Digital Painting Fundamentals with Corel Painter X3

Prologue...I started out with Painter Essentials but found that application to possess limited functionality and have very poor (read NO) support resources provided by Corel. So with its full feature set and a number of "How Too" publication assets available, I switched to Painter X3. I have been slowly working my way through this book by Rhoda Draws, and find it is the best resource available for a new Corel Painter user. However even with this, the author jumps over the tool set, and as such, leaves out much of the hows and whys regarding their methodology…. Long story short, be prepared to repeat the lessons multiple times to fully grasp the idiosyncrasies of Painter’s functionally…but I guess that’s what learning is all about… right? Further disappointment is the lack support (for the student) provided by the publisher Centage, unfortunately this is true with many of their instructional materials.More positively, to help the user discover the width of the digital pallet that Painter provides, the author has provided an array of exercises/lessons with reference images available online. However….Unlike most other “How to” books which provide a clear link to these resources in a resource section at the back of the book, (formally known as The Included CD)…. Here the author hides the URL in an over- written section headed Where Did I Hide the CD…C’mon just the bold labeled facts mam.

I don't generally submit many reviews, but thought I should on this one. I preordered this book, as I have a lot of Painter instructional books and with the new release, I wanted to see what this author had for information concerning how to take advantage of the new features of Painter X3. The problem is that the book barely touches upon this sort of thing.The books has its goods and bads. Basically it is a book that fits someone just learning painter, has an understanding of it on a basic level, but would like to learn more to get to a medium level. It does an ok job of that.The artist and writer appears to be very involved in doing caricatures of people and is quite good at it. If the author had based a book around that and other art forms around that, it probably would have been very good. The problem is much of the other art she covered was not very good.... As someone who does a lot of work with Painter, I found myself really not liking much of the other work. It seemed very rushed, as if there was a deadline and she needed to just get something done to fill the pages. Also, many of the 230 pages seem to be filled with fodder. Many pages just have a bunch of scribbles that show what can be done if you scribble with a number of Painters brushes, but don't add anything. Other pages with instruction are sparse and seem to be spread out to fill more pages. It appears in order to be the first book out for Painter X3, it was rushed and really has little deeper knowledge, like you would expect from an expensive book.Sorry to be such a downer on it, but I really did not get hardly anything out of this book and was definitely disappointed from that respect.

I am finding that I WANT to like this book as I am wading through it. I think it has some great "let's get started" type of information. I find the tone mildly irritating - too much ego. And for the most part, while I think it defines Painter workflows that would get one started, the material is very shallow.I think I would have passed on a review and written off my disappointment as "do your homework before you buy", but I can't find the book's resource material. In the intro, there is a subsection called "Where did I leave that CD?" It talks about where you can download the books resources (which would be nice to have if you want to try to follow it in detail). Well... there was no CD. And the link provided does not exist. I've spent the last 45 minutes or so searching for it and have had no success thus far.Perhaps this is a more of a reflection on Cengage more than on Rhoda, but in any event, for my money, I expect more!!

I am new to Painter. That said, I have been looking for a book that had two parts: 1) a good manual that would not only tell me what buttons etc. do what, but ALSO showed simple examples of each at work. 2) a book showing Painter at work that has excellent examples of artwork created using this program and simple techniques that would be of use to the vast majority of users the first time around.I was saddened to see mediocre at best caricature artwork that had little relevance to real artwork or the use of this program. I was also disappointed to find that there was little direction using Wacom tablets. I would have loved for this book to include the use of a Wacom Cintiq pen display (where you draw directly on the screen verses looking up at the screen while drawing "blind"). This author had little experience with digital tablets and pen displays.I feel like I got more out of the 'manual' in online help than I did with this book that I obviously wasted my money on. I was less than impressed with the author and their organization of this book. It started out with the first few pages on the right track to really help a person and then it seems like it became derailed by the authors musings and terrible work she calls art. It appears to be thrown together.Don't waste your money on this book. Print out the online 'manual', and look for YouTube videos that will certainly be of more help than this book.

I purchased this book despite there being one, one star review out of the four available reviews - and I'm glad I did. I bought it for two main reasons: one, I had just purchased Corel Painter 2015 (even though this book covers the previous version X3) and two, I had just purchased a Wacom Tablet, something I had never used before. I was also new to digital art, and furthermore, I hadn't done any serious traditional art for many years, so I felt I needed some help. This book looked like it would provide me with a good initial tutorial and get me up and running quickly, using both Painter and the Tablet input, and I have to say it did just that. The book is produced to a high quality, nicely presented, well laid out, easy to understand, written in an easy going, relaxed style, with a welcome touch of humour. I enjoyed following the examples, which, as you start out, assume you are a beginner, and as you progress, quickly has you feeling that you're getting to grips with things. Samples, resources etc. can be downloaded from the publishers website. If you're relatively new to Painter or digital art, then you won't regret buying this book.

A great book to get you started in Painter X3. The only software to give you as near a true experience of traditional physical media.

good book

Poor examples.Really disappointed with this book, the examples for you to follow are quite poor - I'd not really wish to do 90% of the stuff in this book and a lot of it look like something a child would do as school.At £20 it's very poor value for money; you can get many better tutorials on the Corel website and off youtube; with better final results and a more in depth lesson.Will be contacting amazon for a return which I have never done before with a book.

if you have the software that this book is for then do not hesitate and buy this book full of very use full tips