Art Photography – How to Create an Oil Painting from a Photo with Corel Painter

Today we’re talking Art Photography as Bob Nolin from Digital Image Magazine shares some tips on creating an oil painting effect from a photo.

Imagine you had a magic paint brush, and when you painted with it on a blank canvas, it changed colors for you all by itself. You wouldn’t have to try to mix colors, or worry about drawing outside the lines. The magic brush would do all the hard work for you. It would allow you to become the artist you had always dreamed of being.

Well, there really is such a magic brush, and it’s called Corel Painter.

Today we’re going to create an oil painting, step by step, with Painter. Estimated time: one hour. A Wacom or other digital tablet is highly recommended.

How to Create an Oil Painting from a Photo with Corel Painter

The magic brush works by cloning (copying) color from a source photo to a target canvas (document). All you have to do to enable cloning is to open an image file (a JPG or a Photoshop file will work), and then go File > Clone. This creates an exact copy of the original file, and sets up the magic link between source and target. You could begin painting on this copy right away, which would be similar to the way traditional photo painters work with oils on a canvas-mounted photograph. But we’re going to start with a blank canvas, and pull color onto it from the original photo.

To do that, go Select > All, then Edit > Clear. The blank canvas is still linked to the original file. To verify this, go File > Clone Source, and you should see a check mark next to your original file name. If not, just go ahead and click on it to select it as the clone source.

Just a quick aside: File > Quick Clone does the same thing (Clone, select all, clear) in one click.

Here is our original image. (Image courtesy Photography on the Run.)

We’ll turn on the tracing paper so we can see the original image. In the upper right of your blank canvas, look for a group of icons. Click on the top one to turn tracing paper on. Click on it and Hold, and the tracing paper settings flyout appears. Try various percentages, and see what works best for you.

In the brush selector, in the Cloners category, choose Wet Oils Cloner 10. Set the Opacity to 15%, and the Resat value to about 15% also. Use a fairly wide brush, 30 pixels or so. Now just start painting, without being careful at all. You’re just blocking in color at this point, and lots of white paper will show through. Turn the tracing paper on and off occasionally so you can see exactly what you have on the canvas. Here’s what it looks like about half-way through the blocking-in process:

Here’s what it looks like when the blocking is complete, with the tracing paper turned off. Pretty gruesome, eh? Don’t worry, it’s about to get a lot better.

Once you’ve got the image blocked in, as above, turn off the tracing paper, so you can see what’s really on the canvas. Now we’re going to switch to the Oils category, and choose the Opaque Bristle Spray brush. (These brushes, by the way, are just the ones I used. Other brushes will work just as well, but give you a different look. Feel free to experiment and play!)

Nearly any brush in Painter can be used as a cloner, not just the ones named Cloner. To use a brush as a cloner, make sure the clone color toggle is turned on (see below). It looks like the “rubber stamp” icon in Photoshop. When it’s turned on, the color wheel will look “greyed out.”

With your Opaque Bristle Spray brush selected, turn down the Opacity quite a bit, to 20% or less. Resat (which controls how much paint is “pulled” from the source image) should be about 20%, too. Make sure the Bleed percentage is less than the Resat setting. Now zoom in a bit (Window > Zoom or Control/Command + ) and begin using short strokes to begin building detail. Try to keep moving around — don’t stay in one area too long. Vary the brush size as needed. Use a wider brush size for the cheeks, for example, and narrow it down to paint the eyes. Take your time with this part, as this is the real meat of the exercise.

Here’s what our painting looks like about halfway through. The left side (our left) is more complete at this point.

And here’s the completed painting. Note how the face has the most detail, especially the eyes. Remember: your goal is to create a painting, not a photograph, so don’t worry about recreating every single detail. Leave it loose and keep moving around.

That’s all there is to it! I hope you’ll give Corel Painter a try, and free the artist inside you. You’ll be amazed at what you can do with the help of the magic brush!