Pastel brush?

[hseiken]

Hi

over in the brushes forum Frances [angelize] said:



apparently that forum does not accept replies [at least, not from mere mortals like me] so I'll reply here:

I hate to disagree but you cannot stimulate pastel in xara.. certainly not in the way photoshop does it and the reason is because of the way that the brush work is rendered

in photoshop the rendering is done by laying down a pattern made up of of pixels and 'gaps'; when you brush over an area already covered, some of the gaps get filled, some do not - this stimulates the building up of pastel

in xara, an art brush stretches the pattern along a line which is not at all the same thing - a scatter brush uses a bitmap that repeats and there is no infilling of what went before, just overlay

that is not to say you cannot try, but I can almost guarantee it won't look the same [challenge here someone? ] - you really need a pixel mode here, which xara does not have

I would completely disagree with you here. The method for achieve results does not equal wither result is possible. In the end, whether vector illustration or raster illustration in terms of software is used, both can definitely pretend to look like the other. The OP asked if there was a pastel-like brush, not whether they can replicate exactly the feel of using pastels to construct an image. There's more than plenty of brushes that mimic pastels just fine and tons more post effects and fill patterns and masking and all that stuff to convince someone of the pastel qualities of an image made in Xara.

It's the path to achieve that quality and texture that's completely different than Photoshop or other 'painting' software that deals in raster only.

[handrawn]

what he asked was whether xara can have a 'pastel' brush that makes strokes that look like [are the equivalent to] the photoshop pastel 'brush' strokes - effectively my answer was 'no' and I stand by that.

sure you can make 'imitation' pastel brushes in both apps, and good ones, but the ps ones are much closer to the real thing

he also said:

that really look like pastel strokes

now I use real pastels... I prefer the harder ones to say, the oil, but whichever pastel you use, a significant factor in the effect you get is the texture of the paper; xara does not have any paper texture features, that's not a vector thing - I guess you could texture the stroke afterwards, but that is not then in the brush, and it is going to be difficult to get to look natural in my opinion

for reference, below is a hard pastel brush stroke made in CS6 photoshop with canvas texture built in

[hseiken]

I agree with you in that Xara's brushes don't 'recognize' texture. But that was my point...Xara can do it, but not in a way that 'makes sense' to the medium...it doesn't try to fake anything like Photoshop does, so you have to take those steps and the artist to push that texture effect as a post treatment. But yeah, You're right, it's easier to just pick up and doodle in Photoshop, but the paper texture isn't something that xara cannot do...it just doesn't do it while you're drawing.


EDIT:

It did also make me think of something else that I wish Xara could do, but strengthens your stance and that's to 'drag' pigment of strokes into an overlapping stroke. I feel like Xara could do this via doing some engine trickery and playing with it's gradient fill technology to auto create gradient fills based on where a stroke travels and what's underneath it. This is something that's essentially impossible to just 'do' via any kind of intuitive way in Xara and something that occurs in in pastel drawings too (i.e. getting residue on your finger and rubbing it into the texture or finger blending two shades)...

[handrawn]

I was answering toonicorn's question

now the wider issue of how you get this effect in a vector app, ie :' you do it once but it's not right, so you then put it right by doing more work' is another question, and yes you can probably play with it for quite a while, but I would rather do it in PS, I am not wedded to vector

also, as you will know if you draw freehand, the realtime feedback of what you are doing is part of the art - I am not clever enough to be able to imagine in advance what the corrected art will look like once I have added the texture afterwards, so that I know how to get the first part down in a way that is going to work; when I am drawing it - that really does sound like more work than is necessary unless you really do need 100% vector

on the second point

do we know of any vector apps that can do this, without using bitmap overlays?

[hseiken]

I don't know of any but I would think they'd require to be tied directly a good modern 3D card to use texture shaders for this...Kinda hope xara would, at some point, pave the way for this tech. *hint*

[handrawn]

it's a great idea, but bearing in mind that xara cannot yet texture along the direction of a stroke, only stretch/repeat, and that is a bitmap overlay, we may have to wait a while mores the pity