Karen Sperling’s Blog

Candy Groat lives in Southern California. For now, she is a hobbyist, but as she is learning to paint her photos, she is exploring her options for exhibiting her work down the road.
Candy has my Corel Painter instructional materials including my Painting for Photographers ebook; my portraits and landscapes Painting for Photographers DVDs; my portraits and landscapes Artistry Bonus CDs; and my Artistry Tips and Tricks newsletters. Candy has also attended my Artistry Retreats and she has taken private lessons with me.
Candy answered my questions that I posed to her in light of my completing my Painting for Photographers DVD Volume 2: Landscapes and my Artistry Bonus CD Volume 2. I thought everyone I’m hearing from expressing interest in painting their landscape photos in Corel Painter would find Candy’s experiences enlightening.
All of the following paintings are by Candy Groat from her photos in Corel Painter using my Artistry techniques.

I’ve done all sorts of things! Before photographing and painting landscapes and other images, I worked as a dental hygienist, worked in retail, taught piano and volunteered in the schools of my children. Then while taking photos of wildlife, I inspired myself to return to school for an MS in Biology! Since then, I have taught biology part time and worked at (mostly) native plant research and participated in our local Audubon Society. Taking photos has been a longtime hobby, so I have taken many classes and studied many books. Karen Sperling’s DVD’s, classes, tutorials and books are the best I’ve encountered yet.

Photographing landscapes is very relaxing and now that I have learned some skills regarding the painting of landscapes, I’m enjoying the photography even more.
I don’t advertise or market right now. I’m so busy actively learning skills and having fun just studying the program and the material Karen publishes, taking classes and taking photos. I do have future plans to sell and donate some of my photos, though.
I’ve sold photographs at local arts and crafts shows in the past, and recently, I’ve been talking with another photographer about sharing a website. I’ve had two gallery shows in the past and may join a local artists guild soon.

As for painting in Painter, I like the fact that one does not have to labor for hours in the outdoors to paint a landscape. There are no messy paints and heavy supply boxes to carry around, and the art takes no time to dry at all! Another thing–I have a small Bamboo Wacom Pad that I can take with me when we travel, just in case I get the urge to work on my photo art on my laptop. Also, the painted photos are easily reproducible and therefore, they make nice gifts for family and friends. I find that the ease with which photos can be painted using some of the features of Corel Painter is just plain old exciting and it leads me to generate all sorts of ideas. I like to embellish my photos and enhance all sorts of aspects of them, which is why I do not just stick with “plain old photography.”
I love to paint and just play with the colors and all the fun brushes that are available in Corel Painter.
Artistry tutorials and classes have facilitated the learning and application of the Corel Painter program to my photography. I’ve had some private lessons from Karen, and those are the best, but I’ve also participated in her group classes and have purchased every single one of her great Artistry Tips and Tricks issues and portraits and landscapes DVDs. I printed the Artistry Tips and Tricks tutorials and keep them in a binder and refer to them often.
Karen is a great teacher and very experienced with Corel Painter programs because she wrote the manual. She is patient and does not mind repeating sometimes when the instructions become a little difficult due to computer issues. I usually write everything down so that I can refer to it later, but even so, I sometimes forget because the technical skills are a little challenging at times. But, that is a good thing!
For those who are interested in learning to paint photographs, I recommend Karen’s group lessons and then after that, some private lessons. The Artistry Tips and Tricks are also very helpful, as I said before, I have every one, and all the DVDs.
The DVDs are very good because you can refer back to them again and again, which is often needed, and they are the next best thing to taking classes. I could use more private lessons myself, the Corel Painter program has SO many amazing brushes and types of paint available. I feel as if I have barely scratched the surface as far as what can be accomplished with the program and lessons.

After watching the opening chapters of the most recent Landscapes DVD, I painted this scene of the Island of Elba entirely with Corel Painter, using Painter’s Tracing Paper function and many of Karen’s grasses, leaves and other brushes that are provided on the DVD and the Artistry Bonus CD 2.

I followed her instructions to paint areas of lights and darks and to leave out background details in order to show perspective.

Some of the brushes worked really well for painting ocean water, in my opinion. What fun!!!
It is not that hard to learn to paint landscape photos. It does take quite a bit of patience, though, and one should start with a decent photograph to begin with, although Corel Painter is very forgiving when it comes to flaws in the original photo. I hope to sell some landscape photo paintings in the future, so stay tuned!
As far as getting into turning photos into paintings, I would say “Just Go For It!”

Additional case studies:

Marilyn Peck
Ray Turley

Tags: The process of art (Corel Painter) //