Sensitive drawing with the Charcoal brushes
By Cher Threinen-Pendarvis
White Orchid in Light and Shadow was painted from life using the Charcoal brushes in Corel® Painter™ X and my Wacom® Intuos®3 pen tablet. This tutorial shows the progress of my still life drawing while demonstrating Brush Tracking, setting a custom paper color, using favorite Charcoal brushes, using the helpful Tracker palette, and more!
The completed drawing: White Orchid in Light and Shadow.
Step 1. Setting up a still life. Choose a houseplant or flower picked from your garden and set up your subject in front of a non-distracting background. I chose this orchid as a subject because of its graceful shapes, unique texture, and interesting details. I found the shapes of the petals and the negative space around them to be fascinating. I set up a small spotlight to cast interesting shadows on the flower.
Step 2. Setting up Brush Tracking. It's a good idea to set up Brush Tracking before you begin sketching because it will increase expressiveness in the Corel Painter brushes resulting in smoother strokes. With Brush Tracking, you can customize how Corel Painter interprets the input of your stylus, including parameters such as pressure and how quickly you make a brushstroke. From the Edit menu (Windows®), or Corel Painter X menu (Mac®), choose Preferences > Brush Tracking, make an expressive brushstroke in the window, and then click OK.
Making a brushstroke in the Brush Tracking window.
Step 3. Trying out the Charcoal brushes. The Charcoal brush category in Corel Painter contains a variety of Charcoal tools. Some of my favorites are the Hard Charcoal Stick, Soft Vine Charcoal, Sharp Charcoal Pencil, and Soft Charcoal Pencil.
The Charcoal variants.
Next, open the Tracker palette by choosing Window menu > Show Tracker. The Tracker palette allows you to access your most recently used brushes. I like to use the Tracker when sketching quickly because it saves going to the Brush Selector bar to change brush variants and I can better focus my attention on drawing.
The Tracker palette with some of the brushes used for the drawing.
Step 4. Setting up a new file with a custom gray paper color. Open a new file that is 700 x 900 pixels. Set up a medium gray background color so that you can work with white highlights and dark shadows on a mid-toned ground. Choose File menu > New. In the New dialog box, click the Paper Color swatch to access the Colors dialog box. In the Colors dialog box, choose a medium gray and then click OK.
Creating a custom paper color.
Step 5. Sketching the shapes. My subject was a white orchid in front of a darker background. Considering the contrast between the subject and the background, I chose to sketch in white and lay in lighter tones first. The gray paper color would function as the medium value. On the Colors palette, choose white. In the toolbox, choose Basic Paper from the Paper Selector. Then, on the Brush Selector bar, choose the Charcoal from the Brush Category selector and Soft Charcoal Pencil from the Brush Variant selector. Using your stylus, sketch in a way that is similar to how you would use a pencil, with lines that gently overlap one another to suggest the shapes. Focus on the simple shapes at this stage. As you make your first brushstroke, you will see the Soft Charcoal Pencil appear in the Tracker palette.
Sketching loosely with the Soft Charcoal Pencil variant.
Step 6. Adding the first values. Now that the shapes are roughed in, begin to build dimension by blocking in the first values. For this task, I recommend using the Soft Vine Charcoal variant because of its soft feel and oval shape, which allows you to expressively paint broad areas while revealing subtle texture.
Working over the medium-gray paper color, block in the lighter areas of your subject first by using white and light grays. Observe and analyze your subject. Where are the lighter values and mid range values? The medium gray paper color acts as the mid-tone range for the drawing. When painting the curved flower petals, I used curved strokes that followed the contours of the forms.
Blocking in the first gray values with the Soft Vine Charcoal variant.
Step 7. Building form. In this step, add darker values to begin to build a range of values. Continue to observe your subject; study the values, from light to mid-tone to dark, and then carefully work the shaded areas to establish a value range. I laid in the mid-tone areas using grays (chosen from the Colors palette) that are similar to the background color.
For a more dramatic, high-contrast look, I added stronger highlight details using white and lighter gray tones. Choose a bright white from the Colors palette and use the Soft Charcoal Pencil variant. As you paint the brighter highlights, continue to use strokes that complement the forms.
After adding the highlights, you might want to add some deeper tones to the darker shadow areas if they need "punching up." To achieve a crisper edge in some areas, I sampled color by using the Dropper tool, and then zoomed in and used a small Soft Charcoal Pencil variant to carefully draw along the edges.
The in-progress highlight and shadow modeling.
Step 8. Adding the stem and cast shadow. You may want to paint a cast shadow (as I did) to create more of a sense of space and atmosphere around the flower. For dappled light and interest, I used the Soft Vine Charcoal variant to paint varied angled brushstrokes (loose, overlapping strokes) behind the left side of the subject.
Again, it's a good idea to step back and look at your painting. Does your drawing need more contrast? Are there edges that you'd like to emphasize? At this point, I decided to emphasize a few important internal contours. I used the Soft Charcoal Pencil variant to strengthen edges of the highlighted interior curves, and I also redefined edges of the lower petals. You can see this brushwork in the detailed image below. The complete final image is shown at the beginning of the tutorial.
In this image, you can see the small curved strokes and highlight details.
Congratulations! You've learned about using the Charcoal brushes and how to paint a sensitive black and white still life study. Happy painting!
All content and images ©Cher Threinen-Pendarvis
An award-winning artist and author, Cher Threinen-Pendarvis has always worked with traditional art tools. A pioneer in digital art, Cher has created illustrations with the Macintosh® computer for two decades. She has been widely recognized for her mastery of Corel® Painter™, Adobe® Photoshop®, and the Wacom® pressure-sensitive tablet, and she has used these electronic tools since they were ?rst released. Exercising her passion for the artist tools in Corel Painter, Cher has worked as a consultant and demo-artist for the Corel Painter developers. Her artwork has been exhibited worldwide, and her articles and art have been published in many books and periodicals. Cher holds a BFA with Highest Honors and Distinction in Art with a specialization in painting and printmaking, and she is a member of the San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild. She has taught Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop workshops around the world and is the principal of the consulting firm Cher Threinen Design.
Cher is the author of The Photoshop and Painter Artist Tablet Book: Creative Techniques in Digital Painting and all eight editions of The Painter Wow! Book. The Painter X Wow! Book is the latest edition of this highly praised volume of techniques and inspiration.
To learn more about Cher, visit her web site at www.pendarvis-studios.com.