Corel Painter Tutorials For Beginners

Digital Art & Painting Tutorials for Painter

Follow these online digital art tutorials for helpful step-by-step instructions that cover a wide range of topics for both beginners and experts.

Learn everything you need to get up and running in the current version of Painter!
Painter for Beginners – Getting Started

Photo Art

Creating a Seasonal Greetings Card with Corel® Painter® 2015 and CorelDRAW® X7
Painter for Photo Art - Getting Started
Painting restoration for Chiesa Della Liberia in Saviano, Italy
Pet Tutorial with Heather Michelle
Portrait painting simplified by using the Cloners brush category
A Useful Alpha Channel
Turning a photo into a painting using cloning tools
Wedding tutorial
Painting Landscapes from Photos
The power of photo painting - Getting started (PDF)
Painting Portraits from Photos
Painting natural-looking hair
Photo-Painting Process
- Workflow 1
- Workflow 2
- Workflow 3
Get creative by using clone color
- Basic level: Turn a photo into a still life painting using the Quick Clone feature (PDF)
- Intermediate level: Cloning a landscape photo using other paint brushes (PDF)
- Advanced level: Paint a portrait and get creative with brushes (PDF)

All Tutorials

Creating a Seasonal Greetings Card with Corel® Painter® 2015 and CorelDRAW® X7

In this tutorial we would like to show you how easy it is to create greetings cards that look almost hand-painted by using the stunning Auto-Painting features in Corel Painter 2015. If you are also working with CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X7, any images created in Corel Painter can be imported and further embellished with graphical or text elements.

Plein air painting with Corel® Painter® 12

Tag along with Cliff Cramp as he sets off for one of his favorite walking trails, armed with Corel Painter 12 and a makeshift outdoor studio, to create a painting 'en plein air'.

Pet Tutorial with Heather Michelle

In this tutorial, I will show you how I use cloning tools in Corel Painter 12 to transform a photo of a dog named Brutus into a painting. I will walk you through each of the steps in my process, which includes color sampling and blending techniques.

Painting and effects with the Artists brush category

With the Artist brush variants, you can apply Impressionist paint effects, push and pull colored paint in the style of Sargent, make curved strokes inspired by Van Gogh, create Pointillist dabs like Seurat, and more.

Painting "S'mores" using Corel Painter 12

For those of you who are not familiar with s'mores, they are a popular campfire snack in Canada and the United States. To prepare a s'more, you need to sandwich a fire-roasted marshmallow and a chunk of a chocolate between two graham crackers.

Cover Redesign

In publishing, a book's cover can make or break its success. In this tutorial, Carlyn Beccia will show you the steps she used to redesign one of her favorite childhood stories, Watership Down by Richard Adams.

Flow Maps

Skip Allen provides an extensive video tutorial on how to make effective use of Flow Maps for Real Watercolor or Real Wet Oil painting projects with Painter 12.2.

A Useful Alpha Channel

Corel® Painter™ 12.1 Alpha Channels are very powerful and very useful, too. This tutorial will describe how to use an alpha channel to remove the background of a photograph.

Wedding tutorial

For many people, weddings are some of the dressiest days of their lives, and not just for the bride and groom, either. Everyone — from the honor attendants, bridesmaids and groomsmen, flower girls and ring bearer to additional members of the wedding party and the wedding guests — is spiffed up and as polished as the reception table place settings.

Creating a quick Oils study in Corel® Painter™

With the painting Moon Over Lennox, this project demonstrates loose, expressive brushwork on a simple landscape with an amazing sky. The Oils and Real Wet Oils in Painter can be used for both acrylic and oil looks. In this project we will use the Oils for laying in base colors and for modeling forms, the Blenders for smoothing and blending paint, and the Real Wet Oils for the final details and softening of a few areas.

Painting of the Dungeon Concierge using Corel Painter 12

The idea for this doodle was essentially a doorman or concierge at an expensive hotel but in this case, he is at the local dungeon. The initial sketch is done with a colored pencil on a 8.5" x 11" piece of paper. The drawing is scanned at 200 dpi, saved as a PNG file, and opened in Corel Painter 12.

