Medium Toned Paper in P8?

[Blind]

Hi all... I'm playing around with the Painter 8 demo. I don't really need 90% of what it does, but the one thing I'd love to be able to do with it is emulate black & white sketching on a grainy medium-toned paper. I don't mean having the texture applied to my brush strokes (well, that too but...) I mean I want to start out on a blank canvas that looks like a medium-toned grainy paper and I just want to use something like the charcoal or pencil brushes on it in greyscale.

If you have ever seen any of KChen's gargoyle sketches you'll see what I'm shooting for. errr... rather, I'm not necessarily drawing gargoyles, heh... but you see what I mean. I'd like to emulate that particular media combination. Does that make sense?

[Blind]

Aha... here. This is the thread where Ken posted his Gargoyles (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=611&highlight=gargoyle) way back. This is the kind of look I'd like to shoot for in my practice sketching.

[Jin]

Blind,

Take a good look at those gargoyle sketches and you'll see several textures:

The paper itself has a subtle texture, looks like suede smudged with graphite.

In the top image, the ratty looking thing on the left has a spotty texture on it's head and shoulder, then a woven canvas/linen texture on the underbelly and ears. The "lion" gargoyle on the right also has the woven canvas/linen texture on the mane, lower face, and neck.

Some "texture" looks like it was added with crosshatching.. drawn. Other textures could, in Painter, be added using just the right Paper and the Add Grain brush applied just in certain places. Or, the spotty texture could be a brush that either paints a pattern (Pattern Pen variant) or a brush that splatters.

To get the Paper (background paper), you might try scanning something with a similar texture, adding color probably on a color filled Layer set to Colorize, then adding the smudged graphite look on another Layer so you can fiddle with it 'til it's the way you want it. Then the drawing on another Layer.

When everything's drawn, you could flatten the image using File > Clone and add the painted textures using the Add Grain variant, Pattern Pens, or a brush that splatters.. or whatever.

There are a ton of ways this could all be done. Those are just a few ideas.

The big thing is the drawing skill and artist's imagination.

[Blind]

Thanks for the tips, Jin! I'm still hunting around for an old copy of P6 to get. Don't think I need P8 for this, and this is really all I'll use it for.

[whitejake]

If that's all you're going to use it for, why dont you just go buy some paper like that and some charcoal? That would be so much cheaper and it'd be the same.

And, KChen didnt use Painter for that. He drew it, scanned it in, and then toned down the colors in Photoshop.

[Blind]

I have tons of paper, charcoal, pencils, graphite, stumps blenders, kneaded rubber, chamoises, et al... but thanks for the suggestion. I'm trying to emulate this on a laptop for those times when I can't bring my traditional media with me.