Karen Sperling’s Blog

I’ve been a photographer all my life, but it’s only recently that I’ve been offering my services for portrait photography.
As a result, I have always invited other portrait photographers to submit photos for me to turn into paintings for tutorials in my Corel Painter books, DVD’s, classes and tutorials.
I’m always looking for new photos to paint, and you’re invited to submit photos for me to consider for tutorials!

Here’s a FAQ about submitting photos to be turned into paintings for Corel Painter tutorials:
Q. What kind of photos are you looking for?
A. Portraits of any subject.
Q. Do I have to be a professional photographer to submit a photo?
A. No. My tutorials are for professional photographers and hobbyists, and I welcome any portrait photos to consider for Corel Painter tutorials.
Q. I am a boudoir photographer. Would you consider boudoir photos?
A. Yes, but since my web sites and tutorials are for general audiences, please understand that I can only include “tasteful” examples. Please email images and I’m sure we can find photos for tutorials that will help you learn to paint your photos that will be also be OK for my web sites.

Q. What do you offer in return for my submitting a photo to you?
A. If I select your photo and use it for a painting in a tutorial, as a thank you, you get the tutorial for free. You can use the tutorial to create your own paintings from your photos. You also get a photo credit everywhere the photo appears.
Q. Do you use all the photos that are sent to you?
A. No. Not all photos lend themselves to being turned into paintings in Corel Painter. If I don’t use a photo that you send, it isn’t a comment on the photo, it’s based on art theories that make a photo a good candidate to be turned into a painting.

Q. How do I submit photos for you to consider?
A. Send 1 or 2 photos 8″ x 10″ at 300 dpi jpg’d to me at ksperling@aol.com. If you have more, write to me and we’ll arrange a different delivery method. Or you can send a url for me to look at.
Q. Will I have final approval before you publish my photo and the painting you do from it?
A. No, the final decision is mine as the Painter expert. You can see my style in the images on this page and at my Artistry and fine art web sites.
Q. I like your style of painting and I’d like to hire you to paint portraits for me. Are you available for portrait commissions?
A. Yes, I can either paint portraits for you or if you’re a photographer, for your clients. Please write to me at ksperling@aol.com for information.

Thanks in advance for submitting your photos for me to turn into paintings for Corel Painter tutorials!

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I created two Image Hose Nozzles to paint the snowflakes in the above ad about my Landscapes Artistry Retreat and to wish you happy holidays, you can download the nozzles for free!
Don’t have Painter? Get a free trial here!
Click here and here to download the snowflake nozzles I created.
Here’s how to paint with them:

Corel Painter X and 11
1. In the Brush Selector, choose the Image Hose in the Brush Category menu.
2. Click the Brush Variant selector, and choose a variant. Spray variants paint randomly, Linear variants paint in a line.
3. In the toolbox, click the Nozzle Selector.
4. Click the selector menu arrow, and choose Load Nozzle (see image).

5. In the dialog that appears, choose either the sperlingsnow01 or sperlingsnow02 nozzle that you just downloaded from the above links and click Open.
6. Fill (command+F, Mac; ctrl+F, Windows) with a color and then paint. It’s snowing! The image hose sprays snowflakes that I created. I made them white so you will only see them if you paint on anything but white.

Corel Painter 12
1. Click the Brush Selector on the Brush Selector bar.
2. In the Brush Library panel, click the Image Hose brush category, and click a brush variant. Spray variants paint randomly, Linear variants paint in a line.
3. Choose Window: Media Library Panels: Nozzles.
4. In the Nozzle Libraries panel, click the selector menu arrow, and choose Load Nozzle (see image).

5. In the dialog that appears, choose either the sperlingsnow01 or sperlingsnow02 nozzle that you just downloaded from the above links and click Open.
6. Fill (command+F, Mac; ctrl+F, Windows) with a color and then paint. It’s snowing! The image hose sprays snowflakes that I created. I made them white so you will only see them if you paint on anything but white.
You can use my snowflake image hose nozzles for anything like holiday cards and images.
Email me a .jpg of whatever you use them for and I’ll post everyone’s images and we’ll have an Artistry Virtual Happy Holiday Party! Click here to email your images!
Can’t make it to an Artistry Retreat? Get in on the special holiday savings on my Portraits and Landscapes DVD’s.
Happy holidays!

