Hey everyone! Do you think this is a
traditional painting, or a digital painting? All guesses in! ...and it is a traditional painting.
Painted on wood and everything. But wait ... hang on... that was a trick. I apologize. it's actually a
digital painting. I had you going for a second though, didn't I? So this video is chock
full of tips for achieving interesting natural, and even traditional-looking digital
brushwork! The thing about traditional media is it's organic. When i put a watercolor stroke
down here all kinds of subtle varieties happen . For example there's more pigment where I
started the stroke. While that wash is still wet here's another color and look at how the water and
pigments interact, giving me color variety for free! wetness can modify edges ... and here's some clean
water being spattered in, and look at how those droplets diffuse and grow and affect the
pigment. With these watercolor washes dry now i can put on additional washes. this wet-over-dry application will darken the washes underneath, but this time hard edges are preserved. Clean water
here can help soften edges and create gradients. of course we can always switch media - grab some
colored pencils. I love a colored pencil's granular texture, contrasting with the smoothness of a
wash. Also I really like using the hardness of a pencil to emphasize edges and shapes. Here's
a stiff bristle brush and a palette knife. I can spatter the paint and get different sizes and
spacings. Let's switch media again and grab some acrylic paint. The thickness here is maybe the most
notable thing ... but as that paint runs out we get a difference of both opacity and texture. And while
the paint is still wet, and with a dirty brush, I can get all kinds of interesting pigment mixtures
and textures. here's a frizzy brush just with water on it and while that paint is still wet i can
start diffusing edges and running colors together. Oh and look at this! Here's an airbrush! I can glaze a super thin layer over everything. I enjoy changing colors on the
airbrush, using masking tools with it... Traditional media, if you've never tried it, is tons
of fun. It's fun because variety happens naturally and it tends to be easier to create interesting
brushwork. Now, if you know what you're going for you can achieve very similar looks digitally. So
today I'm firing up the latest version of Corel Painter. You know what's good when there's cats on
the splash screen. Anyway i'll go make a new canvas and one cool thing i can choose here is the paper.
this is a library of textures that your brushes will react to. and brushes are really the bread and
butter of painter. it comes pre-loaded with every type of media you can imagine. The categories are
on the left column and the corresponding brushes are on the right. So i want to show you a helpful
exercise for improving your digital brushwork. And I want to be very clear: you can do this with ANY
app! This is a photograph I took of an actual piece of watercolor paper. I'll copy and paste it onto my
canvas; I'll name the layer surface then go up here and set it to multiply mode, decrease its opacity
to about 60 percent, and finally lock the layer so I can't paint on it. Now, in most apps you just make a new
layer and start painting... but painter has different types of layers corresponding to different media.
Painter is smart! If I go and grab a watercolor brush and start painting with it i get a new
watercolor layer automatically. so i'll put a few brush strokes down ...and look at how it's physically
reacting with the paper! Now, Painter will treat this as a wet wash until i choose to dry it.
It's one of the many benefits of digital media. So, changing my color up and adding to this wet
wash here. For this exercise keep things abstract. Yunno, don't try and draw anything. If I want to
dry this wash, I just right click and there's an option here. And now when I add more watercolor
strokes it'll overlay on top of those washes, rather than mix into them. Up here at the top I
can dial in more paper texture as well as access the unique parameters of my chosen brush. You can
also modify its shape. So with those alterations this same brush now looks like this! And already
I'm producing that natural variety that I'm after. Alright so let's add a different medium to
this. I'll just make a regular new layer here then i'll go up to the pencils category and I
like this '6b' brush. There's enough thickness to it to see the grain in the stroke which of course
provides contrast against the smoother watercolor. Alright, let's expand our texture palette and get
some spatter in here. I'll go up to airbrushes and grab this sprinkle brush. No matter which software
I use, it's important to me that the fingerprint of the brush be not obviously repetitious. What
you're looking for is subtle changes from brushstroke to brushstroke that throw off that digital
scent. Now again, a reminder, you don't specifically need Painter to do that! However, Painter, right out
of the box, does an excellent job with this stuff. It makes getting natural and interesting brushwork
easy and fun. okay so i'm going to go ahead and collapse my painting layers down and i'll make a
new thick paint layer then i'll go and grab one of these thick paint brushes. And while this new
texture is interesting ... it's too uniformly opaque. I want it to interact more with the painting beneath.
