Stroke path

[Grafixman]

I'd like to know if you can apply a tapered pen stroke to a bezier path in Painter 8. You know, those long, delicate, curving thick to thin penstrokes you find in Japanese anime-style characters' hair. My freehand is not that good. I only have Painter Classic installed and I'm looking at the upgrade offer.

[Grafixman]

I'd like to know if you can apply a tapered pen stroke to a bezier path in Painter 8. You know, those long, delicate, curving thick to thin penstrokes you find in Japanese anime-style characters' hair. My freehand is not that good. I only have Painter Classic installed and I'm looking at the upgrade offer.

[Jinny Brown]

Hi,

I think I've responded to your question somewhere else, but not sure.

In Painter, the applicable terms are Shapes and Selections.

The basic answer to your question is no.

In Painter, we can't create an opan Shape (line made with the Pen tool or Quick Curve tool), then convert it to a Selection in order to Stroke Selection (apply the brushstroke to the selection).

This is because the Shape has to be closed in order to convert it to a selection.

You can, though, use the Pen tool to draw the outline of the stroke you want (make a closed Shape), then use Shapes > Convert to Selection and Select > Stroke Selection.

It's a bit more work, but at least one Illustrator artist says he uses that method.

Or...

You can practice a lot using the Pens' Scratchboard Tool variant making lovely thick and thin lines. Remember, there's always the Undo command and you can always practice on a Canvas dedicated to that purpose.

Good luck,

[Grafixman]

Thanks for the reply. I was wondering if it was possible to do it like Expression or Xara. I guess the only way is to do the linework in vector and export as a bitmap format for coloring in Painter.