Lesson 1 - All About Brushes (Part 1)

In this lecture, I will introduce you to the strength of Painter: brushes. I will discuss how to use the brush creator, basic and specific brushes, using large and small brush strokes, using hotkeys, setting up a brush library, etc. A lot of stuff; when we say "all about brushes", we mean "ALL about brushes"! For your assignment, you will be asked to use these basic tools to paint a person in black and white and create your own black and white character painting.

Lesson 2 - All About Brushes (Part 2)

In this lesson, I will talk about value studies. We will work from dark to light, examine cast drawings and subtle value changes, and I will explain percentages of value. You will be asked to paint a furry creature in black and white and create a furry creature painting of your own.

Lesson 3 - Textures

Now, we'll move on to different surface textures: how do we portray various materials in Painter, such as fur, wood, metal, etc.? How do we utilize patterns in creating our textures while keeping the material consistent? For your assignment, you will paint a shiny character in black and white and come up with a black and white shiny character of your own.

Lesson 4 - Color

In this lecture, we will look at color sets, palettes, and how to use the mixer to set up a basic palette and blends. I will talk about my general approach to color, the color "curve" and how to recognize it. For your assignment, you will do color sketches for the black and white characters from Lecture 1.

Lesson 5 - Painting Line Sketch

This lesson will cover color selection tools, transparency, and picking up underlying color. I will demonstrate with an existing sketch and adding color to it. For your assignment, you will do color sketches for your creature from Lecture 2.

Lesson 6 - Alla Prima

We will dive right into color in this lecture. We will examine how to build up values, working from dark to light. You will practice these techniques by doing color sketches of the shiny characters from Lecture 3.

Lesson 7 - Lighting

In this lecture, I will discuss my methods for applying lighting. I will reveal my "cheats" using lights and other effects, and how to maintain focus. For your assignment, you will add realistic lighting to your painting of the character from Lecture 1.

Lesson 8 - Details and Edges

This lesson will teach you how to cover your digital "tracks" by applying different blending and glazing techniques. The idea of lost and found edges, so the painting has some variation of detail. I'll also discuss the concept of visual "rest areas". For your assignment, you will apply these concepts to your character painting from your Lecture 2 color sketch.

Lesson 9 - Finishing

In this final lecture, we will add the finishing touches and prep the final image. I will cover how to apply different layer types to visually pull the image together and apply all of those last little tweaks to get your painting finalized. For your assignment, you will take your character painting from Lecture 3 to a finished state.