User Guide

144 Corel Painter User Guide
Marking the Canvas
You can paint on the canvas or on a layer above the canvas. When you select a layer on
the Layers palette, that layer becomes the target for your brush strokes.
If you are using a Water Color brush, you can paint only on a Water Color layer. If you
are using a Liquid Ink brush, you can paint only on a Liquid Ink layer. For more
information, refer to “Working with the Watercolor Layer” on page 170 and “Working
with the Liquid Ink Layer” on page 175.
If you try to paint on a shape, dynamic layer, or reference layer, you must commit it to
a standard layer so that your brush strokes are accepted.
You can also select a channel or a layer mask as the target for your brush strokes. For
more information, refer to “Managing and Editing Channels” and “Creating Layer
Masks” in the Help.
When you have an active selection, painting is confined to the selection by default.
Refer to “Selections” in the Help for more information about selections.
In all cases, your brush strokes go to the selected target, so you should check that it
matches your intended destination before you start to paint.
You mark the canvas by selecting the Brush tool and dragging in the document
window with a brush variant that applies media. Each time you drag, you create a
brush stroke.
When you use complex brush variants, you see a dotted line on the canvas before the
mark appears. For example, the Gloopy variant of the Impasto brush requires complex
computations that delay the stroke’s appearance on the screen. When you experience a
delay, you can queue up strokes, without losing any stroke data.
Freehand vs. Straight-Line Drawing
You can draw unconstrained lines by using the freehand drawing style, or you can
draw straight lines. Options on the property bar
let you choose the drawing style.
When you use Freehand Strokes, you can drag with any motion or in any direction.
The stroke follows your drag path.