Growth Patterns for Corel Painter
Perhaps a normally overlooked feature of Corel Painter is the Growth fractal/ pattern generator (Effects menu> Esoterica> Growth). I have used the Growth dialog to create various shapes, which I then saved to a custom patterns library for Corel Painter 6 and above. There is a download link at the end of this post.
Growth Patterns library
There are a total of 21 custom patterns in the Growth Patterns library, and each is depicted in the above image. Although for the purpose of display, the patterns are shown at very small scale, they have actually been captured in the range of between 500 and 600 pixels. I have created them mainly for use in combination with the default Pattern Chalk variant (Painter Brushes> Pattern Pens> Pattern Chalk), and they work well even at large brush sizes with this variant.
Loading the Growth Patterns library
After unzipping the resource, select Open Library from either the Patterns Selector menu in the Toolbox palette, or the launched Patterns Palette menu (Window menu> Library Palettes> Patterns).
In the Choose Patterns dialog, navigate to, and highlight the Growth Patterns.ptl file, then click Open.
Select the default Pattern Chalk variant from the Brush Selector Bar to apply the selected pattern.
Note that unlike Painter’s brushes, the location of the pattern libraries on your hard drive is not critical. Pattern libraries with the .ptl extension should open in all versions of Painter, at least from version 6 upwards (although I no longer have access to Painter 6 in order to test that version). Painter X saw the introduction of the .patterns file extension for cross platform pattern libraries.
Growth Trees Demo.
In this example, Growth 10 and 11 patterns have been used to create this stylised forest scene.
It is important to note that when used in combination with the Pattern Chalk variant, non-linear movement of the stylus whist applying the brush stroke will cause distortion (spherical mapping) of the pattern. The direction of the stroke also controls the orientation of the pattern, and for the tree forms (Growth 10 and 11 patterns) to be in an upright orientation, the brush strokes must be made horizontally from left to right.
When applying strokes from left to right with the pattern pens, it may be necessary to temporarily add extra pixels to the left (Canvas menu> Canvas Size dialog), in order for the pattern forms to display correctly at the start of the stroke, near the left canvas edge.
Constrain Yourself
Whilst pattern distortion can be useful for shape surfing for example, Painter has a neat feature which enables us to constrain the brush stroke to any one of eight direction paths. This is accomplished by holding down the Shift key whilst making the brush stroke. Patterns applied in this manner should be distortion-free, as there is no deviation in the stroke path.
Download the Growth Patterns Library
The download comprises of the following;
A complete zipped Pattern library for Corel Painter 6 and upwards.
Download Growth_Patt_PC.zip (1.3 MB) PC Windows version.
Download Growth_Patt_Mac.zip (1.3 MB) Mac version.
There are no restrictions on use, other than the resources are not to be offered for sale or redistributed without my prior consent.
