Course Description

This class is the first of a three part series of classes, with each set of lessons building upon the previous one. This section, Painter I, will teach you the basics of using the program. This class has been written for users of Painter IX.5, Painter X, and Corel's newest version, Painter 11. In the lesson sections where the instructions may vary according to the version of Painter being used, appropriate notations have been made. What is Corel® Painter™? Corel Painter (or Painter for short) is called a Natural Media Emulation software. What this means is that with Painter you can create digital art projects which appear as if they had been created with Real Life Media, such as oil paint, pastels, crayons, or watercolors to name just a few. Painter IX.5 contains 789 brush variations, Painter X contains 833, and Painter 11 contains 873, so no matter what you want to create, or how you want to create it, the tools you need can be found within the program. When you open Painter for the very first time, you may be intimidated by the vast array of palettes, tools and what-nots. Have no fear! As you go through each lesson, you will be gently lead by the hand as you explore the wealth of Painter's possibilities. The class will focus on learning to get around in the workspace, many of the tools and palettes, various customization features, and a general overview of the program. View more sample images Student Gallery Class Blog This is a 5 week, self-paced, online course. If you need additional help understanding the material presented, you can communicate with the instructor and fellow classmates. The instructor will monitor and track your progress throughout the class. LVS Online offers many wonderful learning tools to help you get the most out of your online course, including an online portfolio service that manages all your course registrations, certificate of completion option, a class discussion board to interact with your instructor and fellow classmates, free hosting account, and a student upload area. LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel products at a significant savings. Follow this link for details. LVS students are eligible to receive software and hardware at a discount. Follow this link for details. Students are also eligible take advantage of special offers made available specifically for LVS by famous software developers such as Andromeda, AV Bros, Extensis, Harry Heim, namesuppressed, Nik Multimedia, and Ulead. Details are provided in the classinfo link found in the confirmation of registration. Show off your LVS Online spirit with an item from the LVS Store Visit the LVS Blog for updates. If you would like to receive more information regarding this course, click on the "Contact Us" link in the Information section and we'll try to answer any of your questions within the day.

Course Requirements

Corel Painter IX.5, X, or 11 installed on your system. NOTE: LVS is a Corel Training Partner. Enrolled LVS students are eligible to purchase Corel products directly from Corel Education Store at a substantial savings! Enter coupon code CRL10LVS when checking out to get an additional 10% discount on all Corel products! There will be Zip files provided to complete many of the weekly exercises. WinZip, PKZip, Windows Compression or a similar program is required to unzip these files. Here are a couple free tutorials available at LVS which may be helpful to you: Winzip Tutorial Here Windows Compression Students must have a working knowledge of their operating system, especially: How to create and name new folders How to locate files How to open and save files Here are a few free tutorials available at LVS which may be helpful to you: PC Users: Free Vista Class Free Windows Class Directory Structure Tutorial Mac Users: Basic Computer File Systems Tutorial (Mac) Certificate Students: Homework must be reviewed by the instructor in order to earn a certificate. Students have the option of using either the Student Upload Area or free web hosting made available for LVS students. Details are provided in the classroom. If you prefer to use your own web space, you must know how to upload your files to a server. Free tutorials are available: Basic HTML Page WS_FTP SmartFTP All lessons are available in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view/print the lessons. Plan to devote 3 - 4 hours per week on the lesson and assignment. Course Recommendation Painter has been optimized to integrate seamlessly with a Graphics (pressure sensitive) tablet such as the inexpensive Wacom Bamboo, or the multi-featured Wacom Intuos. Although you can use the program with a mouse, you will find many of the features to be most effective with a tablet. You may want to consider buying one at some point in time. There is initially a bit of a learning curve, but once you begin to use the tablet and pen in conjunction with Painter (and many other programs) you will be both amazed and excited by how real the painting and drawing effects seem as you work. Check out our academic resellers for discounts on hardware.

