Corel Painter

"The Apple Seller," Painter Essentials calligraphic pen

Not long ago I received an online ad for Corel Painter 2019, the newest version of the venerable program that has been available for about twenty years. Corel was one of the very first to release a digital drawing program back in the 1990s and Painter followed that one.

Corel Painter 2019 is sophisticated and multi-featured, with layers of complexity like Photoshop on steroids. It's many menus and options are daunting (occasionally even baffling) to the untutored like me. Happily, Corel also markets Painter Essentials, a limited yet full-featured version of the flagship at a significantly reduced price. The time limit to try either program free is 30 days, so I downloaded a trial version of each and spent some time with them over the past three weeks. This is my very personal viewpoint. 

The Apple Seller, drawn with thin and thick pencil tool

I tried Painter Essentials first because of its simpler interface. Like similar programs, Essentials can emulate various art media--acrylic and oil paint, pen and pencil, chalk and pastel, etc--and also emulate paper, canvas and other supports or backgrounds. Essentials' basic workspace is clean and uncluttered and simple to learn. Using a Wacom Cintiq tablet with Essentials was actually pleasurable. Most of the testing I've done with Essentials has been drawing. Here are three drawings, done with the calligraphy pen, which gives effects like old dip pens, pencil tool providing thick and thin lines, and a chalk tool. The drawing above was my first attempt ever with the program, and was partly limited by searching for the various functions of the app. I used the calligraphic pen tool (in the Pencils Pens and Markers menu), which provides nicely varied line weight, good opacity, and a realistic emulation of a traditional ink. You can of course adjust size, opacity, and color of your lines and customize the "surface" of the image

The Apple Seller, drawn with chalk tool

(found under Canvas). I chose a near-black color and a mid-value gray background for the drawing. Rather than finish the drawing by line and value I left it for a personal example.

After working with other aspects of Essentials as well as Painter 2019 (more below and in another post), I repeated the Apple Seller experiment using the thin and thick pencil tool (again under Pencils Pens and Markers) over a cream-colored, "rougher" support. In this case the drawing took more time to correct and the result varies from the first, but as with the ink tool, the pencil tool provided a believable simulation of the real thing. Other drawing tools are worth exploring too, particularly the chalk tool, which I used with a sanguine-red color in the final drawing here. In this one I attempted to change the old woman's expression to appear less benign, and I think altering the position of her hand has something to do with that, perhaps.

Painter Essentials is sufficiently useful for drawing alone that I'm tempted to buy it even before the trial period expires. At $50 it is worth every penny.
---

Painter 2019 is probably the most complex art program I've attempted to learn, except perhaps Photoshop. Painter is exceptionally versatile, with workspace setups ranging from classic and simple to specific ones for concept art and manga. The tool groups provided are standard ones such as Acrylic and Gouache, Oil Paint, Watercolor, and dry media of various kinds including pen, pencil, pastel and so on. There is so much depth and breadth in this program that a thorough evaluation in a free trial month isn't likely. Nonetheless, here are a few preliminary thoughts and a digital painting done with Painter.

"Majesty," painted with Painter

Painter has been a pleasurable program so far, but I've only scratched the surface. The workspace and interface are relatively intuitive and mostly simple to begin, particularly if you've used other digital art programs. The color selection interface is set up to allow variation in value and chroma, although the value variation is at the gray end. There is a color mixer space that emulates a palette full of paint, too, allowing tinting and shading of various colors. And there are many many surfaces and backgrounds to pick for your art. I'm going to try out as many of the tools and surfaces as feasible, but those are beyond the scope of this post. Meantime, here's a digital painting I did with Painter. "Majesty" is based on an online photo.

In the next few days I'm going to try working with the watercolor and oil paint tools.