Making your own Captured Brush
By Jane Conner-ziser
Let's hear a hearty round of applause for default Painter brushes—they are amazing verging on the magical the way they make you feel like you are working with traditional mediums! Many of my paintings are created with default brushes and I've found them versatile and easy to use.
Sometimes, however, you want to make unique strokes or use brushes that no one else has. Some paintings call for repetitive textures that are more quickly applied with specially made brush shapes. In this article I will share with you how you can make your own captured brushes in Painter.
NOTE: When you make a captured brush, it is possible to destroy the original brush SO it is safer to start with a copy brush. Most artists make special Brush Categories, so we'll start there.
Open Painter
To Make A Brush Category:
We need to capture some pixels so open an existing file, photo or painting, or create a file (maybe 4x4 inches at resolution 150) and add some paint. Image 01
Image 01
Use the rectangle marquee tool to select the area you want to appear as the image icon for the new Brush Category. In the fly out menu on the far right corner of the Brush Selector bar, choose Capture Brush Category and provide a name. Image 02—note the window that opens is named Capture Dab; pay no attention. I named the category, Janes Brushes but you can name it anything you relate to.
Image 02
Once you have captured the Brush Category, scroll through the Brush Selector bar and you should see it there. It already includes a variant that is a copy of the last brush you had in your hand when you captured the marching ants. You can delete it later if you want to. Image 03
Image 03
Now that you have a special Brush Category, it's time to copy a brush into it so you have something to work with for creating a special Captured Brush.
Choose a category and variant you want to work with, I'm using Pastels / Round Extra Soft 20.
In the fly out "more options" window in the Brush Selector Bar, choose Copy Variant. Scroll to your new Brush Category to select it as the desired destination and click OK. That's it!
For perfect clean up, choose the variant that came in when you captured the category and delete it.
At this point you should have a new Brush Category containing a copy of the Round Extra Soft 20 variant.
Let's change this variant into a beautiful foliage brush!
Create a new canvas 6x6 inches at resolution 300. This will give you lots of room to work.
Make sure you have your new Brush Category selected and the copy of the Round Extra Soft 20 variant ready to paint with
.Choose black paint and color in a shape that indicates the texture of leaves or grass. Don't make it realistic or too detailed; you are just creating the feeling of foliage and you can erase and repaint as much as you want until you get something you are pleased with. Image 04
Image 04
Choose the rectangle marquee tool and select your shape. Image 05
Image 05
In the fly out menu of the Brush Selector Window, choose Capture Dab. It seems like nothing has happened until you -
Open the Brush Creator—Window Brush Creator—you should now see the shape of your new brush in the white practice part of the window, though you may need to enlarge the brush to see it clearly. If the shape did not capture, exit the Brush Creator, recapture the dab, and then reopen the Brush Creator.
Now for some fun! Modify the options for the new brush by going through the active option windows on the left side of the Brush Creator window.
In Image 06 you can see that in the Size options I have changed the brush tip shape to "flat" (picture icon) and have set the expression of the brush to "pressure". For the final brush, I went back and set the expression to "none".
Image 06
When you increase the Spacing you separate the shapes so you can paint more randomly Image 07
Image 07
Next try out the other changes possible by scrolling through the active options and practicing (in the practice window) moving the brush in the manner you think you will be using when you paint with it. It is helpful to write down the default numbers in each option you experiment with so you can go back without resetting the entire brush. When you have filled the practice window with strokes, you can clear it by clicking on the Clear icon at the bottom of the practice window. Go back and forth fine-tuning the brush until it works just the way you want it to.
Most artists work with the Spacing, Angle, and Random options as they provide a lot of customizations for using a captured brush. There are no right or wrong adjustments, just set up the brush to work the way you like to work. For instance, I know that when I work on foliage I like to use a scribbling motion. My practice strokes for setting up a custom shape brush for foliage will mimic the scribbling strokes I plan to use on the real thing.
Hint: I usually play with the Spacing, Angle, Random, Color Variability and Color Expression and I set many of the expression options to "pressure" BUT you see what you like for YOUR own brushes—this is a creative exercise!
Here is a practice stroke of my finished captured brush. Image08
Image 08
The next step is to see how the brush will look on a painting. The first test, Image 09, shows how it looks on a partially painted tree cloning colors from a source image of the same picture. Image 10 shows a more impressionistic tree that was made by uncloning the colors and adding some yellow and purple that was chosen from the Color Window.
Image 09
Image 10
Once the brush has been created and tested to meet your satisfaction, it should be saved. In the "more options" fly out window in the Brush Selector bar, choose Save Variant. I named mine Heart Shaped Leaf. Capitalize the first letter for neatness. Scroll through the variants, select your new brush and re test it to double check the way it works.
To reset the original brush variant so you can use it another time, reselect the Round Extra Soft 20 copy brush and choose Restore Brush Variant from the fly out arrow at the right side of the Brush Selector bar. It should go back to where it was originally though sometimes it doesn't. If it refuses to restore, delete it and re copy another brush into your special Brush Category to use the next time you want to make a captured brush.
Making captured brushes is easy and really gives a personalized look to your paintings. Sometimes a specific brush is made for a specific painting and other times you can create brushes to use often. You can make brushes that add paint and brushes that blend paint because the difference is in the resaturation (resat) option for the brush. Brushes that add paint have a positive number in Resat. Brushes that blend have 0 resat.
Hint: any brush in Painter that has a resat option can be used as either a paintbrush or a blender by raising or lowering the resat option.
In addition, we used the Round Extra Soft 20 variant of Pastels for this project, but any variant can be used and the captured brush will reflect the characteristics of the original variant until you alter the options in the Brush Creator. It's pretty obvious that you have unlimited options for making captured brushes!
Another note on Captured Brushes: Many artists share their brushes but I have found that the only way someone else's brush will work as well for you is if you move the way the other artist moves; in other words, copy their strokes while using their brush. Hey—I gotta be me; you gotta be you and strokes provide personal artist expression. It's impossible to feel exactly like someone else and you will be happier painting if you experiment with what others are doing and then make your own captured brushes that express themselves the way you like to paint.
I hope this article opens a window for your creativity and personal customization of your Corel Painter software. Corel's Painter is amazing program providing fine artists and photographers with door opening creative options and time saving processes for creating art. Cheers to you and your beautiful paintings!
Jane Conner-ziser and Patrick Ciatto own the Galleria d' Arte and Jane's Digital Art School in Ormond Beach, Florida. Jane is a forerunner in digital imaging for the professional portrait and photography industry and is internationally known for her techniques in retouching and portrait painting. She is also a professional photographer. You can find her class schedule and purchase her Photoshop and Painter DVDs on line at www.janesdigitalart.com. Email Jane at janecz@mac.com