Here’s the Quick Fix

If you’re experiencing the same problem as me, the fix is to disable the menu strip at the top of the tablet’s work area.

• Open the Wacom Tablet Properties application from your start menu (or from the Control Panel).
• Select Functions from the Tool panel.
• Select Tablet Menu from the tabbed interface.
• For each of the 18 Tablet Menu Buttons, choose Disabled as the function.
• Enjoy using your tablet without the strange mouse cursor bug.

Wacom Tablet Properties application – aka – Wacom Driver Preferences

What about Intuos 3 and Intuos 4?

Other tablets in the Intuos line are apparently affected by this bug as well. Some in the Wacom forums have suggested that tablet buttons, touch strips and the new touch ring may cause the bug to appear as well. The updated driver released a few days ago may help solve the issue, but may not. I didn’t dig any further after fixing my own problem.

If you are affected and can’t find a fix, to change your mouse cursor back to the normal size, open the Mouse settings dialog from the Control Panel (simply called Mouse), select the Pointers tab and click the OK button to reset to your normal cursor theme.

Are there other solutions out there?

If any of you have any other solutions to the issue, or notice that the updated driver fixes the issue, add a comment to let everyone know.

From the outside, not much has changed between this version and the last, but there were a couple of very minor bugs fixed:

• Update install ran twice during the update process in earlier versions (this caused updates to take twice as long). During the next update cycle, the update will install only one time.
• The RSS panel at the bottom of the window loaded with a lot of filler text while waiting on to see if you had an active internet connection. That clutter has been removed. As a result, it takes the RSS panel a little while longer to populate, but at least you don’t see overlapping text while waiting.

You’ll also notice the large banner for painterLab.com (which is still in the works, but you may subscribe and know exactly when it launches!) has been removed and replaced with sponsor banners. Please visit and support the sponsors as they are helping to keep the Installer portion of the Brush Manager free for everyone and also supporting future developments. If you’d like to support development directly, you may also donate to the project with PayPal.

Also, I’d like to give a quick thanks to everyone for the kind words about the Brush Manager, here, in the forums and privately. Hope you all continue to enjoy it – things will only get better!

Corel Painter 11 box.
© 2009, Corel Corporation.

The wait is over – Corel® Painter™ 11 is here – that’s right 11, not X1! Packed with new features and increased functionality, this is going to be the best version of Painter yet. The new features look great – and it looks like a lot of user-submitted feature requests from over at the Painter Factory community site were included. See – our feedback is important. Congratulations to the Painter Team on the release!

Now onto the stuff everybody wants to hear about:

What’s New?

• Brushes – Adding to the already rich set of brushes available to digital painters, Painter 11 introduces RealBristle™ Dry Media, which includes Rendering Markers, new dynamic Pens and Pencils and Chalk that respond to the tilt of your Wacom stylus!
• Selection Tools – The selection tools of Painter have been improved with a new Polygonal mode for the Lasso tool and improvements to the Magic Wand and other selection methods.
• Color Management – Color management in Painter just got easier. Manage your colors in a familiar dialog window with clearly labeled dropdowns. Get color management right the first time, every time! There is also improved color management support between Painter and Photoshop.
• Colors Wheel & The Mixer – Both the color wheel and the mixer palettes are completely resizable. If the color wheel is too small for your tastes, just make it bigger – same goes for the Mixer – mix more colors at once.
• Transformation Controls – Resize, rotate, move and skew layers quickly with the new Layer Transform tools. No more jumping to Photoshop to resize or adjust a layer only to hop back into Painter to continue painting.
• PNG Image Support – Save your Painter creations as lossless PNG files to share. Also allows opening PNG images to composite into your paintings.
• Performance – Painter 11 is the fastest version of Painter yet with an up to 30% gain in performance for brushes from Painter X.1.
• Of course, I haven’t gone over everything. There is more sprinkled throughout the whole program, but I’ll leave it up you all of you to find the goodies. Go check the Painter 11 page at Corel for more information.

Where to get it?

• ESD (Electronic Software Download) versions and trial versions will be available directly from Corel on February 25, 2009.
• Preorders for the boxed version are also being accepted and are set to begin shipping on March 18, 2009.

