Cornwell and Painter tips

Here's a master copy of a piece by the great Dean Cornwell, done for an assignment in Painting class!

The primary purpose of this was to get the feel and impression of traditional brush marks using a digital tool, and though I'm still no Cornwell I think it turned out quite successfully!

So on that particular topic, this would seem to be a good time to kick off the little mini-tutorials I'm gonna include on this blog. Over the next 5 days, I'm gonna be posting some techniques to help you get more natural looking brushwork in your digital work. Hard-rounds are great and a lot can be done with them, but a good variety of marks and brush strokes is one of the most interesting things about artwork in my opinion, so a lot of the time a hard-round just doesn't cut it.

This series will be geared towards Corel Painter, but most of the concepts can be applied to Photoshop if you know your way around its brush editor. The topics covered will be:

1. Painter Paper Textures Pt. 1

2. Painter Paper Textures Pt. 2

3. Making custom brushes in Painter Pt. 1

4. Making custom brushes in Painter Pt. 2

5. Using Painter's Impasto feature

Click on the detail shots below to get an idea of the textures you'll learn to make.