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From Photo to Fine Art - The Art of Photo Painting - Corel Painter 6 Tutorial
by Jacquelin Vanderwood | In this tutorial I'll show you in more detail the art of converting a photo into to what appears to be a fine art painting. If you are already a fine artist, then this will be familiar. If not, making a photo look like a painting is just about like real painting. Sorry folks but you will have to do some work. If the program could do everything for you, who would need us artists? Just know this that there are infinite ways to create a painting from a photo and as you learn, you'll discover your imagination taking over. Anyway, there's always Control-Z to undo what you just did. Make sure under Preferences that you have the Undo's set to 32, the default is 5. After specifying this, exit the program and reenter it. | | | | | | 1 | | Begin by scanning in a photo as I have done here. Next I began applying the background using the Airbrush>Digital Airbrush. |  
| 2 | | I've applied the Artists>Impressionist look to the background. Very important to remember to keep the Controls:Brush palette open because you will be constantly adjusting size and opacity. Also, you have the option of choosing different styles of paint brush features using the Brush Controls panel. As you can see in the fourth picture below, I continue enhancing the background. | 
| 3 | | Here in the first picture I've used the Artists>Seurat brush to give the background more detail and character. I will keep doing this until I've got what I want. A key note to remember when working in Painter and doing this type of photo painting, is that you will find yourself constantly experimenting. If everything was predictable, what fun would it be? Some of the best artwork achieved is through accidents. I will show you the subsequent pictures below with the menus I used and you can follow that way. Of course I also change color, brush size and opacity as well. In the 3rd picture I begin to soften the features with Photo>Scratch Remover brush. And in the 4th picture I've chosen Photo>Add Grain to begin to camouflage the legs. | 
| 4 | | Here I've started working on the actual figures in the photo using the F/X>Confusion brush to soften the edges. See the hair? | 
| 5 | | In this step I used the Liquid>Smear brush along with adding some color to the child's face. See the edges of the clothing? And again, in the second picture I chose Liquid>Distorto to achieve a more painterly look. | 
| 6 | | With F/X>Fire I continue to highlight areas. Again in picture 2 I am using the F/X>Confusion brush to slowly build up a painterly effect. | 
| 7 | | Continuing to use the F/X>Fire brush to add hair and background highlights. | 
| 8 | | Here I've added a light paper texture to give more of the appearance of a painting. Then in the second picture I've continued adding more Fire highlights in the background, the faces, the legs, different areas. In the third picture I've applied a Dye Concentration to deepen the color a fraction. | 
| 9 | | And there we have it. You too can be a fine artist. Before and After! | | | 
| | Copyright 1999 Jacquelin Vanderwood, All rights reserved |
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