no straight lines required

[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] ok the plan was and still is, to do a martian landscape. Or maybe some other cool planet. But before I start figuring out the colors and other details, I thought I'd start with a sketch for our Martian Lanscape.

One of the most fantastic things about drawing things in sceneries, is that for the most, part, natural things tend to not have many straight edges. . . of course there are always exceptions . . . [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

so this whole topic is geared to the people who have convinced themselves that they "can't draw" because they "can't even draw a straight line". [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] no excuses. . .we're doing squiggles here.

http://home.houston.rr.com/athenaswo...squiggles1.gif

now it didn't take long for me to run into a wee dilemma. After placing some major objects on our landscape in black and white, I knew that I was going to want to add color. I suspected that Painter Layers would be necessary to add the color (in my imagination this would be much the same way a cell animator draws the outline then adds the black and colored pigments on other layers).

But i wanted to do cool things like you do with pencil on paper -- like smudge the outline to help me create the illusion of depth by using the smudges to create shadows.

So far in MY painter explorations, the layers work for smudging as I want them to when i choose a white background for the canvas and the layer itself.

To use the smudge tool on a colored layer . . . seemed to invite disaster (like introducing a white smudge where my intent had been to smudge a black line that i had drawn on an orange background. . . .) so *sigh* i just work on white canvas and layer til i figure out the subtle nuances of these layers and compositing schemes.

Now before I go too much farther, let me clarify. Since rebuilding my PC I went to Corel and downloaded the latest version of Painter 6 patch which is actually 6.1 d62 (goto help, about painter to see if you have this version).

LOL! (laugh out loud) I had been waiting and waiting for the report on when the 6.1 patch was bug free . . . then i promptly forgot to get the upgrade. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

And truthfully, I can't remember if the non upgraded version of painter 6 had this special feature where it gives you a little yellow yield sign with an exclamation point on your layers control panel.

http://home.houston.rr.com/athenaswo...llowyield1.gif

I find this very helpful now that I am twiddling with layers and trying to make sense of the compositing rules of painter. If in fact, this is a new feature in Painter 6.1 d62. (you don't know how silly I'll feel if someone tells me that the yield sign has been there since the 6.0 version) The yield sign tells you that the brush you may have chosen for the layer and combine mode may not give the results you expect. You do have to click on the little yellow yield sign to get the info but it can be helpful.

Now as it turns out, the smudge brush in painter 6 is one of those persnickety brushes that does odd things on compositing methods other than default. *sigh* ok

So here was my new dilemma.

I had started out on a white canvas. when I selected the canvas and duplicated it to make a new layer, the new layer also was white, not transparent.

Ok so maybe I should have started a new layer as soon as I created the document. But I hadn't so. . . what to do? what to do?

How do I make what used to be a white layer, with black pencil marks look like it was actually a transparent layer? How do I make it seem as if they were on layers of cellophane? So far, given the finite amt. of time I've put into this, the answer is use

<ul> compositing methods that seem to help when you want to work on layers that started off white that are meant to be mostly transparent[*]Darken[*]Multiply[*]Gel[/list]

Is this the most efficient solution? probably not.
But it does allow you to recover if you, like me, did not instantly make a new layer and start drawing on the new layer. If I had drawn on the new layer instead of drawing on the white canvas, then I probably would not have to use Darken, Multiply, or Gel compositing methods on the layers to give me that clear cellophane layer effect I wanted.

Is this all I'm going to talk about? yes for this installment. I need to duplicate my starting scene on paper so I can let my imagination roam. . .the image is missing some stuff on the right . . . (oh yes .. and colors .. I have to add colors [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] ) I don't know about y'all but i'm not very creative at the computer.

I like to work on my writing and sketching on paper first [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] . . . it's just what I'm most comfortable with doing. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] . But I also like to practice starting from scratch on the computer just to see how well I can do . . .I can always duplicate most of the strokes on to paper and vice versa.


Have the happiest of Holidays!! and spoil yourselves this holiday season [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

edit: changed from ubb brackets to html brackets on un ordered list


Athena
Our thoughts are bounded by words. The quality of those thoughts is largely determined by the words that compose them.

[This message was edited by T. Athena Hatton on December 23, 2001 at 17:56.]