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Painting by Karen Sperling.

There comes a point during every Artistry Retreat–my Corel Painter workshop where I show professional and hobbyist photographers how to turn their photos into paintings–when the photographers start to paint. Up until then, they’ve learned the art concepts behind painting and they’ve seen some of Painter’s tools and brushes. They’ve also witnessed some basic instruction from me, and then it’s their turn to start putting it all together for their own painting. More often than not, these first baby steps toward painting are accompanied by feelings of dread, insecurity and despair because these initial efforts seem to be lacking in artistic merit.
The operative word is “seem.” In fact, just about all the photographers who study with me do a fantastic job with their beginning painting attempts, producing excellent interim images that will eventually turn into great paintings.
More often than not, when I encourage photographers this way in the Corel Painter class, the response is usually skepticism, but I speak from experience.
Although I’ve been writing about Painter for the past 20 years, it’s only in the past 10 years that I’ve been painting and writing about my own art for tutorials and teaching from my own art in classes. And I remember very well because it isn’t that long ago what it was like to feel like my early attempts at painting were best left in the computer.
The painting at the top of this page is my latest painting and one of my best ever. The client used the words “stunning” and “spectacular” when she saw it.
I wasn’t surprised that she liked it because I knew it was good. I base this bold statement on the simple fact that to paint it, I followed the art concepts that I write about in all my tutorials and teach in all of my classes. I also used all the brushes and techniques that I write about in my tutorials and teach in my classes.
I also knew there is no accounting for taste, and although I knew the painting was good, after I sent it to the client, I also braced myself for the possibility that she wouldn’t like it, just because it happens, but she loved it and what a great feeling.
I titled this blog what it’s like when you like what you paint because I am thinking about all the photographers who are plagued by doubts when they paint, some so much so that they find it more comfortable to just not paint at all. I’m here to tell you that you get over those feelings. The more you paint, the better you get and the better the paintings come out. I gave up on drawing and painting many times in my life and it feels good that this time I kept going so that I can create the painting you see on this page.
I love the process of painting, even though it’s not always easy or comfortable. Sometimes it feels as annoying as fingernails on a blackboard, but other times, when things are going well, it feels as nice as anything you enjoy doing.
What is it like when you like what you paint?
It’s bliss.

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Although my mother was an artist, and I studied art in school, I never thought of myself as an artist, and still have a hard time accepting it, which is why I understand so well the photographers who come to me to learn to use Corel Painter. Why we are handed myths about creating art to hold us back, I don’t know, but I like to dispel those myths by creating art and teaching how I do it.
I thank Corel Painter for being able to create paintings, whether digitally or traditionally. Painting with Painter got me over the fear of making mistakes and got me painting. I still fear painting, but not enough to stop me from doing it.
I got to thinking about my fear of art and painting recently when I created my Painting for Photographers Landscapes DVD and a video for Corel about painting landscapes in Painter. I did a lot of research for both projects about art theories and landscape artists and what reminded me of the fear was coming across traditional pastel landscape paintings. I always enjoyed dabbling with traditional pastels but never finished anything with them and really loved the pastel paintings of landscapes I came across. I thought it would be fun to create pastel paintings, or should I say, finish them, and then continued to work on the DVD and video projects that I was in the middle of.
Soon after completing both projects I got a call to paint someone’s deceased cat as a present for his wife. He sent me the photo of the cat and it was amazing how funny looking the cat was.

And yet, I thought, this cat was so beloved that a husband wanted to give a wife a present of a portrait of it and, looking closer, it really had some interesting coloring that I thought would lend itself to being painted with traditional pastels. So I decided to take the leap and attempt a pastel portrait from scratch, no computers, no Painter.
If you haven’t studied my Artistry Corel Painter tutorials, you may be wondering what the connection is between painting landscapes and painting cats. If you have studied my materials, you know that you’re not painting objects, you’re painting areas of light and dark, so the art theories apply to any subject.
Here’s the traditional pastel painting I did of the cat using the photo for reference.

