Help with Blending technique?

[JnXC]

I've always used photoshop but every now & then I would go back to painter & just mess around, try to get use to it. With the kind of works I do I only require a few things. blotch colours all over the place, then use the smudge tool to blend one colour to the next whilst making use of layers etc. However in Painter XI... I can't figure out how to get the blending anywhere near what i'm aiming for.

EXAMPLES



The first 2 images are the same piece by Kim Hyung Tae, i've circled the parts which i'm talking about. Sure i can get roughly the same effect on photoshop with just the paintbrush and smudge tool, but I would like to be able to do the same thing in painter and from there using and training with painter.

I don't Recall the artist of this image but it consist almost entirely of the simple blending/smudged look i'm after.

NSFW
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v289/JNX25/3.png

i've searched for hours, youtube, 3dm3, cgsociety etc and where as I see it in many pieces which states it's done in painter, I assumed finding a tutorial for something so common would be easy... I'm hoping someone could help me or point me to somewhere that I can find the answers.

Current brush setup consists of a custom tinting brush for laying down colours & a custom smear brush trying to replicate PS's smudge tool but at the same time try to get those sharp and almost natural watercolour blending...bah dunno how to explain.

I did go through the blending basics thread which helped explain alot, & while i don't have access to painter at the moment, there's a few brushes etc i need to test. i'm guessing i should use a hard edge brush instead of the soft one, need to test that but any help and suggestions to help me get clsoe to those styles of blending would help a great deal.

thanks

[JohnMalcolm1970]

The Painter blender called Just Add Water can give very smooth blends. Forgive my crude and quick example - but it shows how you can go from something fairly rough and then blend and shape it with the aforementioned blender. If an edge gets too soft then Just Add Water is good at higher levels of pressure for pushing pixels around and can be used to bring more definition back.

[ikken]

I've always used photoshop but every now & then I would go back to painter & just mess around, try to get use to it. With the kind of works I do I only require a few things. blotch colours all over the place, then use the smudge tool to blend one colour to the next whilst making use of layers etc. However in Painter XI... I can't figure out how to get the blending anywhere near what i'm aiming for.

I assume he's using a circular round brush with low resat, high bleed values (a refinined tinting -> round brush should get you there), and later bleaches/dodges the highlights either in photoshop, or on a separate screen layer.
a simple blender will most likely not take a good care of your edges - they will become to blurry and undefined.

Also, it's hard to tell without looking at a high-res image, but he might be using oils - round camelhair to get the finer details and hair streaks done.

[Portus]

Check out this clip of him live painting, I think it's from some demo:

http://vodpod.com/watch/2597625-blad...eo-mmosite-com

BTW, you could easily do the same in SAI which has an easier blending engine.

[JohnMalcolm1970]

Check out this clip of him live painting, I think it's from some demo:

http://vodpod.com/watch/2597625-blad...eo-mmosite-com

BTW, you could easily do the same in SAI which has an easier blending engine.

From a quick look at that video, he seems to only use a couple of brushes - One looks like one of the variants from Painter's Simple Water category (most probably tweaked and the other is a Pencil variant. The other two brushes in the top row of his custom palette are from the Airbrush category - but I didn't see him using them and I have no idea what brush is on the second row of his custom palette.

I didn't see him switch to a blender so the Simple Water brush he uses is most probably tweaked to blend at low pressures and lay down colour at mid and high pressures.

[JnXC]

Thanks for all your quick responses,

JohnMalcolm1970,
Thanks for that response w/ example, never really seen anyone put that much effort into their explanations O.o many thanks again, as i'm back at my place now i'll be able to experiment with the info you provided.

Ikken,
I did try some variations of the camelhair brush, the settings i use came from this girl (http://blog.asurocks.de/2009/06/ever...-my-heart.html) who has an amazing art style. of course, this being the first time i'm seriously getting into painter, I don't fully understand each individual settings in the brush creator but i'm learning, experimenting + watching some lynda.com tutorials though... it's very slow ><'

Portus,
Thanks, I've seen that video numerous times whilst I was on my search to look for the brushes he uses and the settings (I know... it's not the tools) I've purchased a few books such as the collection of the megacity 909 which has some nice tutorials by him and if anyone wants it' I wouldn't mind scanning & upload. also got the oxide x2 book? the tutorial in the middle pages are Useless -.- as for Sai, I dunno I don't want to give up on painter after spending so much time and effort trying to figure things out. but thanks for the info on that... also, is it just me or does his brush look strange O.o

so the Simple Water brush he uses is most probably tweaked to blend at low pressures and lay down colour at mid and high pressures.

