There are ways to control the clutter and tell Painter how you like to work. If you’re new to Painter, the sheer number of options, palettes, tools, and menus can seem overwhelming. If all you want to do is draw and paint, you can ignore most of the other choices in the Toolbox for quite a while. Make sure the Brush toolis selected, as shown in Figure 1.4. I used Painter’s Preferences > Interface to make the single column of tools into a double column. You’ll see the vertical Toolbox on the left side of your screen.

All panels are listed in the Window menu. In addition to your canvas, the Painter workspace consists of several panels offering brushes and other art supplies as well as special features and commands. If you want to use the same settings over again, click the plus sign and you’ll be able to save the current configuration as a new preset. Basic Paper is the default surface texture, but that tiny triangle in the lower-right corner of the paper swatch lets you choose from several alternatives. (Pixels and resolution are explained in Appendix A.) Canvas color is white unless you click the color swatch to change it. In this book, you’ll use 72 ppi (pixels per inch) most of the time, so you’ll be able to see the whole Painter Canvas onscreen without scrolling and you can work faster. The New Image dialog box, shown in Figure 1.3, lets you enter height, width, and resolution for the image.

Okay, now you’re ready to create that new image. You can access Brush Tracking at any time in Painter’s Preferences. The colorful squiggle gives Painter the pressure and speed data it needs to optimize the tablet for you. Make a typical stroke in the blank rectangle. Click it now to get the panel shown in Figure 1.2. Brush Tracking, under the Set-up section, is an essential feature for adjusting your Wacom tablet to your touch. When you see the Welcome screen, shown in Figure 1.1, you can choose Create New Image, but first notice some other options. In just a few minutes, you’ll actually be able to create digital scribbles as good as this! So, turn on your computer, plug in your Wacom tablet, launch your Painter program, and let’s get started.įor this chapter, you’ll use the following item from the website that supports this book: Custom palette: Painter 12 Sampler

I made these scribbles with several of the brush variants available in Painter 12. Buy a copy of Digital Painting Fundamentals with Corel Painter 12

Painter12