I applied the art theories and steps that I write about and talk about in all my tutorials, books, DVD’s and classes, only instead of using Corel Painter, I used traditional pastels.
Here are the interim steps of the traditional pastel painting. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the art theories that I talk about for painting in Painter apply to traditional painting, but I am.


The most exciting part of this painting was showing it to the guy and having him say he loves it! Wow!
This quick overview contains all the steps I talk about in all my Corel Painter DVD’s, books, CD’s and classes. If you think you can paint, you probably can. Check out my Artistry materials to learn how! Although they cover turning photos into paintings in Painter, you might surprise yourself and start painting with traditional media! Visit my portraits and fine art web site for more examples of my traditional and digital paintings.
I guess I just took a little step closer to thinking of myself as an artist!

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By Karen Sperling

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Most people have digital cameras nowadays. Many, if not most, have software to edit their digital photos. Some, if not most, get more creative with their photo editing the longer they do it. They go from simply cropping the photo to adjusting colors and tones to applying effects. Some take their photos to the next step and start to paint them. And some go to the next level with their photos and turn them into paintings.
While many software programs nowadays offer tools for painting photos, the standard continues to be Corel Painter. The new version, Corel Painter 12, is the best version yet and I highly recommend it.
Corel Painter has a vast audience of artists and animators who paint their artwork from scratch. Painter also appeals to photographers who want to paint their photos, whether they are professionals painting portraits for clients or hobbyists painting photos of kids, grandkids and travels.
In Painter 12, Corel has added many new features for digital artists and animators, and has also streamlined some of the functions used by photographers.
This review looks at these new Corel Painter 12 features that will benefit professional photographers and hobbyists who wish to turn their photos into paintings. Artists and animators can apply the following to their work as well.
The main big improvement in Corel Painter 12 for photographers is the handling of the clone source.
In general, when you open a photo in Painter, you choose File: Clone or Quick Clone.

Choosing File: Clone or Quick Clone creates a clone copy of the original source photo. The difference is Clone just makes a copy and Quick Clone creates a copy and then deletes the copy’s contents. Photo by Karen Sperling.

Either tool creates a new image copy with a computer mapping or link back to the clone source or original source photo. You can then turn on Tracing Paper, which shows you a 50% non-printing ghost of the original clone source photo to use as a reference as you paint in the clone copy (you will only see Tracing Paper if you edit the clone. If the contents are identical to the original photo, then you don’t see Tracing Paper).

Tracing Paper is a 50% non-printing ghost of the original source photo and can be used as a reference when painting in the clone. Photo by Karen Sperling.

This computer mapping or link also allows you to use Painter’s Cloner brushes or paint with other brushes using Clone Color in the Colors palette.
Without this link or computer mapping, you can’t turn on Tracing Paper or use the cloning brush tools. In all previous versions, if you quit out of Painter and went to get a bite to eat, when you returned and relaunched Painter, you had to manually open both the source file and the clone copy and reattach them using File menu: Clone Source.

To reconnect the clone and the source image in previous versions of Painter, choose the original source photo using File: Clone Source. Photo by Karen Sperling.

Enter Painter 12.
In the new Corel Painter 12, if you save the clone copy in Painter’s native .rif file format, when you quit Painter and relaunch it, you only have to open the clone. You don’t have to open the original photo and you don’t have to reattach the source photo and the clone. With just the clone open, you can turn on Tracing Paper, select a Cloner brush or click Clone color in the Colors palette, and enjoy many Monet moments.
This is a huge improvement and cuts down on the learning curve for beginners and saves set up time for beginners and experienced users alike.
Another big improvement in Painter 12 is the Clone Source panel, found in the Window menu.
This is where File: Clone Source has been moved to and it’s been enhanced in Painter 12. If you save in another format other than .rif, you do have to reattach the file to the clone source. Interestingly, with the new Clone Source panel, you don’t have to physically open the clone source photo in Painter, you can click the icon at the bottom of the panel, locate the source photo on your system and click open.