...You can Do That? O.o i'd ask how but you've helped so much already so i'll try search for info on that, after hearing about that i'm even more happy i got a cintiq... even though there's one stuck pixel that's been bugging me for almost a year now -.-

However, I would think it's better to have 2 seperate brushes for that. more control over both the blending and the coloring, not too sure of the advantages with having such a setting with the pressure, other than there being no need to select brushes ><'

[JohnMalcolm1970]

...You can Do That? O.o i'd ask how but you've helped so much already so i'll try search for info on that, after hearing about that i'm even more happy i got a cintiq... even though there's one stuck pixel that's been bugging me for almost a year now -.-

However, I would think it's better to have 2 seperate brushes for that. more control over both the blending and the coloring, not too sure of the advantages with having such a setting with the pressure, other than there being no need to select brushes ><'

Start with something like New Simple Water from the Digital Watercolor category. Change it's Method from Digital Wet to Cover and play about with it's Resat value. Turning it down to 0% will make it act only as a blender. 100% will be no blending. Setting it to a low value (for example 15%) will give you both belnding at low pressure and opaque colour at high pressure.

^ Doing things this way and playing around with various other tweak and settings means at the end of it you will have your own custom brush variant. One that you made... and then people can wonder what brushes you use

[JnXC]

Ah, thanks again O.o i'll try that out. I do try experimenting and searching for answers, but after a while I gotta ask for help otherwise I feel i'm wasting time, need to get the gallery on my website back up, need to work on this n that etc.

[Fredbt]

How many times have I written this simple solution to blending in Painter? Well, it would be simple if Corel would just restore the best blending brush ever included in Painter.

Misnamed a Palette Knife, the Fine Dry Brush was the perfect blender. I used it for years and still use it today. For some reason, when Corel bought Painter, this excellent blending brush disappeared.

It was included in early Painter Classic versions and a special brush set given with Wacom Tablets several years ago; called the Wacom Brush Set. I have kept this brush for many years and I add it to every version of Painter I've bought since. If not for this blender, I would probably just use Photoshop for most of what I do. I hate the Smudge and Blur features in Photoshop and Adobe, like Corel, hasn't seen any need for a real bender.

At the request of Corel a couple of years ago, I sent the Fine Dry Brush to them, but as far as I know, they haven't done anything about restating it in Painter's standard brush set. Why they haven't done so is beyond me.

If you paint in real-world oil paints, this brush is the same as taking a clean dry brush and blending your colors together or gradually blending and fading the colors out on a canvas.

Please don't ask me to give you a copy of this brush. Everybody says that would be illegal. Perhaps I should attempt to get permission from Corel to give the Fine Dry Brush to other artists without fear of penalty. If they won't restore it to Painter, I don't see why they would deny me permission to share it with others. In my mind, it makes Painter complete. It's the one brush I don't want to do without.

[ikken]

I assume you still could share the brush settings, instead of posting the brush as a download?

Corel changed some brushes (like they did with square chalk between painter 6 and later, replacing a nicer brush dab with a mediocre one), and removed some variants completely, like they did with camel hair brush (one that Ryan Church was using, a tweaked rake brush basically)
but I can't see how they can restrict sharing brushes from an abandoned painter release.

[Portus]

At the very least post a screenshot so people can see the holy grail of Painter's blending brush.

I have Painter Essentials 2 that came with the Intuos 3, I'll take a look at what's in there.

[JnXC]

If editing and creating a brush could get him the same effect, I doubt he'd add it to painter again & again, but what do I know, I only started using painter a few days ago O.o

[Portus]

Here's one of my brushes, it should mimic very closely what Hyung Tae Kim did in those examples you posted.

I hope it imports ok since it was made in Painter 6 and you have to import it in later versions, if not I'll post the settings.

[joeparis]

If editing and creating a brush could get him the same effect, I doubt he'd add it to painter again & again, but what do I know, I only started using painter a few days ago O.o

It should be possible to create it from scratch. There aren't really any big secrets to brush creating, just complicated sometimes. All the default brushes can be made from scratch but you may have to create an unique image to capture a dab.

[JohnMalcolm1970]

1) Take any oil type brush
2) Turn the Resat value to 0%

[Arshes Nei]

Ahh, why does this seem familiar... http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=171346

[JnXC]

Here's one of my brushes, it should mimic very closely what Hyung Tae Kim did in those examples you posted.

Ooh, thanks, i'll have to try it out sometime. what i'm working with now (thanks to everyone who responded here) has gotten me pretty good results thus far.

Thanks Joeparis, I'll remember that

I've seen many threads asking about kim hyung taes brushes, tutorials & what not, I've started this thread in various forums but this one is by far the most helpful. Infact another forum pointed me to this site and deviant art which i'm grateful for as it's helped alot.

[JnXC]

Here's one of my brushes, it should mimic very closely what Hyung Tae Kim did in those examples you posted.

I tried the brush &... well i don't think I know how to use it, by that I mean i can't use it as effectively as the brushes I created.

A big thank you to everyone who has helped me in this thread, though i'm not close to the blending etc levels of the images i posted in my first post, I do feel i'm closer, currently i'm using 2 brushes, tweaked new simple water (thanks johnmalcolm for the tip on how to blend & lay color with one brush) and a seperate blending brush as the new simple water i set the it to flat cover, the 2nd is a soft cover. Below is an example of my work, though not finished yet it's a piece i'm working on for the company Salon Strategies. Any more tips etc are most appreciated.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...5/Chanelle.png

[Arshes Nei]

Your problem is not the brush. Your problem is the foundation.

