Paint in a sandbox

So, I think I may have some new additions to my toolbox in Painter.

A bit of history: if you’ve been able to sit in while I draw, you probably have some idea as to what subtools I use. For the rest of us, I use the Cover Pencil for line art, Acrylic detail and 10/20/30px rounds (all opaques) for base color, and Acrylic 10/20/30px drybrush for blending. A very, very limited selection, yes, but it’s what I’ve been using since I jumped on the Painter bandwagon (back in… 7, I think).

I decided to go wander into other subtools today– I wasn’t really out to draw anything, just to see what they could do. And I found some things I like!


Thick oils. OOOH.
In particular, I like the Thick Wet Oils since they’re not as… rough-looking. As you can see, if you pile up on an area, it really does pile up like with actual paint… inversely, you cannot easily erase this kind of paint, so I’d have to do any oil stuff on separate layers if I’m going super-thick. Seriously, try to erase piled-up oil with the normal eraser subtool… all you wipe out is the color. The “body” itself stays.

Fine feathering oil looks fun, too. It’s more or less the Oil version of Acrylic’s drybrushes, just a wee bit softer. It also factors in the underlying color a bit, so I may reserve this for backgrounds.

But Oil Pastel… this is gold. Normal oil pastels are pretty solid… and like acrylic opaques, don’t really blend well. Could be useful for laying down the base color for character/object layers. (Same could be said for Chunky Oil Pastel.)
Soft and Variable are where it gets fun. Soft has some blending; again, it takes the underlying color into account (in this case, white, then the other blues) but this time they quickly settle in and start singing on their own. Variable is the OMFG subtool– definitely factors in underlying colors and quickly transitions, but it also has a bit of variance in the purity, introducing a bit of random-yet-plausible to the mix.
Soft and Variable, if used by themselves, would be better suited for background, but I think some awesomesauce (ESPECIALLY with Variable) could ensue if coupled with Normal/Chunky. HMM.

Thick Wet Oil, Fine Feathering Oil and all four Oil Pastels will likely become permanent additions to my toolbox. I need to use them in an actual ramen piece to see how well they play with acrylics (if at all… oils and acrylics don’t quite like each other in real space but in Painter you get to break the rules to a point). Maybe it’s color bias from the media samples, but it’d be fun to see how the Maximillian renders with oil pastels as opposed to the usual acrylic-and-drybrush combo. :O Perhaps I should do a side-by-side comparison… oil pastels vs. acrylic?

In other news, PIZZA WEDNESDAY. Who will win today’s brawl? :O

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