Collab - Knight of the Goddess

The lineart was a christmas gift from *DarkVolt Yay it's colored!

I downloaded the PainterX trial recently to see how it changed since I last used it (many years ago). Like I said to another, it's truly a different kind of beast compared to photoshop. They're still both monsters when it comes to figuring out how to use them efficiently -- the learning curve is /quite high/. It's hard to get over that hill the first time.

I shouldn't even be trying to compare photoshop and painter, actually. The names are proof enough to what the two are trying to achieve. Fundamentally though, as far as digital painting goes, they offer two completely different flavors of user experience.

Art-wise, I grew up on photoshop's digital canvas. I don't fully understand the joys and pains of 'real' painting, but the ones I do understand -- watercolors and acrylics -- seemed more than a little alien when I was using those brushes in painterx. Trying to use them the way I remember using them was a frustrating experience.

In the end I tried to find brushes that I could use in a way that I am used to (digitally) painting with, and this ended up being the oil and colored pencil brushes. Like photoshop, it didn't suffice to use the brushes as they're given to you; I played with the settings and - voila! Something I could start with!

My critiques for painterx are few, and mostly user experience related. Keyboard shortcuts were unreliable most of the time; whenever I would rightclick with my pen to change brush settings, keyboard shortcuts would stop working until I clicked on a menu. Another complaint, perhaps I am not understanding its purpose well, but using large brushes is... unwieldly, especially with those brushes that come along with an animated 'aftereffect'. When I'm trying to paint fast, waiting 2-5 seconds after every brush stroke just to see the splatter animation run its course didn't appeal to me much - it went better once I started avoiding those brushes.

All in all, once I figured out what brushes I liked, things got going and the painting was actually enjoyable, although slow.

Lineart: *DarkVolt
Colors: =Daggerfell