Painter's watercolor drying "problem"...? or A good medium?

[Ben Her]

I'm using Painter 8 on Mac OS X. Forever, I have been trying to find a decent "medium" within painter to work in. My goal was to find a decent way to "color over" my original pencils in a thin medium and then maybe touch up in an opaque medium later.

The digital watercolor seemed to do the job at first - blending nicely over the original canvas. It even worked nice on a seperate layer. So I saved my work and reopened it later, only to find that the paint can no longer be blended! Not sure if this is a "feature" or if might be preventable by using something else. I tried the "real watercolor," but each brush stroke takes so much time to render that it doesn't seem practical at all. (Even though I'm using a G5 with a gig of ram)

Does anyone have any suggestions? Maybe I should just try using Gouche or something completely different. No matter what, it would be nice to have some consistancy in blending between my work sessions.

One example of Painter work I really enjoy is this guy's work:
http://www.gezfry.com/linksj.shtml

I wonder what medium in Painter he uses?

My "real life" painting experience is almost all in oil, but the Painter equivelent doesn't seem to resemble it at all...

[Jin]

Hi,

In Painter IX, the problem of wet Digital Watercolor paint being dried when the image is saved, closed, and opened again has been fixed.

In Painter 8/8.1, a few very simple brush categories that can be made to look like watercolor and for which some or all of the variants in their default state allow painting and blending at the same time are:

Tinting
Oil Pastels
Pastels

The Tinting brush category includes some blender variants.

With Oil Pastels and Pastels, if you don't like the Paper texture to be so evident and adjusting the Grain slider is not enough or don't want Paper texture at all, open a new white Canvas, make a square-ish selection (don't hold down the Shift key or the Capture Paper command may be greyed out) , then use the Papers palette menu's Capture Paper command and name your custom Paper to indicate it won't have any texture. I named mine "Blank White".

Or, you can choose one of the smoother Papers and adjust the Paper palette controls.

You can lower Opacity to get a "thin" stroke, or paint with the default Opacity setting on a Layer set to Gel or Multiply. If you work on Layers with any brush variants that have blending and smearing characteristics, the brushstrokes will have white edges wherever they're painted on transparent areas of the Layer. Two workarounds are to:

Change the Layer's Composite Method to Gel or Multiply. This will make the brushstrokes transparent, darker, and darken colors on other Layers or the Canvas below the Layer set to Gel or Multiply.

Move the Resat (Resaturation) slider all the way to the right. This will remove the variant's blending and smearing characteristics, however.

You'll probably find other brush categories' variants you can play with to get a watercolor look, but the ones mentioned above are brush categories other Painter users say they've used for this purpose.

Good luck!


Jinny

[Ben Her]

Thanks for your help Jin! I hope to get a better handle on Painter in the future. The Watercolor issue, it seems, is what has kept some of my friends here in japan on earlier versions like 6. I'll post some results as they come in. Cheers!

[Jin]

Hi Ben,

You're welcome.

Yes, a lot of people preferred Painter 6 Water Color over Painter 8 Digital Watercolor, mostly for the reasons we've talked about in this thread, drying paint when the image is saved, closed, and reopened.

Most everyone in the Painter community I've heard (read) talking about Painter IX Digital Watercolor is delighted. That old wet/dry problem is solved now.

Personally, though I have all Painter versions from Painter 5 on installed on my computer and use all of them frequently, I very much prefer Painter IX Digital Watercolor even over our beloved Painter 6 Water Color. The brush variants are just yummy!

Maybe you'll be able to upgrade soon and take advantage of the improvements.


Jinny