Creating a custom Wow! Charcoal brush
By Cher Threinen-Pendarvis
This month’s Corel® Painter™ Wow! tip shows you how to build a Wow! Grainy Charcoal brush in Corel Painter X that you can use to paint expressive, textured strokes. Both the standard Wacom® Intuos® 3 Grip Pen and the Wacom® 6D Art Pen will paint pleasing strokes with this brush, but you will need a 6D Art Pen to interpret the Rotation controls and take full advantage of the expressive nature of the brush. The strokes shown here were painted with a custom Wow! Grainy Charcoal R brush and the default Hard Charcoal Stick variant of the Charcoal brush category.
These strokes were painted with the default Hard Charcoal Stick variant.
These strokes were painted with the Wow! Grainy Charcoal brush.
Step 1. Opening a new file and setting up. To test your brush as you build it, create a new file. Choose File menu > Open, and make a new file that measures 500 x 200 pixels. The Charcoal brushes are sensitive to Brush Tracking. Before you begin to paint, it’s important to set up the Brush Tracking, which includes controls such as pressure and speed, so you can customize how Corel Painter interprets the input of your stylus Windows® users choose Edit menu > Preferences > Brush Tracking. Mac OS® X users choose Corel Painter X menu > Preferences > Brush Tracking. Make a brushstroke with your stylus using your desired pressure and speed.
Step 2. Choosing the brush and making a brushstroke. Choosing the brush and making a stroke. You can build your own custom Charcoal brush by adding settings to a default brush that will allow it to paint with additional capabilities, for instance, Rotation that can be expressed using the 6D Art Pen. On the Brush Selector bar, choose Charcoal from the Brush Category selector and Hard Charcoal Stick 20 from the Brush Variant selector. Now use your stylus to paint an expressive, curved brushstroke.
A brushstroke painted with the default Hard Charcoal Stick 20 variant.
Step 3. Adding settings to accommodate rotation. The Angle section of the Brush Controls contains settings that allow you to achieve rotation of certain kinds of brushes. Open the Angle section by choosing Window menu > Brush Controls > Show Angle, and choose Rotation from the pop-up menu.
Setting the Expression menu to Rotation.
My settings in the Size section, with the Expression pop-up menu set to Rotation, and the Min Size set to 30%. The Size and Min Size sliders control the maximum and minimum thickness of the brushstroke when the Expression pop-up menu is set to a controller such as Pressure, or Rotation, and a pen tablet that can interpret these controls is used.
You can see the tilt, bearing, and rotation indicated by the Enhanced Brush Ghost. To turn on the Enhanced Brush Ghost, Windows users choose Edit menu > Preferences > General; Mac OS X users choose Corel Painter X menu > Preferences > General. Enable the Enhanced Brush Ghost checkbox. The circle in the Enhanced Brush Ghost represents the brush size and the line indicates the tilt and bearing of the stylus. If you are using a 6D Art Pen, a small dot will appear on the circle, indicating the rotation of the stylus.
This stroke was painted with the Wow Grainy Charcoal R brush and with the Enhanced Brush Ghost enabled. The Enhanced Brush Ghost shows the size, tilt, bearing, and rotation of the stylus. The small dot indicates the degree of rotation.
Now, make a stroke with your new Wow! Charcoal brush and notice the realistic variation and texture in the brushstroke. Experiment with a variety of strokes: try tilting the stylus, rotating the pen in your fingers while making curved hatching marks, and also longer curved strokes and zig zag strokes to get a feeling for the new brush.
Making a stroke with the new Wow! Charcoal brush.
Step 4. Saving the new brush. To save your new brush variant, choose Save Variant from the pop-up menu on the Brush Selector bar. When the Save Variant dialog box appears, name your new variant. (I named mine Wow! Grainy Charcoal R.) Your new variant will appear in the Charcoal brush category. To return the original Hard Charcoal Stick variant to its default settings, choose the Hard Charcoal Stick from the Brush Variant selector and then choose Restore Default Variant.
Good work! You have created a new, custom Charcoal brush with settings that accommodate rotation and the 6D Art Pen to use on your paintings. 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.