Study Guide 3, Painter 5

Brush Strokes: Brushes, Variants and Method

In this lesson you will explore the different brushes that make strokes on the canvas. You will look at the variants of the brushes and alter the settings on the Control palette. You will observe the Method for the brushes and see the result of changing the Method.

You already know Painter has lots of brushes. So far we’ve only used the 2B pencil in these lessons. Now we’ll do a project, using others.

There are 15 categories in the brush library. List them.

1.                    6.                    11. 
2.                    7.                    12.
3.                    8.                    13.
4.                    9.                    14.
5.                    10.                  15.
 

Four categories are special tools:

Liquid
Cloners
Artists
Image Hose

The other eleven categories make marks (strokes) on the canvas. List them.

1.                     6.                     11.

2.                     7.

3.                     8.

4.                     9.

5.                     10.

Each category is a container for Variants. List the variants in the Chalk category.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

On a new canvas, we’ll use the chalk variants. First, if you use a pressure sensitive graphics tablet, click Edit > Preferences > Brush Tracking. Make a mark, using your normal pressure and speed. This sets the sensitivity for your tablet, and you have to do it each time you open Painter. The settings are not saved.

Close all palettes (Ctrl-H). Display the toolbox, brushes palette, art materials and controls (ctrl-1, ctrl-2, ctrl-3, ctrl-5.)

On the art materials palette, click Color (the word on the menu). Click Color Picker. Examine the three ways to display the color picker – standard, compact, RGB. Choose your favorite. I like compact, because it takes up less room. Click Color again and choose Display as RGB. This causes the color picker to display the RGB settings. Change to Display as HSV. This causes the color picker to display Hue, Saturation and Value settings. Choose your favorite.

Choose Chalk, Large Chalk. Note the settings on the Control palette. Leave all the default settings for the brush. Choose bright blue from the art materials palette color picker.

1. With Large Chalk, blue, default settings, draw a border around the edge of your canvas.
2. Use the Controls palette to reduce the size by about half (The default setting was 19 pixels. Set the size to about 10 pixels, either by moving the slider or by typing the value into the small window. You may have to click Build Brush.). Reduce the opacity by about half (press 5 on the keyboard to change from 100% to 50%) and switch the colors so white is the foreground color. (Do this by clicking the curved arrow that points between foreground and background colors.)
3. Note the default method for the chalk. It is the Cover method. This means that any color will cover any other color. You can draw on 100% opaque blue with 50% white.
4. Now we’ll restore the canvas back to white by filling with the foreground color. Your foreground color is still white. Press Ctrl-F and choose Current Color. The canvas is filled with white.
5. Reset the brush to default settings by clicking Brush Palette > Variant > Restore Default Variant.
6. Repeat the steps, drawing a blue border, and a white inner stripe of half size and half opacity.
7. Switch to the next variant of the chalk brush, the Artists Pastel Chalk. Draw a blue border just inside the first border. Decrease the brush size and opacity by half, change to white, and draw a white stroke in the center of the blue stroke.
8. Continue doing this with each of the Chalk variants. Notice differences in the way the chalk looks as you apply it to the canvas.

Your result should look something like this.

Experiment with the brush, pen, airbrush and charcoal brushes. These all use the cover method, by default.

Experiment with changing the method from Cover to Drip. What does this do to the appearance? It may make the tool stop resembling the natural medium. For example, chalk applied with a drip method probably won’t look much like chalk.

Draw a vase with flowers, using chalks, cover method.

Draw a second vase, similar to the first, using chalks, drip method.

We used pencils, buildup method in the first lesson. Buildup method means that if you keep going over a color, you eventually get black. What happens if you change the method for the pencil?

Note your results and questions for the chat session.

Next lesson: The Brush Look Designer