Painter 12 Workspaces

New to Painter 12, we've introduced some custom workspaces to help artists from all backgrounds quickly familiarize themselves with Painter.

Wet-into-Wet painting with Real Watercolor

Wet-into-wet is a traditional technique that can be simulated using Painter's Watercolor layers. Wet-into-wet is the most fluid way to apply color, as it involves keeping the paper wet while new color is applied, so that new colors blend with existing moist paint. With Watercolor layers, you can paint with brushes that apply pigment that percolates and diffuses into the paper grain, and paint washes that blend into the existing wet paint.

Painter's new mirror axis

Paint just once but leave behind two, four, or even more, symmetrical tracks! The Mirror and Kaleidoscope axes in the new Corel® Painter™ 12 make this possible.

Corel Painter tour for Adobe® Photoshop® users

Photoshop users, this tour will help you feel right at home! This handy PDF walks you through brushes and color palettes, managing your options, working with Photoshop files, finding your favorite features and much more! (PDF, 169 KB)

Corel Painter shortcuts

Check out some of our favorite shortcut keys, learn where to find the rest and discover how to create your own. (PDF, 224 KB)

Creating an Illustration in Corel Painter

In this tutorial, Painter Master Greg Banning recreates one of his illustrations from the book A Hero Named Howe (published by Raincoast Books in 2006). This retro-styled illustration takes a simple approach, keeping with the design style of the 1960s. (PDF, 1.02 MB)

Painting Chun-Li in Corel Painter

Painter Master Mike Thompson takes you through his illustration of Chun-Li from the popular Street Fighter® video game series, produced by Capcom®. You'll learn his tips from sketch to color blocking and adding final details. (PDF, 635 KB)

Painter Rocks the Art World

In honour of Painter's milestone 20th anniversary, artists from around the world have created video vignettes to share their favourite Painter tools and techniques. Dive into the heart of their art and discover just what makes Painter rock for them!

Creating An Image Hose in Corel Painter

The Corel® Painter™ Image Hose is like a brush that lets you spray images. Follow this tutorial for step-by-step instructions on how you can create your own custom Nozzle that paints with images you've created. (PDF, 553 KB)

Corel Painter for artists

With its ability to adapt and imitate most traditional mediums without mess and expense, digital art is quickly gaining a foothold among professional artists. Many choose Corel Painter—discover why

Painter Master John Derry
Join Painter Master John Derry as he takes you through the photo-painting process from start to finish. Learn tips and gain insight on the techniques you need to take a photo and convert it into a painting. Enjoy!

Workflow 1
Learn how John uses Adobe® Photoshop® to prep the photo for painting.

Workflow 2
John details how he uses Auto-Painting to both visualize the photo as a painting and as a starting point.

Workflow 3
Walk through the process of interpreting the photo into a painted result.

Get creative by using clone color
In this series of tutorials you will learn how to turn a photo into a painting using clone color. This lets you keep the colors of the original photo but reinterpret it through the characteristics of the particular brush you are using. You still need to be sensitive to a photo's form and move the brush as you would if you were painting from scratch. This is best achieved by using a pen tablet rather than a mouse. Get started with basic quick cloning of a flower still life, then move on to cloning a landscape with other paint brushes, and finally get creative when you work on a portrait.

Sensitive painting with RealBristle brushes

In this tutorial, Painter Master Cher Threinen-Pendarvis shows you how to sketch and develop a still life painting from direct observation, using RealBristle brushes to create your piece. RealBristle brushes, a new feature in Corel Painter X, simulate the natural movement of an artist's brush, creating brushstrokes that more closely reflect the look and feel of a traditional art brush. (PDF, 301 KB)

Painting photos in Corel Painter X

Transform a photo into a beautiful chalk drawing with digital artist, photographer, and Corel Painter pioneer, John Derry. In this tutorial, John describes how to choose a color scheme, create a custom border, and add touches that blend colors and create a realistic paper texture effect. (PDF, 417 KB)