Fudgelicious Painter

I am sometimes asked what softwares I use for digital painting. The programs I have been using most often are Photoshop and a very simple, old version of openCanvas. While Photoshop is very versatile and you can mimic the look of more traditional artwork styles by creating customized brushes, I still feel the brush strokes could blend together better. openCanvas3 has one brush that blends nicely, called WaterColor brush, which is why I do some painting there. I have tried out Painter before, but I wasn't a fan of the user interface and kept crawling back to Photoshop. But yesterday I checked out the latest version of Corel Painter, installed the trial and fell in love.

The UI seems much more accessible for a regular Photoshop user, and I like the sound of new features the package has although I am yet to try them out. Tonight I had some time in my hands and decided to combine a portrait study with getting familiar with the brushes of Painter 12.

Falling in love with Corel Painter 12. Oh, and you too, handsome.

The colours mix well and the brushes are a pleasure to work with. It is easier to achieve a more painterly look compared to Photoshop, although it of course still requires some sense of understanding the basic art / painting fundamentals that apply on both digital and traditional media. Although the program crashed once nearly causing a loud fff-udge, I am very happy with it. Painter is more for painters, while Photoshop is more designed for digital manipulation.  I am confident I will purchase the full retail version of Painter 12 soon - it seems like a worthy investment. If you are interested in trying out the  trial version, you can download it here.


Here a link to the photo of the model I used as reference for the study, provided by Katanaz-Stock on deviantART . :)