Click the icon at the bottom of the Clone Source panel in Painter 12 to locate the original photo clone source. Painting by Karen Sperling.

This attaches the painting file to the source file with only the clone file physically open in Painter.
Another nice improvement is that you can have multiple clone source files listed in this Clone Source panel. The clone source file has to be the same size as the painting file, so it’s not like you can open a bunch of different files and use them as clone sources. You can, however, still use them as clone sources the old fashioned way by pressing option on Mac/ctrl on Windows, clicking the area you’d like to pick up and painting in the area where you’d like the clone source imagery to be.
You can, however, save interim steps of an image, attach the previous steps in the Clone Source panel, then paint from individual stages of the image by first selecting the desired image stage in the Clone Source panel and painting with any of the Cloners or with other brushes with Clone Color selected in the Colors palette.

You can select multiple clone sources in Corel Painter 12. Painting by Karen Sperling.

Another nice feature of the new Clone Source panel is the slider that allows you to adjust Tracing Paper transparency. It replaces and enhances the percentages menu found in the Tracing Paper icon in the image window’s upper right-hand corner in previous versions of Painter.
Two other cool features have been added to Painter 12 that I use a lot:
• Recent brushes bar in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, a very handy way to access previously used brushes.
• The addition of pressing shift when you want to click and drag tools out from the Brush selector into a custom palette. In previous versions, it was easy to create extraneous custom palettes by mistake. Now, by having to press shift first, you create custom palettes only when you want to.
These improvements are the ones that I’m enjoying the most frequentliy, but there’s much more going on in the new Painter 12.
The major change is the updated interface. It is much more Photoshop-esque, which will help new users who are used to Photoshop get going in Painter.
The updated interface wasn’t entirely just a cosmetic change, either. One very useful aspect of it is that you can now rearrange brushes and variants, or variations of the main brush tools, to completely customize your work environment. Let’s say you most often use the Chalk and the Blenders. Click the brush icon in the brush selector and simply click and drag on the Chalk and the Blenders and move them to the top of the menu for easy access.

Click and drag on brush and variant icons in the Brush Selector to organize the Brush Selector to taste. Painting by Karen Sperling.

There are new brushes including the Real Watercolor and Real Wet Oil categories that produce some very cool effects–check out, for instance, the Real Watercolor variants with the word Fractal in them.
Two cool new Painter 12 features are the Mirror and Kaleidoscope painting modes. The Mirror Mode creates a mirror image of anything you paint or draw, so for instance, if you draw one side of a face, Painter automatically draws the other side for you. The Kaleidoscope Mode multiplies the mirror effect up to 12 times, so everything you draw or paint is repeated the selected number of times to create a pattern, which could be useful for backgrounds or clothing.

Example of a background painted with Painter 12’s Kaleidoscope Mode. Painting by Karen Sperling.

Last but certainly not least, Painter 12 seems to me to be the most rock solid version of Painter yet. I’ve created a DVD and had several classes since Painter 12 debuted a few months ago, and the program has been consistently stable. In addition, it seems to be the fastest version of Painter, yet.
Here are some other new features in Corel Painter 12:
• The Navigator panel allows you to maneuver around the document window. You can also enable various tools from the Navigator including the drawing modes, Impasto, tracing paper, grids, and color management.
• Brushes, paper textures, color sets, and gradients libraries have been enhanced for better organization and management.
• The new Temporal Colors palette has been introduced to let you choose colors on the fly.
• The New Image dialog box has been updated to allow you to choose paper texture in addition to the past choices of size, resolution and paper color. You can also create presets for new files.
• Corel Painter 12 renders smoother-looking images onscreen when you zoom in and increases the speed of rendering images when you zoom out.
• New brush controls have been added including Computed Circular dabs, dynamic brush settings, and new Brush Calibration controls and multicore brush support, new Gel brushes and new Digital Airbrush variants.
All things considered, I think Corel Painter 12 is a shining star in the constellation of software programs and whether you’re painting from scratch or turning photos into paintings, I think Corel Painter 12 is a must have.