So I can right click the layer and convert it to a thick paint layer, which just means my thick
paint brushes will interact with the painting I've already done. So, to complete this little
brush work exercise, you just want to get to the point where you feel like you've created a full
range of textures, edges, played with various brush types, and generally have something that contains
enough variety to hold your interest. The late, great, Richard Schmid said something I'll always
remember. He said that painting is often less about the physical subject matter and more about how
you filter it through the language of painting. And this is the point where you want to look at
what you've done and analyze the visual vocabulary you've created. For example this area here: I see a
shape that looks like this. Now, the key is it's not defined like this. It's not totally solid. There's
a hard edge here and then the shape continues with soft edges. Here's a painting by Daniel Keys.
This painting actually looks like something! But the visual vocabulary is the same! Looking
at that green pumpkin in the middle there the left side of the silhouette looks like this.
But look closer; it's not totally solid. It too is made of hard edges and soft edges. there's a
hard edge there interchanging with a soft edge there, then the hard edge picks up again here, and
passes the baton to the soft edge here. It can be difficult to practice painting form and light, AND practice your brush work at the same time ... that's why I recommend these abstract exercises.
alright let's keep analyzing. See this lumpy area here? What color would you say that is? Probably
you'd say it's blue, right? Okay it reads as blue to me too. But let's look closer. Here's a sampling
of a bunch of colors that are all in that area. Now let's remove the painting. would you still blanket
term all that as blue? Probably not. Some swatches are blue... but even there there's different types
of blue, and other swatches are not blue at all. So when painting color, consider using your
brushwork to kind of weave color or layer color. I want this to eventually look blue... which of
course it doesn't yet. But I'll start swinging this color around now, and I'll pick one of Painter's
oily brushes which has a nice bit of smear to it and i'll start working into this color. The
brush work is important: I don't just want it to be 100 percent opaque. I want evidence of that
warm seeping through the cools. That'll help give your color that unpredictable yet fresh
look that we tend to admire in good painters. You know, where the color feels like it's never
really standing still - like it's always vibrating around a bit. Anyway, then just keep working at this
until it looks blue to you and that's all there is to it! That's another quick exercise you can
try! Okay so I want to point something out about brushwork. Brushwork contributes to the emotional
part of painting. What's far more fundamental is shapes. For example this shape defines the side
plane of her head. So that's the fundamental thing we're after. Your brushwork is in service of that,
and there are so many possibilities. I could do a very straightforward approach like this or i could
be more experimental and build the shape up with multiple brushes and multiple passes...I could try
filling the shape in very simplistically and then imbue it with artistic brushwork from there...a
great way to shake up your brush work is put the shape in by painting around it, producing the shape
as a negative shape. So long as you adhere to the shape you could use whatever brush or brushwork
you want. Even a cheesy image hose like this will still work! I'm reminded of this painting by
Craig Mullins. We can all see that tree right there ... but actually zoom in on it and that entire section
is not so different than the exercises we've been doing so far. So let's fire up Painter again and
flex its brushwork muscles a bit. Starting off here with that same 6b pencil brush, and i still have
that paper texture layer over everything set to multiply mode which i find really helps give your
digital brushwork that traditional feel. I'm going to switch my brush now to this oily conte brush. I
want this to be smooth and a little smudgy, so I'll drop the grain a little bit then just work right
into my pencil layer, smudging and blending strokes. Now, we just talked about shapes. My goal here
is to define two shapes: an average light shape responsible for all of the light, and an average
shadow shape responsible for all of the shadows . And because those shapes are so important I
want my brush to be very reliable: a little bit of personality is okay, a little smudging here
and there, but not too much. I feel like if you're just sketching around you could be done right
here. But to start the color process I'll switch over now to one of my favorite watercolor brushes:
the grainy wash brush. Of course Painter makes me a new watercolor layer by default and i'll glaze
