Watercolor

[Jes]

The new watercolors in Painter 7 are great ... but I also have a problem
with them.
If I paint over an area several times the color builds up and turns dark -
almost black. This dosen't happen "in the real world" and I would very much
like to avoid it in Painter 7 as well, but I can't.
Anybody knows a good trick?

Thanks
Jes

[KSperling]

I found a solution.
In the Brush Controls: Size palette (Command+7, Mac; Ctrl+7, Windows) move the
min size slider to the left. What that slider is for usually is to edit the
stroke's tapering quality. If it's to the left, you get an even-width stroke
straight thru, if it's to the right, the stroke is narrow and wide, depending
on how much pressure you add to your stylus. With watercolors, by moving the
min size slider to the left and making the stroke solid, and also moving the
controls palette: opacity slider to the left a bit, it appears the strokes
don't turn black as quickly.
Karen Sperling
Editor/Publisher
Artistry Painter Tutorials
http://www.artistrymag.com

[Jes]

"KSperling" wrote:
>With watercolors, by moving the
> min size slider to the left and making the stroke solid, and also moving
the
> controls palette: opacity slider to the left a bit, it appears the strokes
> don't turn black as quickly.

Hi Karen
You're right. But they still turn dark don't they? And this makes it very
difficult to paint a large area without lots of dark areas. My point is that
watercolors in the real world never builds up to black. I hope there is a
way to avoid it in Painter, but I haven't found it yet.

Jes

[KSperling]

Yes, they do still turn dark, unfortunately.
I'm on a few Painter lists and everyone seems to be struggling with this same
dilemma.
Apparently it's a feature not a bug.
Karen

[Simon]

yeah, the watercolor turns dark quite easily in Painter 7.... Also, this
version 7 is so slow that it even lags when I was using larger size of
brushes. (I have a AMD Thunderbird 1.5G) Hope I will get the refund and go
back to ver. 5.5

"Jes" <s-jessenrem...@post6.tele.dk> 撰寫於郵件新聞
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[Jinny Brown]

Simon,

Painter 7 Water Color brushes generally work slower the larger the brush
size. There are a few things you can do to make them faster. One is to
move the Feature slider to the right. This spreads the bristles and
tends to make the stroke less dense, so play with it to get the best
result. Another is to decrease the brush size.

These brushes can be made to paint less (or no) black by adjusting some
of the settings. For instance, there are some on my site you can
download and try out. Specifically, the best for avoiding (or lessening)
the black problem are:

Paulo's Water Bristle Brush
(With this brush at its default settings, unless you continue to paint
over existing strokes of the same color, it doesn't seem to turn black.
Lowering its opacity allows you to paint over existing strokes even more
without the black effect. As with real watercolors, painting one color
over another can result in some ugly, dark colors)

Paulo's Water Useful Diffuse Brush
(With this brush at its default settings, it takes a lot of "scrubbing"
over existing strokes of the same color to get the black effect. Again,
lowering its opacity allows you to paint over existing strokes of the
same color even more. As with real watercolors, painting one color over
another can result in some ugly, dark colors.)

Matt's Old Watercolor Brush
(Matt's Old Watercolor brush is one that doesn't seem to paint dark or
black when painting over existing strokes of the same color, no matter
how hard I scrub away at it. Painting over existing strokes with
different opacity settings and colors results in the new paint sometimes
covering the existing paint nicely and sometimes, depending on the color
and opacity of the new strokes, can result in a similar ugly dark
overlap to what we'd see in real watercolors.)

With a lot of Painter 7 Water Color brushes, you'll still get darkening
(even if not black) where brush strokes overlap, just as we would with
real watercolors, and very ugly dark results with some Variants when the
colors that overlap would do the same in real watercolor (i.e. green
over read).

Using Matt's Old Watercolor Brush, I was able to increase the brush size
to about 118 and paint with long strokes to create a sky. It took a
relatively short time for the paint to dry (compared to other Variants)
and there was no evidence of brush strokes overlapping. The effect was
smooth color. I decided to try an experiment:

1. Dropped the Water Color Layer to the Canvas.

2. Chose the Diffuse Water Variant.

3. Chose Lift Canvas to Water Color Layer.

4. Chose Wet Entire Water Color Layer.

As the Water Color Layer dried, the previously painted Old Watercolor
Brush strokes took on the characteristics of the Diffuse Water Variant
and there continued to be no evidence of overlapping strokes (or
darkening). The effect was continuous across the entire "sky".

I don't know what the result would be when using other Water Color Brush
Variants when the Wet Entire Water Color Layer command is used but I'd
expect that you could use at least several of them and get a good
continuous color result.. with only the brush characteristics changed.

Try it and see what you think, and if you do try it, please let us know
how it turns out.

Good luck,

Jinny Brown

PixelAlley's Section Links:
http://www.pixelalley.com/pixelalley-sections-pages.html
(Painter 5 and 6 tutorials, Painter 7 info, tutorials, PDF downloads,
brushes)
Contact: jinb...@pixelalley.com or,
Painter Forum at In Depth Discussions:
http://www.critical-depth.com/cgi-bin/idd/
______________________________________

If you're interested in trying these Painter 7 Custom Water Color
variants, they're available for download, along with a demo image, at:

http://www.pixelalley.com/Painter7/painter7-water-color-brushes.html

Jinny Brown

PixelAlley's Section Links:
http://www.pixelalley.com/pixelalley-sections-pages.html
(Painter 5 and 6 tutorials, Painter 7 info, tutorials, PDF downloads,
brushes)
Contact: jinb...@pixelalley.com or,
Painter Forum at In Depth Discussions:
http://www.critical-depth.com/cgi-bin/idd/
______________________________________

[Simon]

Hi, Jinny
Thanks for all the advices, I will give it a try.
I hope there will be a patch for fixing the speed issue..... (quite
laggy.... it seems that the watercolor layers make ver. 7 really, really
slow...)

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