rainwaterspark | Art style memo (Reply)

Recently I've been experimenting a lot with digital art styles, so I thought I'd compile some sort of memo to help myself keep track of them. (Full versions of most of these pieces can be found on my dA.)

Default style

My "default" digital painting style usually incorporates both Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop. I'm a big fan of using Painter's blending brushes and tinting brushes to get a smooth, yet painterly effect.

For backgrounds (when I bother to do them), I actually prefer to use Photoshop mostly. I don't know, I guess having originally been a Photoshop user makes me still feel more comfortable when using Photoshop for certain painting effects, even if theoretically I could achieve the same things in Painter. Especially for skies (not that I'm particularly good at them yet), I use various Photoshop brushes to lay down splotches of color and then the Smudge tool (usually Heavy Smear Wax Crayon or Chalk brushes) with scattering effects to blend.

My lineless art is usually terrible if I'm not using a reference, so I first make a sketch (with the default Hard Round brush in Photoshop or Real 2B Pencil in Painter), then ink it with Painter's Pen brushes.

Marker style

Recently I've been working on replicating a marker-like look using Corel Painter. I think I've finally gotten something that I'm relatively satisfied with. It relies mostly on Painter's Variable Chisel Tip marker brush (with opacity expression set to pressure for softer blending) and Scratchy Dry Tip marker brush for detail work.

Digital watercolor style

I'm not exactly comfortable using Painter's Digital Watercolor brushes to simulate actual watercolor paintings yet, but I've been experimenting with using them for a coloring style similar to my "marker style." It seems to work particularly well for monochrome coloring.

Portrait style

For this, I actually rely mostly on Photoshop, using the default hard round brush at low opacity and flow to layer colors on top of each other. Sometimes I use other Photoshop default brushes for texture, and sometimes I jump to Painter to use the blenders.

Watercolor style - Take 1

Lastly, I've been very interested in replicating watercolor effects using Painter 12's Real Watercolor brushes. My experience with real watercolors is pretty limited, so a lot of what I've been doing is trial and error so far. One thing I definitely struggle with is the fact that it's not easy to fix mistakes in watercolor, unlike with my regular painting style where I can just lay a different color on top.

Also, I realized that Painter's Liquid Ink Coarse Bristle brush is really good for simulating dry inking effects.

Watercolor style - Take 2

Recently I've been playing around with Artrage. I'm liking Artrage's watercolors over Painter's quite a bit, especially since they allow me to achieve a paint-splatter effect that I've been trying to replicate digitally for a while now. (Basically, it involves using rough paper textures with the watercolor tool, and thinners for blending/more "watery" strokes.)

Pastel style

I don't use Painter's pastels very often, but I love using them when I do. Mostly so far I've been using the regular Oil Pastel for laying down color and the Variable Oil Pastel for blending.

I'm not sure if there's any other style I'd like to emulate/develop in the future...