Saturday, August 09, 2008

Painter improvement



I've been trying to learn the program Painter without buying a book, and it hasn't been easy. I especially was trying to get a watercolor look that didn't seem digital and wasn't spraying the color all over like a stain on a white shirt.

Namowal has mastered the technique over at her blog, but she's using Painter 8 and this is Painter X. Don't you love all those stupid X editions of things? Like the paintbox is rated x?

Anyway, today I found the pen I need, it's called "New Simple Water" under the digital watercolor category. If you set the paper to French watercolor, you can actually get the look I have on the pink rug or the blue chair.

I still couldn't resist throwing the woodcut filter on the thing:



You can compare this to the ones I was doing a couple of days ago.

And guess what-- they're all based on this photo! Most people never show their sources, but I'm just fooling around wid da sofware. I don't usually base stuff on photos, but I wanted something a little realistic to get my mind thinking about small apartments.



oh and then there was this from last time when I hated it so much I just hit it with the distortion brush.

4 comments:

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

Niiiice. Now I want to see if painter 8 has the New Simple Water brush.
Where's the photo from? Is it somewhere you've been or something you found online.
I have some painter books I can lend you, but they're not X level.

Linda Davick said...

Sally, that IS nice. But there's a carrot on the dresser. And cowboy clothes on the chair. And little faces everywhere.

Anonymous said...

This interior is great. Getting really fun! Are you using the same base drawing for all these iterations?

Sally said...

Thanks for the comments. Namowal, the new simple water brush needs tweaking as they all do. Although the help file said to set the grain to lowest number, in fact you have to set it to highest (100) to get the water color paper look. At least that's what I thought I read, because now I can't find it again.

I just stayed with the drawing I had because it's not this actual image I'm concerned with, but rather figuring out a basic background look that might work to sit back with Flash animation.

The photo came from the L.A. Public Library archive.