Your Thoughts

What feature (or features) are you most excited about in Painter 11 – what do you look forward to using the most? Leave a comment – Corel pops in for a visit every once in a while.

Marilyn opened a new group on Flikr a couple of months ago to accompany her upcoming book. In the discussions for the group, Marilyn posted a question about using software aside from Corel Painter X to “paint.” In my answer to the question, I added After Effects CS3 into the mix of everyone else’s suggestions because I actually have used it in still paintings before!

Those of you who know what After Effects is may be a little confused, but I’ll get into the “why” in a minute. For those who may not know, After Effects is a motion graphics and video creation/editing/compositing application produced by Adobe. Chances are, if you watch movies and TV, you’ve seen the power of After Effects for film effects.

How does it apply to still images and painting?

Well, what is video? Still frames played together in succession. To “paint” with After Effects, all you have to do is create a composition with any desired effects and render a single still frame that matches the “vision” of the final piece.

Back to Marilyn’s group, coincidentally, I posted an image to my Flikr account (same image as above) where I used After Effects for part of the post-processing, and it is the one image Marilyn commented on! The light rays were created in After Effects using a combination of effects from both standard features and a couple of plugins, composited on top of my original, full resolution painting.

Here it is in animated (and exaggerated) form.

Have any of you ever used an application that wasn’t meant specifically for creating still-images to help in creating you own digital art?

Speed paintings generally do not involve a beginning sketch. Instead the artist lays out block and shapes of color to begin to establish the basic composition, values and volume.

Playing with the concept, I created this painting in Photoshop CS3 [though the speed part isn’t quite there – it took around 3 hours to get to this point]. I plan to keep working with the process in hopes that it will help speed up my normal painting process as well [not to mention that these are just fun to do]. Some of the steps and a mini-tutorial for this painting are after the jump.

The first step involved blocking in a light background color on top of a dark digital canvas. During this step, I left dark areas for the tree trunks, the ground plane and the tree canopy. After the basic background chunks were in place, I detailed the trees a little by adding branches and some texture in the canopy and also some grass on the ground.

After the first step, all of the trees were on the same visual plane and had no depth or volume. The next steps involved pushing the trees into different levels of the background and establishing various mid-planes to give the painting a feeling of depth. Notice the use of atmospheric perspective to push the trees back. The result gives emphasis to the foreground.

More detailing and adding in more elements to the image. I also chose to lessen the atmospheric perspective to make the scene appear less foggy and also added another visual plane with the fountain in the background.

A quick contrast and brightness adjustment gives the scene a glowing quality. Further detailing is added with carious brushes to bring in a little texture and some highlights in the fountain’s plane to show a break in the tree canopy. Also added yet another background plane behind the fountain to push the depth of the painting even more.

After more time adding in details, highlights, a little blending I decided to call it quits. I also added a person standing on the fountain’s platform to give the scene a sense of scale. You can barely see her, but she is on the right hand side of the fountain in the painting. Since she is so small, the fountain appears to be HUGE [and it is – even though the perspective isn’t accurate].

The “finished” painting still has a rough feel to it, which is a look I enjoy in paintings of this variety because the final painting shows some of the process taken to get to the final stage. Brush strokes aren’t finely blended in and the whole piece takes on a very organic feel.

Here’s a crop of the final [full size on click]:

Three Speed Painting Tips:

• Work in a zoomed out view. Zooming in causes you to focus in on details which aren’t always needed to to establish the illusions necessary to convey the piece.
• Like with all painting, use the largest brush possible for the area you’re painting. The final result will feel more natural. Reserve the small brushes for detail painting.
• Establish main values and planes quickly in the beginning. This will make the rest of the painting process easier because you won’t have to change values on more detailed areas of the later in the process if there is an error.

© 2008 · Christopher W. Price & Studio|chris

© 2007 · Studio|chris

Free offer expires December 15, 2007.

© 2007 · Christopher W. Price & Studio|chris

© 2007 · Christopher W. Price & Studio|chris

Issue 10 of the Official Corel Painter Magazine is up for sale on their website today! Grab yours before they’re gone. For those of you who may have missed the sneak peek for this Issue’s “Art Class (Q&A)” section, go check it out!

I’ll also have a sneak peek for Issue 11 posted very soon. Keep your eyes on this space!