PhotoArt training for Painter

[Andrew B.]

Jeremy Sutton developed a DVD-based course on how to use Painter to convert photos to paintings. And judging from the blurb, it appears to deal with portraits. I am surprised that I completely forgot about this until now, but maybe I read about it before I got interested in PhotoArt.

Anyway, I have not viewed this course, and I cannot vouch for the quality of his photoart techniques. But I can vouch Jeremy's skill as an instructor. You can read about his course here.

BTW, I searched for a good discount price and found one here, but only until the end of August, 2003.

[roger_ele]

I have taken a one day course from Jeremy and it was excellent. I have the DVD and have gone through a little of it and it is very good, it was the same as the course so I got bored and distracted. Now that I am reminded I will put it on and get a refresher ... and see if there is anything deeper in that wasn't covered in the class.

Roger

[Andrew B.]

I have his Total Painter tapes. Even though these are for an earlier version, I was very happy with the instruction. And if I hadn't seen these tapes, I would have overlooked some of Painter's useful features. But in terms of it being a photoart class, there was only one technique on the tapes that I would consider photoart.

But the four DVD set looks to be all photoart. IOW, how to start with a photo and translate it into a natural media look. I went ahead and ordered it, and I guess I'll find out if the techniques work.

[DannyRaphael]

In preparation for a Painter class I'll be taking in a couple weeks to be taught by Karen Sperling, I'm in the process of plowing through four CDs she's put together (one is a "Painter 8 Intro") each of which describes various photo-art techniques.

www.ArtistryMag.com

Although somewhere in each tutorial she casually mentions that artistic skills for creating photo-based art using Painter can be "learned," this isn't trivial stuff given my stick-figure drawing abilities. So far, very interesting. Techniques are presented not only from the "how to" perspective, but she includes insights from an artist's perspective as well. They are giving me a head start using Painter for this purpose that I would never have gotten by just reading the User Guide.

[Andrew B.]

Did you work though the tutorial called "Artistry Watercolor Techniques in Painter for Artists and Photographers?" If so, what do you think?

[DannyRaphael]

I've got that one and, until now, had only taken a quick scan of the 20 page .pdf. If you take out the intro, advertising and fluff, there's 17 pages of "content."

Here's an overview, but since I've not actually tried it out, I can't comment yet from that perspective.

This two-tutorial CD is based on a method described (in a video) by Birgit O'Connor. Karen (literally) translatesd the "real" watercolor steps into Painter steps to achieve nearly identical results.

Tutorial 1:
* A walkthru of the O'Connor method, using the same photo as a basis as Birgit used for her WC. One image (a seashore with mountain BG and pretty sky) is used in the tutorial.
* Note: This tutorial (about 3/4 of the .pdf) is based on "from scratch" methods. No cloning whatsoever. Strokes, blending methods, techniques, brush selection.
* There are numerous images illustrating snapshots of the "image in progress."

Tutorial 2:
* Describes how to apply the methods/techniques described in tutorial 1 to the File > Clone, select all/delete, turn on tracing paper method. A different base image is used.

Karen's tutorial style take a little getting used to. Rather than a nice clean linear list of 1-2-3 steps, the text reminds me of a transcript of tape recorded thoughts. She includes comments on art theory and the like, which is educational to someone like me with zero background in that sort of thing.

The technical detail is accurate, complete and consistently formatted when it comes to describing menu choices or specific brush variants and the like. Mac and Win keyboard shortcuts are provided throughout.

Hope this helps a little...
~Danny~

[Andrew B.]

Thanks, Danny. That's a very good overview of what's there.