Tonight I am doing a webinair for the Digital Art Academy and I will be using the Flemish Rub brush as one of the brushes in the paintings. This is an old brush that goes way back to Painter 5 and John Derry the Daddy of Painter designed it. It is on the cd’s that come as extra materials with Corel Painter. Because back in 2005 there was discussion about this brush on the Digital Painting Forum I am sharing everything here that John said about the brush and the new controls we can use with it. Please be sure to visit John Derrys website and enjoy his other free downloads including lessons and Johns fabulous set of Painter Brushes!
DISCUSSION FROM THE DIGITAL PAINTING FORUM:
October 2005
REGARDING THE FLEMISH RUB BRUSH:
Directly from John Derry:
Hi:
I thought you might like a bit of background regarding the Flemish Rub variant. I created this brush when we were working on the Painter 5 release. Jeremy has appropriated it for his Brush Goodies and, avid Painter maestro that he is, he has seeded this brush variant to many users. On with the story…
One of the techniques of the Flemish oil painters was to use their forearm to effectively blend a large swath of wet oils on the canvas. Obviously, they ended up with a mess on their arm (in the name of a Art!), but the effect created a smooth blend of color on the canvas. I wanted to create a brush that had some of the same appeal and, after a bit of experimentation, the Flemish Rub variant was born.
If you’d like to get your hands on the Flemish Rub brush, you need look no further than your Painter IX CD. To locate it, go to Extras: Brushes: Painter 5 Brushes: Artists: Flemish Rub.xml. Copy this file to on your system to Corel Painter IX: Brushes: Painter Brushes: Artists folder and the next time you open the Artists category, there you’ll find Flemish Rub awaiting your exploration! Note that you can control the pull of this brush via the Grain adjuster.
I hope that you’ll enjoy this oldie-but-goodie variant!
Viva la Painter!
Hi Again:
One thing I forgot to mention with regard to the Flemish Rub variant…this variant (and all pre-Painter 6 variants) were created before we introduced full 360° dab rotation. As a result, these older brush require a slight tweak to perform as expected.
With the Flemish Rub variant active, navigate to Brush Controls: Angle palette and adjust the Angle Range slider to 360°. That’s it! With this adjustment, the brush’s width with follow your stroke direction.
Having done this, you’ll now be a Painter Brush Mechanic!
This original version of the Flemish Rub variant uses a highly squeezed Circular Dab (making it rice shaped) with Jitter applied to produce a stroke that varies the amount of smeared underlying paint across the width of the brush. The resulting smeared paint has a wavy character.
In playing with Flemish Rub variant, I noticed that Grain Expression (Brush Controls: General Palette) is set to None. It is a far more expressive tool when the Grain Expression is set to Pressure. This enables a pressure-controlled smearing effect. Less pressure minimizes smearing; more pressure exaggerates smearing.
Viva la Painter!
Obviously, any variant can be—and I highly encourage it—adjusted to the user’s own tastes. The other thing I discovered is that I like the way Flemish Rub looks with the Drip Method subcategory set to Drip (the original Flemish Rub is set to Grainy Drip). When set to Drip, the resulting strokes have a silky smooth quality to them.
END of ARTICLE JOHN DERRY
