Snow Time 2009 Brushes

In this example, I have used the Snow Shaper variant on a layer above a colour filled canvas (you could also apply a gradient fill). I then selected additional colours from the Colors palette to produce abstract shapes in combination with the white to give the illusion of a landscape. This variant will also pick up some of the neighbouring colour as the stroke is being applied.

Again, used on a layer above the coloured canvas background, the Snow Peak Tilt variant can give a wonderful illusion of snow-capped mountains or other structures.

Please note the word ‘Tilt’ in the variant name, as this effect relies on both tilt and bearing of the graphics tablet stylus whilst making the brush stroke. The strokes in the above example were produced by tilting the pointed tip of the stylus towards me, with the blunt end pointing towards the monitor. We can also use the Rotate Page tool in Painter, in order to rotate the document to a more comfortable painting angle.

Top left: Snow Icing variant – produces a soft edged to the brush stroke.

Top Right: Snow Line - one possible use for this variant would be for painting patches of snow on branches etc. Adjust the brush opacity to your requirements.

Bottom Left: i Snow Icing_Clumpy - an impasto based variant to produce clumpy patches of snow with impasto depth.

Bottom Right: i Snow Icing_Smooth – another impasto depth based variant, but producing a smooth, linear stroke path.

From left to right – Snow Fall Sml, Med and Big Flake. The concentration of flakes can be varied by painting additional strokes over the same area.

The i Ice GRN variant utilises impasto depth only (the stroke does not exhibit the currently selected colour), in combination with the currently selected paper texture to produce a textured ice effect.

For the i Icicle GRN variant, I have used a pre-saved colour value with the variant, and again, this works conjunction with the currently selected paper texture.

It is useful to have the Papers palette open, and experiment with the paper scale, brightness and contrast settings.

From left to right;

Frost Glaze Grainy – exhibits the currently selected paper texture, and could be useful for rendering frost covered tree bark for example. Don’t forget to experiment with the scale, brightness and contrast settings in the Papers palette.

Frost Glaze Soft - the Static Bristle dab type has been used to give a fine textured appearance (not influenced by the currently selected paper texture). This ‘graininess’ can be further refined by adjusting the Hair Scale slider in the Brush Controls> Bristle palette.

Icing Sugar - in this case, the Pixel Airbrush dab type has been used to create a variant with a granular, frosty appearance.

Based on a captured dab, the Fir tree variants may be used to render individual Fir tree branches, or even small complete trees if the brush size is reduced accordingly.

When painting individual branches, in order that the leaves on each branch orient away from the trunk, the brush strokes need to run from outer to inner (i.e towards the trunk as shown in the screenshot).

Painter has a wonderful feature which allows colour variability within brush strokes for some of the dab types. This feature has been employed in this case to vary the individual leaf Hue, Value and Saturation along the length of the stroke, giving life to an otherwise flat rendering. To experiment further with colour variability, play with the settings in the Color Variability palette (in Painter 11, this is accessed via. Window menu> Color Palettes> Color Variability, and can be found under the Window menu> Brush Controls sub-menu in earlier Painter versions).

The Fir Tree Branch variant has been assigned prefixed colour and colour variability values.

In the case of the Fir Tree Branch_Oil variant, the same color and variability values have been used as for the previous variant, but due to the fact that the Plug-in method, Liquid Brush subcategory has been used, this variant does not work on transparent regions of a default layer.

A seasonal snow collection would not be complete without the wonderment of fairy lights, tinsel and stars, and this library is no exception.

The Fairy Light Dotter, Star Dotter and Tinsel Glow variants utilise the Glow Brush Plug-in subcategory. These variants will work on transparent areas of a default layer, but will not work directly over white areas of the canvas or default layer.

Both the Fairy Light Dotter and Tinsel Glow variants have been saved with a preset 50 percent Hue variability (see previous section). In order to render only the main colour selected in the Colors palette, without any variability, change the Hue (H) value to 0 percent in the Color Variability palette. The Star Dotter variant has not been saved with a specified colour or colour variability, so will render the main colour selected in the Colors palette.