By Rhonda Grossman Draws - Digital Painting Fundamentals with Corel Painter X3 (1st Edition) Paperback

I am brand new to Painter and bought this book with hopes of not only becoming familiar with the program, but with the medium in general. I am about halfway through and I am so glad I made this purchase! Not only am I learning a lot about how the program itself works, with the requisite tips and tricks, but, as hoped, I am learning about digital painting in general, and I am experiencing a huge new found love! I can't wait to start applying the lessons to my own photos and paintings (there is a companion download of photos and palettes that come with the book to work through). This will definitely be a book I hold on to, to refer back to. I definitely appreciate the author's tone and writing style as well. Highly recommended!

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 had skipped ordering this book several times because it seemed like a lot of reading. I wasn't sure if I would really learn anything related to what I was interested in doing. When I saw the pictures of the exercises it did not inspire me much because I am only interested in landscapes. However, I learned a tremendous amount about brushes, papers, techniques, and so much more that I can transfer to my landscape paintings. I would recommend this book to anyone because she teaches in a way that what you learn can be transferred to what ever project you have in mind.Ms. Draws in definitely an expert in Corel Painter x3.

I was looking for easy instructions to make a photo look more like a painting.This is not it for photographers.

To be honest, I have not had a very thorough chance to delve into this book. However, I know from other artists who have purchased this book that it is one of the best for working with Corel painterX3 (or Painter 13, if you prefer. I have wanted a book to help me learn and I think this is one of the best. Lots of visual examples.

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!!

Rhoda draws and paints and she also knows how to teach it well. Her book got me into Painter in a quick way by touching base on the basics and demystifying some of the tools. The lady is a great teacher.

Painter has always been a complex, and difficult-to-learn software, with an unintuitive interface that improved dramatically when Corel took over from Fractal Design. This complexity has never really been demystified by some books and manuals which have appeared over the years . . . until now. Rhonda Draws has produced this book specifically designed for human understanding, with large color illustrations, easy-to-read screen shots of the various control palettes, accompanied by helpful concise instruction, tips, tricks, which cover all the aspects of digital painting -- portraiture, scenery, still life and cityscapes and effects.In my estimation, this is the definitive guide to learning and using Painter. It's twenty years overdue, but most welcome indeed.

Si vous pensiez apprendre comment créer des brosses, comment faire pour bâtir vos tons et vos couleurs et réaliser une super peinture numérique, portrait ou paysage, je vous le dis de suite: vous seriez très déçus. C'est n'est qu'une énumération des possibilités de painter et presque tous les exemples utilisent des photos!!! Je suis désolé, mais prendre une photo et peindre par dessus c'est n'est PAS de l'art. Zéro pointé.

Très intéressant. Bien conçu.

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.

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.

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.