Buy Now

Learn to paint landscapes from photos in Corel Painter 12 with the Painting for Photographers DVD Volume 2: Landscapes.

This review is ©2011 Karen Sperling and Artistry and may not be reproduced in any form without written permission.

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I have received many rave reviews of my Artistry Retreats–workshops where I offer art lessons and step-by-step Corel Painter instruction–that you can read some examples of here and here.
Yet, I’ve never offered a review of my classes as the instructor, so here is one, now.
Overall, the people who attend my Artistry Retreats are professional photographers or hobbyists who are interested in turning their photos into paintings in Corel Painter.
Professional photographers who study with me include both studio photographers like Grey Darrah who would like to offer commissioned painted portraits to their clients and fine art photographers who are interested in exhibiting and selling their paintings from photos.
Hobbyists who study with me are usually people like Marilyn Peck, who had other careers in such fields as medicine, dentistry or engineering, and are either retired or getting ready to retire. Of course, they’re not really retiring at all, they’re changing gears and in some cases turning painting from photos into a career. Others are grandparents who are interested in painting photos of their children and grandchildren and of their travels.
For the most part, the people who attend Artistry Retreats have never taken art lessons before. They have a feeling that they might enjoy painting, and they follow their heart and take a class to learn how to paint.
They might have studied with other Corel Painter instructors, or they might have used my instructional materials or those offered by others. Or they might be brand-new to Painter and think it’s something they’d like to learn. They decide to attend the in-person classes to see how the painting is done firsthand and in person from me because I’ve been teaching Painter longer than anyone and also because they like the style of my art.

Now we’re all together at the Artistry Retreat. What’s it like for me, the instructor? It’s always exciting, which amazes me after teaching Painter for 20 years. What’s exciting is that I can help people paint who want to paint and who have a lot of fear and trepidation about it but nevertheless take the step to join one of my classes to do it. As the instructor, it’s really fun for me to see people go from not knowing how to paint to painting. After the art lessons and during the Painter instruction, I walk around the room looking at everyone painting and I always say the same thing, “Didn’t you tell me you had never painted before?” They always reply that they’re painting for the first time based on the information I just told them. For those who have painted before, the information and techniques that I present click for them and their painting is taken to the next level.

I admire the people who come to study with me because they are doers, not talkers. They are willing to step outside of their comfort zone to learn to do something that interests them. I’m always honored that they choose to study with me.
All in all I give the people who have studied with me great reviews. They’re a joy to hang with for the two or three days of the Artistry Retreats and I’m glad I get the opportunity to show them my painting techniques.

I highly recommend the people who attend my Artistry Retreats as photographers and hobbyists you would enjoy meeting. Click here for information about the upcoming Artistry Retreats for turning photos into paintings in Corel Painter.

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By Karen Sperling

Photo and painting by Karen Sperling.

Many professional photographers and hobbyists find that they enjoy editing their photos in Adobe Photoshop, from changing tones and colors to adding filters or special effects. Many are discovering the joy of taking this photo editing a step further and painting their photos using Corel Painter and a Wacom tablet.
In this tutorial you’re going to see how I turned a landscape photo I took in Cambria, CA into a painting in Corel Painter.
When you paint a painting from a photo, it’s a good idea to keep in mind traditional art concepts used by master landscape artists throughout the ages. These include:
1. Eliminate details
Eliminate details in the painting compared to the photo. Here’s what the original photo looked like.

It had a lot of details, which I eliminated by cropping the photo in Photoshop.
Cropping the photo also helped with the rule of thirds, the next art concept to keep in mind.
2. Rule of Thirds
Follow the rule of thirds, which recommends that your subject fall on the imaginary folds if the canvas were folded in thirds.
After the photo was cropped, the rocks in front fell approximately on the intersection of the imaginary folds, represented by the blue circles, becoming the clear subject.

3. Choose a color scheme.
One of the differences between a photo and a painting is that a painting has a chosen color scheme. I chose a color scheme by opening the photo in Painter and looking at it next to a color wheel. I decided to use an adjacent color scheme, using colors next to each other from red-orange to blue-green on the color wheel.