Course Prerequisites

See #3 above

Course Syllabus

Lesson 1 The Interface-Part 1: An overview of the most important interface parts The Menu Bar The Toolbox The Brush Selector Bar The Colors Palette The Layer Palette The Property Bar Shortcut Keys Why you should learn them Where to find lists of all the Program Shortcut Keys Grain settings An overview of paper grain Paper grains exercise Homework Assignment: A learning exercise Paint an apple sketch using the Pastels, and other brushes Preserving your original file Brush explorations Pastels Category Distortion Category/Grainy Mover Photo Category/Add Grain Lesson 2 Setting Painter preferences: How and why to adjust the preferences Some customizing: The tip of the iceberg Creating and customizing workspaces Creating and customizing Palettes Custom Layouts The Brush Selector Bar-a neat little trick: Accessing other views of the brushes Zooming for detail Homework Assignment: A learning exercise Draw and paint a simple pear, step by step while acquainting yourself with some of the Painter tools. Opening a new document Selecting and using a Pencil Selecting and using a Brush Choosing and changing colors Adjusting Brush properties Resetting your Brush Lesson 3 Document Window: An in depth look at the document window and it's tools Tracing paper, grid, color correction, and impasto icons Draw, navigation, and scale icons Scroll bars Tools: Grabber, Composition tools, Crop tool Grabber Composition tools Divine Proportion-what is it? Layout grid What is it? Creating your own Using the layout grid Crop tool Freehand crop Aspect Ratio crop Using the Info Palette with the crop tool Square crop Cloning Part 1: Quick Clone What is a clone? Quick Clone exercise Lesson 4 Layout Tools Rulers Guides Grid Resizing A. Resizing images B. Resizing the canvas Selection tools Rectangle Circle Freehand Magic Wand Paint Bucket Cloning Part 2: Standard cloning + cloning with non-clone brushes Clone an image To Duplicate an image To create a cloned image Exercise part 1: Cloning with standard brushes (Clone Color Button) Exercise part 2: Embellishing a cloned image Lesson 5 COLOR The Color Mixer palette Using the mixer Saving your own mixer The Color Sets palette - creating, saving and using color sets From Mixer From Canvas From Photos Cloning Part 3 Tracing by cloning Trace, then paint a waterlily Lesson 6 Intro to Layers What is a Layer Anatomy of the Layers palette Trace and paint using layers Creating a new layer Pasting an image as a layer Naming layers and adding notations Changing layer hierarchy Using a layer to trace Painting on different layers Odd Things Review Resources What's next?

Course Excerpt

LESSON 1 Corel Painter I - The Journey Begins Welcome to Lesson 1 of Painter I - The Journey Begins. I gave the class that name because once you start using Corel Painter, you will have begun on a never-ending journey, and I'm so happy to be the one to start you off and wish you Bon Voyage! I hope you have read the Welcome Page. There is a lot of information included there which will help clarify how to post your homework, and what to expect from this class. If you haven't read it yet, please take a few moments to do so. Painter is a wonderful, and exciting program. It's also extremely complex and there is much to cover in these lessons. So without further ado....let's begin! The Welcome Book When you initially open the program, the first thing you will see is the welcome book. This contains several tabs with information, resources, and samples of work done by professional artists who use Painter. Continued... Please note: Lessons provide step-by-step instructions with detailed screen captures.

Course Goals

At the end of 6 weeks, students will understand the basics of creating a document in Painter and drawing or painting their very first digital image. They will have learned how to customize parts of the program, how to use many of the basic tools, how to crop and save documents, how to use some of the many brushes, and much, much, more.

Course Reviews

Duncan Eagleson: "Painter I: the Journey Begins is a good introduction to this powerful program. Elaina's lessons are clear and lucid, her examples and exercises well designed to demonstrate the operation of the various tools. The class is geared to provide for both the experienced user of other graphics programs and complete newbies, and she is patient with the beginner's questions as well as the more advanced students' eagerness to lurch ahead of the lessons." "Programs like Painter frequently have a rather steep learning curve, and are very difficult to master through self-study and trial & error (the way I first learned CorelDraw lo these many years ago). I've had Painter installed for a while now, and have made little progress with it, I kept meaning to allocating the time to really study the manual and experiment with the program, but never got around to it. This course made a perfect introduction, and at a real bargain price." "I can heartily recomend this class to anyone who wants a door into using Corel Painter. With what I got from this class, in combination with my general familiarity with graphics programs (Photoshop, CorelDraw, Photopaint), I could probably go on to use Painter pretty effectively in my usual workflow (I'm a professional illustrator). But I'll be signing up for the second class series anyway. I'm getting a guided tour of the program for less than the price of most books on the subject, and you can't beat that with a stick!" More... Duncan's websites: http://eaglesondesign.com/ http://railwalkercomics.com http://maskmaker.com