Using white as a highlight when you really need to learn color theory, is one problem.

Please resize your image too, it's much too large.

[JnXC]

Your problem is not the brush. Your problem is the foundation.

Using white as a highlight when you really need to learn color theory, is one problem.

Please resize your image too, it's much too large.

i'll make it into a link after this message. Yup, I only recently looked a little into that and i'm gonna have to add more cool colours to the shadow areas and replace the white with warm + brighter variations of the skin beneath it.I only did a little of reading on complementing colors and the liking. As for the highlights etc I can only blame Kim Hyung Tae for I constantly refer to his art when colouring etc. bad habit I know

my problem 'was' the brush, as I could not blend things the way i wanted it before, if only you could see how horrible it was ><'

Thanks for the crit though, wasn't really expecting it, was more expecting hmm, you're blending too soft/too hard in this area etc, any crit/advice etc helps so thanks again.

*Edit ~ Just thoguht i'd add the things I did read up on, though they may not be in as much detail as I need.
Colour Theory With Logo examples - http://logodesignerblog.com/how-to-u...n-logo-design/
Wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_t...r_abstractions
Simple Color Theory - http://pronouncedyou.deviantart.com/...urse-120798230

[Arshes Nei]

No, I mean you need to really go back to your foundations. What you're saying on blending isn't really the problem.

When you learn your foundations, you'll realize what I said earlier about the brush will make more sense. This really looks like an odd floating head that doesn't have hair, but a helmet.

You posted the picture on feedback, which is why I'm giving it.

As you learn, you'll have a different brush stroke or method than Hyung Taie Kim. That's why hoping for a painter brush doesn't cut it, especially if you don't know how he uses pressure, opacity or stroke to create it.

The people helping you have their own foundations, and while they can make a brush that creates the effect, the same individuality will still apply. Their brush may make the effect, but if you as you clearly stated, don't know how to use it...it's not going to work. Even their method can be different than a brush I create to make the same effect.

Think about it this way, it's not like John Singer Sargent or another painter had wildly different brushes to paint in oil, however, each of them using the same brushes will have a different effect.

I love Painter, but it doesn't create art, we do. The only way we learn how to make good art is working on foundations, like color theory, anatomy, and observation and so forth.

[JnXC]

oh O.o in that case i'm lost, no idea where to start from. T.T mind helping a little bit more? i'm looking at it now, I think hmm, the face is fine, i'm actually happy with how the skin turned out there, the hair needs work & the neck also, other than that, goin back to the beginning... ugh, confidence crash -.- lol

[ikken]

I'm sorry but there's a whole fine arts and studies section on this board, and it has a TONN of worthy information
other than that, you should invest your time and money into life drawing course and some still life drawing at home;
if you're after HTK technique, find his older art-books and study his art closely (but only when you already have an idea how to draw and have practiced it for a while)
his early designs have a plenty of anatomical and stylistic f-ck ups, but they show his technique and approach quite directly
his later works are really refined and there's a ton of post-processing, which makes it harder to get how exactly his brush strokes are painted, etc - it's all glossy and heavily colour processed pictures.

[Jason Ross]

Try blending on a different layer so if you screw up you can just erase what do you don't want. Also with this method you can "overblend" and area and then airbrush erase for really soft transitions.

[JnXC]

if you're after HTK technique, find his older art-books and study his art closely (but only when you already have an idea how to draw and have practiced it for a while)
his early designs have a plenty of anatomical and stylistic f-ck ups, but they show his technique and approach quite directly
his later works are really refined and there's a ton of post-processing, which makes it harder to get how exactly his brush strokes are painted, etc - it's all glossy and heavily colour processed pictures.

Thanks Ikken, i'll browse the sections you mentioned, though i love his style etc i'm mainly trying to get the whole sharp n soft like blending shown in the first post, though many may not agree (even look down upon?), in photoshop, this could be closely achieved with the use of the gradient/motion blur & the smudge tool.

I do like the idea of sacrificing great anatomy for a certain look, i'm not saying it's an excuse to disregard anatomy completely but I wouldn't consider it a priority with most of the pieces I produce, I have to agree most of his works (old & most recent) have anatomy flaws but, i like that ><' no idea why lol

I asked for help as I thought it was something specific or even in a category of sorts which i'm just trash at.

@Jason
you have an amazing portfolio.
when I first experimented with painter, i did that with the pick up colors thing on, however the results didn't appear as well as if I were to drop everything on one layer, try a few strokes & rely on undo if I ain't happy with it. most of the time, like if im blending the skin, a new colour would appear which doesn't sit well with the colours being blended into each other.

[AlstonA]

on way to get the just add water effect tool in photoshop is turning on scattering on your smudge brush. then, adjust the opacity to your preference and use lightly.