Being Creative

Educators that practice a creative approach in the classroom recognize that learning is both an activity and a process. Corel embraces this notion by offering the program Corel Photo Paint. This program can be used to transform any media into living art.

Here are some of Corel’s Possibilities:

• Allows elementary-level students to experiment with introductory digital art, painting and drawing;
• Lets secondary and university-level students make use of powerful graphics, photo-editing and animation capabilities;
• Multi-purpose, easy-to-use tools streamline the process of creating, editing and reusing graphics;
• Responsive, interactive features let students see their work develop with real-time feedback;
•  Extensive compatibility means easy integration on Mac® or PC platforms, as well as efficient file sharing with industry standards, including Photoshop®, Adobe® Illustrator® and Macromedia Flash™ ;
• Allows students to combine other useful programs such as Art Strokes to create a Water Color painting ;

How to Create a Water Color Painting Using

 Corel Paint Art Strokes

The Watercolor Art Stroke makes an image look like a watercolor painting. You can specify the brush size, granulation level, and image brightness. You can also specify the intensity of the colors and determine the degree to which the colors blend.

1. Choose a suitable image. For the example, the selected image 790009.WI from the PHOTOS/EVE_SKY folder from Corel Draw Suite.

2. Open the Watercolor dialogue box (Effects > Art Strokes > Watercolor). There are five control parameters: Brush Size, Granulation, Water Amount, Bleed and Brightness. All five have a distinct effect on the result.

3. Click the Reset button on the dialogue box to see the effect using the default settings. As you can see, the image is converted into a watercolor type painting complete with the runny bleeds often seen when using watered-down acrylic paints, or as in traditional Chinese style paintings.

4. The Brush Size parameter not only affects the size of the brush used but also affects the color detail remaining in the image after the effect has been used. The greater the brush size value the greater the loss of color detail. Edges and regions of strong contrast do not seem to be affected.

5. The Granulation parameter alters the amount of smoothing between the brush strokes and adds more white 'paper' splotches to the image as it is increased. Lower values give a smoother result but make the result look less like a true watercolor image that is often 'blotchy'.

6. The Water Amount parameter allows you to 'water down' your paints, making the result lighter and more transparent to the underlying 'paper'. Increasing this value makes the image lighter and the colors less saturated.

7. The Bleed parameter changes the amount of edge detail in the result. Possibly this parameter should have been called Edges or something like that. Low values simulate beautiful black edge detailing with a fine brush, outlining the areas of major contrast. Higher values case the edges to 'bleed' into the rest of the image, blurring and diffusing them.

8. The final parameter, Brightness, does exactly what it says and increases the brightness of the image as it value is increased. At low values the brightness of the original image is maintained so there does not appear to be any way to darken the image, only brighten it. At high values, the brightness can be too much and ruin the effect somewhat.

Here is the final image!