in some wet washes here. Just like real watercolor it'll lay transparently over top of the pencil, and
painter does an exceptional job at the watercolor simulation here. Just like real watercolor you can
combine all kinds of colors knowing that they'll pleasantly diffuse together in the wet into wet
wash. Now, no matter which app I'm using I do like to change my brush often. So this is a different
watercolor brush. Now, this one leaves behind those characteristic pigmented edges. This may look
a little strange right now but this is just an under layer; this texture facilitates that abstract
interest we talked about earlier. Also though, these brushes are just a joy to play, with and I firmly
believe that joy should factor into your process! Anyway, now i want to brush with less texture, so
i can go back and tighten up the drawing a bit. I'll use this grainy medium hard airbrush for that
and this is just a bit of contrast to help define shapes where needed. And while I'm here I'll grab
that spattery airbrush play with that a little bit. And now I think I'd like to build up some thicker
paint texture, so I'll dig into the oils bravura section. The word 'bravura' refers to a thick direct
oil painting technique. Now, I don't want to cover this with opaque paint. I just want to build up
that opacity and texture where i think it feels right. And again, the way you learn what feels
right to you, apart from looking at a lot of art yourself, is by doing those abstract brush
exercises. Now of course, as I'm painting along here, I'm always thinking about shapes and form and
edges and light. In fact painter's Navigator window here is really useful. It's got this little
toggle for displaying in grayscale. So in the throes of emotional brushwork, that little display
window really helps me also stay focused on the fundamentals! But anyway, back to brushes. This is
really cool - this is the dirty water brush. Remember back here when i spattered that water onto the
pigment and it lifted the value? That's what I'm doing here. it has this interesting ghostly effect
while still somehow preserving your shapes and values enough to be readable. And immediately to
counteract that, I'm going back over things with a very directional brush. With all these brushes
to choose from, Painter thankfully comes with a 'My Favorites' checkbox. A nice handy way of sorting
your tool set to the most common selections. This is my favorite 6b pencil brush which I've
used several times already in this video. It's a great tool to add crispness to your edges. Of
course I'll do that only where I think it's needed. I spent a lot of money on my colored pencil
selection in real life ... but even that pales in comparison to the selection you have with digital
media! And I just want to pause quickly here to say there is a link in the pinned comment where you
can get $100 off Painter. I highly recommend you give this app a shot! Anyway, to finish off this
painting, let's go through the tonal control -> equalize filter. You can adjust your levels
and gamma for a bit of extra punch. I'll spend a second to dial this in and there we go - let's
call that finished and move on to the next one! Let's try something more cartoony like a character
design for an animated film. I'm blocking in some shapes and gesture with a marker brush. I really
like how this marker brush kind of looks like it's dying or dried out. Using the 'my favorites'
filter to quickly navigate to my pencil brush, start sketching this guy in. Layers-wise i'm
just working on a single layer - although i do have that paper texture above as i've always
done in this video. But the drawing itself is happening on just one layer. And you get to watch
me dig myself into a hole with this hand pose here. Don't like that; let's try again. Hands are always
tough to draw... and i know how to draw hands! I've done a whole video about it! But despite that, hands
remain one of the most difficult parts of the pose. I think it's because they contain so much
character and attitude and any tiny little change can affect that. Not to mention the complexity of
the form. Anyway, even though this is a drawing and not a painting i'm still using brushwork. And the
thing that helps this brushwork look interesting is the layering of different media. You know,
starting with that fat marker then switching to a tighter pencil. And again, you can go about
this with any app. Doing so really helps achieve that organic look and steers it away from looking
digital. I don't mean to imply that looking digital is a crime against art or anything. But I do think
that things that look overly digital tend to also look overly repetitive, which, in turn, has trouble
capturing an audience. Anyway so I'll make a new layer here and set it to multiply mode and i'll
go up to my favorites and grab this hard glazing brush. It's got a nice bit of natural transparency
to it really good for blocking out some quick values here. But the thing i like about this
