Digital Painting Fundamentals with Corel Painter 12

Although I have used Paint Shop Pro for years, I was daunted by Painter 12. The CD comes with a 112 page help guide, but it wasn't enough to cheer me on the way to learning cool art techniques. "Digital Painting Fundamentals" will hold your hand and with baby steps you progress from one technique to the next. Unless you are well grounded in digital art techniques you can't simply plunge into the deep end and swim. Other artists, especially those well-versed with Photoshop, may find this how-to book elementary, but for me it was just what the doctor ordered. You learn how to use the individual brushes, pens and paints in hands - on exercises, in hands - on experiences. You set the pace. Painter is very complicated and even with the book right in front of my nose, I creep along and often it takes me a while to locate the menu item author Draws is talking about."Digital Painting Fundamentals" is not for the dilettante but for the artist who is willing to put in a lot of time to learn this craft. Right away I was flummoxed by the Wacom Pen since I had never heard of such an item. With a Wacom pen and an accompanying tablet the artist is able to draw directly onto the tablet and the strokes will imitate many different brushes and pens, all of which you control. I feel that to work well using this book I will have to get the pen several of which are offered on Amazon.Author-artist Draws will propel you along in a breezy non-bookish way, and I'm confident I'll become a Wacom expert somewhere down the road as well as a digital art creator. But bear in mind that the purchase of a Wacom pen which you use instead of trying to draw with your mouse is a necessity for performing most of the exercises in the book.If you're a neophyte to digital art this book is really a Bible for mastering Painter 12. "Fundamentals" is printed on thick shiny paper, the illustrations are beautiful and clear. The tone of the book is breezy and enthusiastic and the enthusiasm is catching. You'll want to get going!P.S. Rhoda (Grossman) Draws is a character as well as being a very accomplished digital artist. If you run "Rhoda Draws" through Google, you'll find many pictures of her and some interesting biographical notes.P.P.S Corel has wonderful support by phone or email. I had mistakenly anchored my tool menu on the wrong side of the canvas (duh) and they cheerfully told me how to move it.

This book is less about learning to use Corel Painter 12's software and more about learning how to draw and paint with digital media. I have Ms. Grossman Draws previous edition about working with Painter X and I must say this is a step up for me. That book had us drawing and painting women's shoes (which I have, confessedly) absolutely no interest in. There is more diversity in the subjects that one uses in the lessons; the only thing I didn't particularly care for is having to go to the web and download the files for the exercises instead of having them available on a CD as in previous editions. If you are a veteran artist who wants to learn all the ins and outs of the Painter 12 software and all it's myriad tools, then this book is not for you. I might as well add at this point, if you are a photographer who wants to learn the ins and outs of photo painting--then I don't believe that this book will meet your needs either--the subject is touched upon, but it is definitely not a photo painting book. If you want to learn to draw and paint with digital media and learn the basic rules of drawing and painting I reccomend it highly. A lot of things are stuff I did in high school art class, but to be honest never did them well, so I can definitely benefit from reviewing the basics. My best advice, if you are uncertain, is to download the sample chapter and browse the "Look Inside This Book" option and you'll get a better idea whether it is suited to what you want to learn. I believe most of the negative reviews to be read on Amazon.com regarding this book are the result of people not being aware of what they were getting. If you really want to learn all about the software you'd be best off reading the User's Guide that comes with Painter 12 or watching some of the many video tutorials available on the subject.

This is a good effort to provide a guide for the person that is needing the fundamentals. It works well as a supplement to the many Corel Painter12 online tutorials. Nice bold well laid out text and illustrations are easy to read and comprehend. It fills in the dots between a lot of points that are made in the rapid paced tutorials. The book often allows one to see the information on the tutorial screens much more accurately allowing it to be absorbed at a much slower rate. A little wordy in places but all in all I was well pleased with the purchase.

The content is good, but the lack of a CD makes doing the lessons an annoyance...Start the lesson, page back to see which chapter you are in, search the first part of the book to find the website that has the lesson files, search the site for the files needed for a lesson, download and unzip the file, import the palette. Could have been a lot easier. Too much time wasted searching. It takes time away from learning Painter.

The author is probably the wittiest author in Digital Programming Land without turning your attention away from the subject matter. Given the small space she got for taming Painter 12 she somehow manages to give you enough explanation for the most important and basic details of the application program, including the use of Intuos tablets. I am not debating the otherwise excellent Corel Corporation's decision about the small size of the book. Compared to the giant CorelDraw and the somewhat smaller Corel Paint shop Pro books Painter 12 is Ms. Puniverse. I guess it is the result of careful financial consideration and as such I just have to accept it. At the final end Ms. Grossman Draws' book is excellent.

Kurz und knackig, trotzdem umfassend und zur Eigeninitiative anregend! Kein selbstgefälliges Gelaber und nachvollziehbare Beispiele (Vorlagen auf der Homepage des Verlages/Autorin).

Much better than the manual on showing how to setup Painter for use and then gives loads of tips on getting the best out of a very complex and sometimes buggy programme. Excellent colour pictures show just what be achieved using this unique software.The book is probably more suited to artists using the programme than for photographers hoping to turn snaps into artistic masterpieces

Very nice

Dieses Werk hat mir leider nicht so gut gefallen. Möglicherweise liegt das an mir, aber ich komme damit leider nicht gut zurecht. Die Abbildungen sind nach meinem Geschmack ein wenig lieblos gestaltet und entsprechen nicht dem, was ich in der digitalen Szene gewöhnt bin und sie sind mir leider keine Hilfe. Die wichtigen Kapitel wie Kaleidoskop sind faktisch nicht vorhanden. Ich hatte mir erheblich mehr erwartet, vor allem weil die ersten Seiten noch recht gut sind. Ich persönlich würde es nicht mehr kaufen. Diese Rezension spiegelt meine private Meinung wider und ist nicht allgemeingültig.