Blade Walker 20220121

More or less back to drawing basics. Not completely because need to learn new software same time. This week I did mouth drawing part of face drawing course. Wanted to draw mouths for this picture. Got idea from famous Blade Runner 2049 scene. Didn’t want to do it exactly. This is first drawing I tried idea with thumbnails before started drafting. Moving to Clip Studio Paint gave lot of tutorials showing correct workflow. With Corel Painter I had to figure it out myself.

All those tutorials made change easy. I could probably have done everything I did for this drawing In Painter but I wouldn’t have know how to do half of the things. Still need to learn brushes and getting used to how everything works in Clip Studio but I already know more how to use it than I did Painter. Learning new brushes is small price to pay for all the free tutorials Clip Studio Paint has.

Two weeks ago I told I had problems with Loomis head. Managed to figure out what it was. Now I get almost right sized heads from start. It didn’t took this long. I had more to talk about last week. Heads still have issues but at least I start the process correctly now.

Bye bye Corel

It is not me. It is you. I got Corel Painter because I knew the brand and didn’t want Adobe CC’s subscription model. Then got some other Corel products from sale. I remembered Corel to be top brand but that was long time ago. Corel’s customers are probably people like me who knew when they were on top long time ago. It is really hard to run into Corel’s products online unless you look for them. Yes there are adds but nobody seem to use them. It is hard to find tutorials for them. If someone mentions software they use or makes generic tutorials you don’t hear Corel or see their products.

This is a issue if you use Corel products. I have tried to find good Corel Painter tutorials. There is one guy who makes them and his paid courses are quite expensive because he doesn’t have any competition. Painter has huge learning curve and there are no good tutorials. I got one course from that one guy which went through everything on Corel Painter but it didn’t help me to use the tools. I learned how to change everything but didn’t learn how or why to use something.

Second issue with Corel is their aggressive marketing. If you bought cheaper version of products you can’t turn all marketing options off. You get bombarded with adds without option to opt out. More expensive version give you more options but you still get reminders of sales. Don’t remember which options I selected on Painter. I still got pop-ups during sale periods. I guess they know default brushes are not sufficient.

I tried to find brush technology to learn. Non of them had all brushes I wanted as default. You think you just buy those missing brushes. Well. How do you find them? I don’t know. I tried to find liquid ink brushes with no success. Some brush technologies require special layers. You can’t mix all technologies on same layer. This makes things complicated. Might give more realistic results but unless you are willing to spend time creating new brushes or spend time on store searching correct brush it is huge limitation.

Painter is not only Corel product with limitations which prevent you to do what you want. For example AfterShot Pro don’t let you change color temperature if you shot jpeg. You can do that only with raw files. Last straw was weird eraser bug on Painter. I tried to find eraser which worked like Clip Studio Paint’s eraser. I couldn’t find one but what I got was bug that defaulted eraser I didn’t want. Had to change eraser every time I opened Painter. Good luck trying to find instructions how to fix it. There are no tutorials.

Clip Studio Paint started to look interesting. Then I saw this. (If there is problem seeing the video use direct link)

You can’t find Corel Painter tutorial like this. I don’t know what of this Corel Painter can do. After watching this I know how to do this in Clip Studio Paint. After getting course he mentions from Udemy and watching Youtube tutorials for few evenings I know more about how to use Clip Studio Paint than I know how to use Corel Painter after taking quite expensive course and using it for some time.

There was one thing I didn’t like about Clip Studio Paint. It is default pencil. Pencil is my most used brush in Painter. Some of default brushes aren’t that good. Painter comes with much better selection even when it is quite limited if you want to use only one brush technology. Painter has three watercolor brush technologies which doesn’t work that well together. I think two of those can be put to same layer. But they don’t look good together. Clip Studio Paint’s brushes work on same layer. Maybe the result isn’t as realistic as in Painter.

Default brushes are not issue because you can get new ones. There are good free ones but my suggestion is you get DAUB Super Bundle. I have tested only few of the brushes in it. It is worth the price even if it didn’t have any other brushes. It has over 500 tools. Not sure what counts as tools but there are enough good brushes. DAUB brushes get you closer to Painter than default brushes. For the price super bundle is pretty much must buy for Clip Studio Paint users. DAUB brushes took away any reason to still use Painter. It has pencils I like as much or more than Painter’s pencils. Only thing is to decide which ones to have on Clip Studio Paint.

Probably Painter still looks more realistic and give you finer control on brushes. But Clip Studio Paint feels like it is designed by someone who actually uses it. You have things like color history. I have wanted that so much. I use color jitter. It makes harder to get same color I used before. I could use color set to save colors but that is more work. Clip Studio Paint has color sets but you don’t need them to save current pictures colors unless you want to save the colors for future use. There are tons of similar features which makes everything easier.

After only few days with Clip Studio Paint I understand why I hear about Clip Studio Paint but not Corel Painter. Clip Studio Paint Pro costs only fraction of Corel Painter. I got Clip Studio Paint Pro, DAUB Mega Bundle and three paid online courses for less than half of what comprehensive Corel Painter course costs. Clip Studio Paint is so much better for what I want to do I paid to move away from Painter. No wonder nobody casually mentions Corel Painter. I know Corel Painter is better if you specifically want what it does better than alternatives. But is it worth the money and less online courses and tutorials? Painter can probably do some things why I moved to Clip Studio Paint but I can’t find tutorials of them or online courses teaching them.

Title say bye bye Corel. I move away from other Corel products too. Got Affinity suite from sale some time ago when I tried to learn graphic design. Can’t say much about the suite. Much cheaper than Adobe or Corel alternatives. On quick check Affinity Photo suits better for what I want than Corel AfterShot and Paintshop Pro. It has everything in one application.

It is long post but few words about that picture above. I have wanted to do something with digital watercolors. With Corel Painter I never got past testing the brushes. Had no idea what I should do. Couple days after installing Clip Studio Paint I saw video below. It gave me enough information to get started. Picture above is first time I tried to do something with digital watercolors. Not knowing workflow which works for me. Only knowing some basics. Using software I installed couple days before. Next time I know to what to do differently to get better results. But that is not the point. I never got to this point with Corel Painter because there are not enough tutorials online.