Corel Painter

Corel Painter is a very strange creative virtual environment, its as if the developers attempted to create as 'true-to-life' a piece of software they could create. You can mix paints, choose an almost infinite range of brushes, pens, pencils, different canvas textures, its a pretty complex software. It's weird that can you use all these 'life-like' tools but it includes the more 'unreal' tools like the paint bucket and an eraser that rubs out any style of brush plus you can position any brush strokes as layers like Photoshop/Illustrator. I set up a few custom brushes just to see what sort of strokes they would create...



So, I spent some time changing the canvas settings and varying brush pressures, mixing colours and seeing what different kinds of virtual marks I left onscreen - keep in mind that this is just exploration and experimentation, clearly not me at the height of my artistic capabilities...

I can't say I felt immediately comfortable with this piece of software as a whole, thats not to say with more time spent on it I couldn't get used to using it and I would like to, considering the insanely complex work thats been produced by artists using it. The main problem at first was that this was also the first time I had used a graphics tablet and it didn't recognise the different brush pressures so I had to download the drivers for it from the Wacom website. After that it worked alot more smoothly but I still found the whole experience a little strange, using the tablet instead of a track pad, I think even using a mouse feels a little weird now that I'm so used to the feel of it.



However it's clearly worthwhile practicing using this, I reckon I'm going to get one of the new Wacom Bamboo Pen tablets just so that I can sit on my computer and get as used to as I have with a track pad. There's a world of difference between taking it out from college every so often and actually having one of your own. The only reason I'm comfortable with Photoshop - and now Illustrator - is just having it there with the freedom to practice and explore whenever I have the time.