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Understanding Basic Brush Controls In Corel Painter 11
This tutorial on Basic Brush Controls seems like it is stating the obvious to those of you who have been using Corel Painter for awhile, but analyzing the strokes this way and changing the controls, one by one, really helps you understand what the controls actually do. It is an excerpt from my eBook, which is written so that beginner's can understand these basic controls. So, if you think you know everything…you can stop right here! Lol!
David Gell, "webmaster and resource creator at jitterbrush.com, has been making and converting Painter brushes and other resources as far back as version 6 (around 1999), when Painter was then owned by a company called MetaCreations." Quote from David Gell’s About page on his fantastic blog Jitterbrush.
Brush Control Palette
He has created a wonderful tool called the Brush Control Palette which keeps all the brush control categories available for you in an organized and tidy fashion. Much better than having to have them open all over your screen. You can customize it by moving the categories around and even taking some off, but why bother. How to Access the Brush Controls in Painter 11
 Understanding the Brush Controls Illustration No. 1
Understanding the Brush Controls:It looks kind of complicated when you first lay eyes on it, but if you break it down to individual settings and examine the results of changing the controls in this organized fashion, making these adjustments as you are painting, will become second nature. Traditional watercolour painting doesn't let you get away with dipping your brush in the paint and just making any old stroke. You have to patiently learn how much water, how much paint, what angle to hold the brush at, how hard to press .... etc. In digital watercolour you need to learn to control your brushes as well, before you even touch the stylus to the tablet.
 Understanding the Brush Controls Illustration No. 2
The Size Control:The first control of concern is the Size control. You can control two things, the maximum dab width and the minimum dab width.
 Understanding the Brush Controls Illustration No. 3
The Size Step Slider:This is an important control because it controls the transition between the narrow and wide sections of a stroke. It greatly affects the smoothness of your strokes, which seems to matter quite a bit in using the watercolour variants.
 Understanding the Brush Controls Illustration No. 4
Expression Controls - Pressure:There are ten different options under Expression Control. I will concentrate on the first few as they concern the watercolour variants the most. I started with Pressure because it's the one I'm most likely to change.
 Understanding the Brush Controls Illustration No. 5
Note: 11/ 27/ 2010: this diagram has been edited. Thanks to Skip Allen for pointing out that "Brush Expression Set at Expression" doesn't make sense. It should have said "Set at Pressure."
Velocity Control:Velocity is not a control I have paid to much attention to because my style has always been fairly controlled and detailed. After seeing what a difference it can make, I think I might experiment with this more. Might help with painting grass and branches. I've tried making a flicking stroke to do it, but probably should have had the Velocity chosen in the Expression options for it to work properly.
 Understanding the Brush Controls Illustration No. 6
The Direction Control:It's possible to vary the diameter of the stroke as you change your direction. In this sample it's easy to see how the Direction setting works.
 Understanding the Brush Controls Illustration No. 7
Wheel, Tilt, Bearing and Rotation Controls:The following strokes are all the same because they were made with a Played Back stroke. The Expression settings were changed for each one. Quite a difference in the resultant mark isn't there. The Tilt Expression might come in handy, but I don't change these controls much. I know some brushes I use that others have made, have some of these settings changed, but to be honest I don't use them much. Source and Random are ones I don't use at all. When I experiment with them it's interesting and fun, but I feel the need to have a little more control over where my mark lands! lol!
 Understanding the Brush Controls Illustration No. 8
Hope this closer look at the Brush controls gives you a better understanding of the basic brush controls and how some setting changes can make huge differences in the outcome of your making your mark. Make your changes with more confidence and you will control the brush, it won't control you!
Time to go and experiment some more with Skip's Splashing Water Brushes! I've heard many digital artists say they find painting digitally addictive! I can think of worse addictions.
Happy Painting!
 Related postsCommentsJoan said: Hi Elaina,
Friday, November 26th
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Nightshadow said:
This looks very useful Joan. Thanks so much.
Elaina