In Painter, I chose File: Quick Clone. This created a copy, or clone, of the photo and deleted the contents of the copy so that I had a blank canvas to paint on. By cloning the photo, I set up Painter to allow me to turn on Tracing Paper, which lets me see a 50 percent non-printing ghost of the photo. I press command on Mac, Ctrl on Windows and type a T to turn on Tracing Paper. Repeat to turn off tracing paper.
I chose the Oils brush category and the Real Oils Smeary variant. I chose a shade of burnt sienna, or brown, in the Colors palette. I began to paint, creating a tonal painting, which is a traditional art technique to show the areas of light and dark to use as a guideline for colors later. Lift and paint to paint darker tones; scribble to paint lighter ones.
Adjust the Size slider in the Property Bar to change the width of brushstrokes.

Next I started adding color using the same brush.

At this point, I used four variants of the Oils brush category and painted the rocks in the foreground, the plants and the shoreline in the background.
I outlined with the Fine Camel variant, made distinct brush strokes with the Real Tapered Bristle, painted smooth oily strokes with the Oily Bristle and blended in places with the Real Oils Smeary variant. I also blended with the Blenders Just Add Water variant a little, but I didn’t blend a lot because I wanted the brushstrokes to be visible.
Here you see the rocks at various stages in the painting from left to right, including the final, all the way to the right.

I was playing around less with the brushstrokes and more with getting the highlights, midtones and shadows right based on the photo and using the colors in my adjacent color scheme.
I used the Artists Impressionist variant to paint the water. I blocked in areas of color, and I put in lines of light and dark based on where I saw highlights and shadows in the photo by lowering the Jitter slider in the Property Bar and painting.

Then I blended in places with the Blenders Water Rake.

And that’s how I turned a landscape photo into a painting in Corel Painter!

Karen Sperling is the original Corel Painter expert. She wrote the software program’s first several manuals and several published books, including the current bestselling Painting for Photographers. She also produced the Painting for Photographers DVD’s for painting portraits and landscapes from photos. Karen Sperling has exhibited her fine art in New York and during Art Basel Miami. Her art and commissioned portraits are held in private collections around the world and are available through her art web site.

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I was going through Painter 12’s Oils Brushes and there seemed to be a million of them. Meanwhile, some of them are from previous versions of the software and some are brand new.
So I decided to make a chart of all of them to refer to.
And I also decided to give you the chart to help you, too.
What this chart shows very clearly is that some of the oils brushes paint opaque brushstrokes and some paint in a more blender fashion. And this list helps you to distinguish between them.
This directory also shows you which ones have hard, aliased edges and which have soft, anti-aliased strokes.
I’m working on a tutorial that shows how to paint with these brushes, but in the meantime, I thought you might like to have this chart and experiment on your own!
This chart is useful whether you are painting from photos or from scratch.
Click here for a larger version of the chart.

If you don’t have Painter 12 yet, you can get it by clicking the above links. It looks like they’re even offering a sale! The one on the left includes an offer for a Wacom tablet bundled with Painter. The link on the right leads just to Painter.
Happy painting!

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I always say that painting is 90% thought, 10% execution.
I have just proved my own theory the past few days in trying to decide on a landscape to paint. I just spent a lot more time deciding what to paint than I will spend doing the actual painting.
One thing that was good about film cameras was that you put more thought into the photos you were taking to conserve film, well, I did, anyway. I knew I had 24 or 36 exposures and I sure wasn’t going to waste film taking several shots of the same thing, trying to get the composition right. Well, I tried not to, anyway, though I do see how many times I couldn’t resist, judging from the stacks of similar prints I have.
I did think about it, though, and that’s one of the double-edged swords about shooting digitally. On the one hand, it’s nice to have almost limitless freedom to shoot, depending on the size of your memory card and how many cards you have. On the other hand, you can take too many photos, and wind up with an overflow of the editing, tracking and decision-making tasks that accompany having so many choices.
I’ve been looking through stacks of film and digital pictures I’ve taken over the centuries, trying to decide which one to paint. It hasn’t been easy. All the photos looked beautiful and I thought I could paint them, but I wasn’t sure.
The problem was, I was looking at the pictures emotionally. I love them all, as I’ve loved all the places where I took them. The decision to choose a photo to paint isn’t a visceral one, however, it is an intellectual one, based on art theories, and the more you base your decision on art theories, the easier it will be to choose a photograph and to paint it.
The art concept that came galloping to my rescue from the grips of indecision was the idea of determining the focal point or subject or area of greatest contrast between light and dark.
It’s much easier to determine the focal point of a portrait. More times than not, the subject is the face. But in a landscape, the choice is a little less obvious and you have to play detective to come up with a good subject.
After I remembered to think about focal point, I narrowed the zillions of choices down to these six I photographed recently in Cambria, CA. I was standing on a cliff taking these photos, trying to frame them right in the camera. Each one is beautiful, really, but which one is really great to paint?