brush is if you prolong the stroke you'll see the digital pigment kind of build up or dissipate
depending on how you're moving the brush. Again, it's a textural quality that I think looks nice
over the other brushes I've been using. Switching up to a charcoal brush now... and just dialing in the
grain here, that's why all the undos. Just throwing a bit of atmosphere behind this guy. I think it
helps pop the sketch. I learned that little trick when I was doing live caricatures. But back to
my pencil brush now, just to beef up some lines where i think it's needed, and we'll call that
sketch finished. That was fun let's do one more! For this one i'll stay in cartoon land but I'll
add a more realistic painting finish so this will be sort of a combination of the two sketches
we've done so far. You might recognize this guy as my green monster character. A character that
shows up in quite a few of my paintings! I used a conte stick to block in the drawing and now
i'm looking for some thick paint. I'll try a few options here, and eventually i find this
palette knife brush in the 'Sargent' section. And yes i do enjoy that painter has an entire
section of brushes dedicated to one of my all-time favorite painters. Anyway I've just flattened
the layers down, and as I often do, I switched back to my pencil brush which again allows me to
refine the drawing and also add some harder edges. You probably noticed I go back and forth a lot.
That is, I'll use brushes that are very expressive and a bit random and then right after that I'll
go back to a more reliable brush that allows me to draw more accurately. That's how I like to keep
expression in the brush work but also stability in the drawing. So I'll right click and convert this
entire layer to a thick paint layer and as we've seen earlier that allows these thick paint brushes
to interact with what's already on the canvas. Playing with this brush's settings a little bit to
arrive at a thickness and texture that i like and i like this brush enough to add it to my favorites.
I do that simply by clicking this heart icon. So i'm playing with this brush here and i like
its behavior but I want to change its shape and characteristics a little bit. So, without knowing
exactly what I'm doing, I'm just tweaking these settings. Each brush in Painter has a unique set
of parameters you can control here. And it really does change the look of the brush while holding on
to its original character! Another tip I have about getting good looking brushwork is: don't be afraid
to start out with a mess. This sketch has been a good example of that. A mess is inherently
uncontrolled. But it contains those abstract differences and contrasts that then help create
interest. The only thing that's different here from my abstract exercises is: in those exercises I
just let things be. I never really tried to control anything or create any particular effect. I was
just putting material down and then afterwards taking stock of what happened and how things look
against each other. In this painting i have to exercise some control because I do want to create
particular effects. For example I'm getting an airbrush here (and Painter tells me i need to put
that on a different layer not a thick paint layer) but i'm using this airbrush only in the shadow
areas, to diminish some of that texture. I want most of the texture and thickness to be in the light.
That's a brushwork aesthetic choice. And I'm making that particular choice because the eye tends to
look at the light side for the most information and if I know the eye is going to dwell on the
light side I might as well load it up with the most interest brushwork-wise too. Now that's not a
rule; that's just a thought that makes sense to me. Oh, and I'm not saying I invented this: here's Mead
Schaeffer doing it like 60 years ago. So to thicken up that texture in the light I'll use Painter's
impasto brushes. These brushes are pretty neat - they mostly add thickness to the paint that's already
on the canvas so you're not really painting with this brush... as much as you are 'sculpting' paint. And
the other neat characteristic about Painter is it remembers where you've put that thickness. So
if you then switch to a brush that doesn't have thickness like this 6b pencil here the pencil will
appear to travel over the clumps of thick paint. It's pretty cool! Flipping the canvas here to
help check my work, and you notice I'm doing that thing where the monster reads as green, but i'm
actually weaving together many different colors that are all related to green. And the different
brushes helps that blending look interesting. And anyway i think that'll just about do it for
this one. Here's where I ended up with it ... and that's about all for today! Thanks everyone for
watching this video! If you want to try Painter yourself you can use the link in the pinned
comment to grab a free trial or use that same link with the checkout code to get 100 dollars off. Thanks
to my Patrons as always, and hey, happy brushwork!
