainting, Auto-painting and Restoration palettes in Painter IX.5 brought together features that can be useful to a photographer. These features were previously distributed around the program and not so easily accessible. Read on for my steps (you'll need to scroll down).
Step 1 Equalize
The Effects > Tonal Control > Equalize (Cmd-E on Mac, Ctrl-E on PC) is a phenomenal tool in Painter. Try it out on your source photos as well as your completed paitings. You'll be amazed at how the automatic adjustment of the black and white points in the histogram (equivalent of levels adjustment in Photoshop) invariably improves almost any image.
Step 2 Saturate
Choose Window > Show Underpainting. Then choose Style > Saturate. You'll see the effect. Then choose Apply in the Underpainting palette. In this instance I applied the Saturate twice. This helps warm and boost the colors in a source image.
Step 3 Quick Clone
Choose Preferences > General (Cmd-K on Mac, Ctrl-K on PC). I set the Quick Clone to just clone and delete the image. The choose File > Quick Clone.
Step 4 Record and Save Stroke
Go to the pop-up menu in the upper right of the Brush Selector. Choose Record Stroke. I used the Artists > Sargent Brush to make a love heart. I then chose Save Stroke from the Brush Selector pop-up menu and called the stroke "loveheart".
Step 5 Clone Color
Activate the clone color button on the lower left of the Colors palette (keyboard shortcut "u").
Step 6 Apply Auto-painting
Choose loveheart to be the stroke in the Auto-painting palette. Then press the green arow to set the Auto-painting going. At this juncture you can get up from your computer and go and pour yourself a cup of tea! The Auto-painting function will rain brush strokes one stroke at a time onto your canvas. What I like about this feature is the randomness of the stroke sizes and orientations. This gives an organic feel to the resulting painting. I let this run for about ten minutes and then changed the length and Brush Size sliders in the Auto-painting palette to get even more richness of brush strokes.
Step 7 Complete Digital Painting
After creating a wonderful background from which to work, made up completely of love hearts, I then completed the painting with the same Sargent Brush, chiselling out more detail in the faces and clothes.
Step 8 Add Acrylic to Print
I printed this image out at 34" x 45" on canvas using the Epson 9800, a great machine. The pigment ink was then fixed with a spray fixaive. I brushed on a Acrylic Gel Medium (semi-gloss) and applied some acrylic paints using a palette knife. You can see some of the acrylic below.
Here's Dave, Denise and I holding painting.
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