Photos by Karen Sperling

At first glance they look the same, at second glance, notice that I put the land and sea in different realtionships to each other in each frame. The water is also at varying levels in each photo and the areas of light and dark are different, thanks to the sun going in and out of the clouds. Which photo would you paint? How would you decide?
I decided by determining a focal point, or subject, or area of greatest contrast between light and dark. Usually, in a landscape, if no clear focal point emerges, you can get away with calling the horizon the focal point. But that didn’t work with these photos. I couldn’t tell where the focal point was. Was it the rock formation in the foreground? The one in the middle? The interesting cliff with the trees in the background? Was it the water?
After awhile and looking through a lot of other photos, I remembered something.
The photo didn’t have to be perfect as is, it could be cropped. So I started experimenting with cropping and this is what I wound up with.

Photo by Karen Sperling

It’s the top, middle image cropped and it now had a clear focal point, namely the rocks in the foreground.
The moral of the story is, when you try to find a photo to paint, whether it’s a landscape or a portrait, always ask yourself what your focal point is. If there is no focal point at all, you either have to create one or choose a different photo to paint. Sometimes you can find a focal point just by cropping.
To learn more about this and other art theories and Corel Painter steps for turning photos into paintings, attend one of my popular Artistry Retreats or get my bestselling Painting for Photographers DVD Volume 2: Landscapes and Painting for Photographers DVD Volume 1: Portraits.

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One recent Sunday I drove down to the Wedge, a well-known surfer’s paradise in Newport Beach, CA. The southern California media were broadcasting about how gigantic the waves were thanks to a storm in faraway New Zealand. I had to see these reported 20-foot waves for myself, and of course, take pictures of them.
I wasn’t disappointed. I took many great shots that day.
Here’s the crowd gathered to look at the waves. You can see the turbulent ocean all the way to the left.

Here are some folks who had a better view of the waves, from on top of them!

I chose this photo to turn into a painting.

And this was the result:

Here’s a detail of the brushstrokes in Corel Painter:

I used the art concepts and Painter steps on my Painting for Photographers DVD Volume 2: Landscapes to paint the painting.

I’m also teaching how to paint landscapes from photos at a 2-day Artistry Retreat October 22-23, 2011.

When I was leaving the beach, a couple saw my big camera and asked me to snap their photo. My camera is complicated enough that you don’t exactly snap photos with it, it takes a bit of set up, so my first and only try wasn’t stupendous:

So I edited the photo in Photoshop and painted it in Painter for a much better result.

To edit the photo and to paint the figures, I used the art concepts and Painter and Photoshop steps on my Painting for Photographers DVD Volume 1: Portraits and the brushes on my Artistry Bonus CD Volume 1. To paint the background, I used the brushes on my Artistry Bonus CD Volume 2. This is a detail of the background.

I’m also teaching how to paint portraits from photos at a 2-day Artistry Retreat October 15-16, 2011.
The couple liked the result, which was nice.
All in all, it was a very nice day. I couldn’t resist snapping photos of the sky at sunset. This photo might not stand on its own, but I might use the sky one day as a reference in another painting.

Tags: The process of art (Corel Painter) // 1 Comment »