Impastoso Brushes

First introduced in Painter IX in conjunction with the Artists’ Oils dab type, the Mixer palette in Painter X upwards also allows certain other dab types to sample and load multiple colours onto the brush. To enable this feature, click on the Sample Multiple Colors button in the Mixer palette (denoted by the red arrow in the above screenshot). With this button selected, the brush can be dipped into the Mixer pad at any point to load the underlying colour values, just like using a traditional artists’ palette.

Although the (M) iRound CamelHair variants can produce a wonderful depth effect, Painter IX and above appears to introduce an unfortunate tiled edge artifact, as denoted by the three red arrows on the canvas above. This defect is most noticeable when using the iRound CamelHair impasto variants if the brushstrokes are made at right angles to the ’tile’ boundaries. I have measured these, and found them to be approximately 240 pixels square, covering the entire image. It is possible to camouflage the lines by changing the angle of the overlying brush strokes, but this is far from ideal.

The fourth arrow (top right in the above screenshot), points to the Toggle Impasto Effect button, which as the name suggests, can show or hide the impasto depth effect.

The M Real iBristle Sparse and M Real iBristle Spray variants are to be found in the Painter X and above version of the Impastoso library. These variants make use of both the Mixer palette sampling and the RealBristle technology, first introduced in Painter X.

Occasionally, surfing the brush control settings in Corel Painter can yield some interesting and unexpected results. In this case, the RealBristle settings in Painter X and above have transformed this Palette Knife dab type into the V form shown on the left in the above image. Stability of the stroke is not maintained however, as the form eventually collapses to that shown on the right. The original V stroke can be subsequently reinstated though, by changing the brush size.

Using the Artists’ Oils dab type, first introduced in Painter IX, can produce some quite realistic and aesthetic results, especially in combination with multiple color value loading (again via. the Mixer palette). As can be seen in the screenshot however, some tweaking is still needed in the brush engine department.

The strokes in the right half of the image were created using the M iArt Load P Knife 40 variant with the depth increased to 300 percent in the Impasto section of the Brush Controls palettes. Whilst this produced a greater appearance of depth to the strokes, it also emphasised some of the defects.

When creating these variants, I opted to have brush size controlled by pressure, and for the media to run out towards the end of the stroke, with the added feature of eventually not completely filling the paper grain (again due to insufficient media on the simulated knife). If required, the grain visibility can be completely eliminated by reducing the Grain value to 0 percent in the Brush tool Property Bar, or the General section of the brush controls palettes.

Impastoso variant names prefixed with ‘Smeary‘, along with the iPalette Knife (all versions) and the iArtists P Knife variants (Painter IX and above), do not add additional colour, but smear pre-existing media, whilst adding/manipulating impasto depth.

The Impastoso Varnish variants add clear, colourless impasto depth only, and do not smear existing colors. I found that the best way to use these is to create a new ‘varnish’ layer and apply the varnish brush strokes on that new layer. In this way, the underlying impasto depth is not affected and can then be further enhanced.

Also experiment with the Layer palette Composite Depth options (this menu location is denoted by the red triangle in the above screenshot.

Included in the library are several variants which interact with the currently selected paper grain texture. When using these, I would recommend having the Papers palette visible on the desktop, so that paper scale and contrast may be readily adjusted to taste.

In the above example, I am using the iTextureCol Pen (at increased brush size) in combination with the Branching with Dots paper from the Contrasty Textures paper library. I believe this paper library is available as extra content on the Corel website, or in the Extras folder on Painter software CD versions.

The above variant could be useful in combination with selections, creating jewellery designs for example.

Three erasers have been included in the Impastoso library, affording the choice of erasing colour only, impasto depth only, or both colour and depth.