Artistic Painting in Satori 2.29 XL


Satori fully customisable brushes are very capable of producing excellent fine-art type strokes. Brushes can be ANY shape and can be easily programmed to make transparent or opaque strokes.  These in turn can also be made to mix with, overlay or push existing colour.  Moreover, because Satori is a vector programme at heart, your finished painting can be printed out at any size without loss of quality.
There are one or two points that need to be remembered when using them, however.  As with any medium, once these have been used a few times, they become as automatic as any other painting technique. 

This brush set was designed for use with graphics tablet, but most should work reasonably well with just a mouse. (I can recommend Wacom's "Graphire" tablet as an inexpensive way in to PC fine art - it's what I use!)

Installation:
Place all the files into your Satori/Brushes folder.
You may find that there is not enough room for all your brushes.  If this is the case, follow the first tip below.

Tips on Artistic Brushing

1. Make room for more brushes. 
Either use the “Library” tab in the Brush Setup, which only removes Brushes from the actions palette for the current session, or follow the steps below:

We’re going to replace all the brushes that use ‘picture’ shapes with one brush that can reference all of these, similar to Picture Tubes and Image Hoses in other paint software.

Note: These are found in Satroi\Brushes.  Files with a .SBD ending are brush profiles and contain all the settings for the brush.  Files with a .CVS ending are Satori Canvasses and are pictures used as brush shapes or outlines.  You need only move the .SBD files.

Start or restart Satori.  The brushes you moved should now have disappeared. Open the Brush Setep dialogue box by clicking on either “Brush Setup” in the Paint/Size tab, or on “setup” on the Brushes and More tabs, also found in the Paint section of the Actions Palette.

Now we will make one Shapes brush to replace all the deleted brushes.


Here’s the clever bit.
In Brush Setup, click on the “Type” tab.  This gives you the choice of using a Standard Brush or an Imported File.  Activate the “Use Imported File”; the buttons marked “Browse” and “Thumbnail Browser” should now become active.
Click on “Thumbnail Browser”.  With a bit of luck it will open in your Satori/Brushes directory.  If not, you’ll have to browse to that directory.  When you do, behold, there are the shapes of the brushes you deleted earlier!

Double-click on a shape you want to use as a brush and click “Apply Now”.  Now you can paint with the chosen shape.  When you want to change the brush shape just select a different file to import. (note: Apply Now uses the current brush shape until you change brushes, then it returns to its default state.)

To make the brush shapes paint closer together or further apart, change the amount you set in the “Brush Application Distance” on the response tab.  Experiment with other settings as suggested in Section 4 to change the character of your brush.


2. In your main Satori folder make a folder for your own Brush Shapes.
Into this you can keep small canvasses or RIR files (400 x 400 pixels is about right), with different shapes that can used for any existing brush.  ANY shape or picture can used, so long as they are either a Satori CVS or RIR file. Follow the instructions above to browse to the canvas you want. Remember that CVS files are resolution independent whereas RIR files are bitmaps set to a fixed resolution.
Always save brush shape canvasses that you make with the highest compression. 

Remember to check or uncheck the "Use Imported Colour" button, depending on whether you want to use the imported file as a picture with its own colours (like, say, a leaf or coloured shapes), or just as a brush outline and using Satori’s palette colours.

3.  Personalize those brushes! 
·    With the brush setup dialog open, try using the same brushes with varying amounts of chalk added.  Put a check in the check-box next to the word “chalk” on the “Styles” tab. This will punch square holes into the brush shape.  Higher number put more holes into the brush. These squares are not quite so blocky in later versions. 
·    Do the same with the water dialog box.  This governs how the paint you are applying mixes with the paint underneath.  Anything over 90 makes very thin, runny paint that can be moved around.
·    Check or uncheck the No Buildup check box.  This will totally change the way paint flows out of the brush. With the No Buildup unchecked, the brush will continue to pour out paint in a continuous stream.  When it’s checked, the brush puts down it’s shape one blob at a time. 
·    Change the Limit amount on the style tab.  This will change the maximum amount of paint you put down.  Lowering the number make the paint appear lighter and thinner (more transparent).
·    All brushes can be turned into erasers by selecting “Remove Alpha” on the styles tab.
·    Smear paint around by selecting “Push” on the styles tab.

It can be useful to have the brush set-up dialog box open.  This makes it easier to make any of the above changes.  Either click on “Brush Setup” in the Paint/Size tab, or simply on “setup” on the Brushes and More tabs, also found in the Paint section of the Actions Palette.

Other Painting Techniques

Glazing.
   Use limiter to “thin” the paint and make it transparent”.

Blending and Smearing.
   Use push.

Painting on a coloured ground.
   Create one layer for the ground.  Fill with a coloured rectangle.  It is then very easy to experiment with different coloured backgrounds.

Palettes
   There are a few ways in which to make palettes. 
The first is to use the Swatch on the colour palette.  Click on “Clear” to clear the swatch.  Add colours as you create them.  Remember to save your swatch before you close Satori.  (Although Satori remembers the last palette loaded.)  This gives you a maximum of 48 colours.
Another way to make a palette is to create a second canvass with a white or neutral grey background onto which you can paint small blobs of all the colours you use.  This means that colour mixes are possible.
The picture itself is, of course, its own palette.  Just use the colour picker tool on Satori’s colour palette to select the colours you want.  These will not always be true colours as they may be mixed or transparent colours.
    Another idea is to create a colour swatch with the basic artist’s colours.

Layers
       Using separate layers is an ideal to keep different element from mixing.
For example you could have one layer for the canvass or paper colour, one for the drawing or sketch, one for sky and background elements and one for the main subject.  This means that if you don’t like the way things are going it is quicker to edit or simply delete a part of the painting.  You can also use the layer resize and move functions to re-arrange the composition.


Reasons to upgrade to the full version of Satori:

More Brushes
Later versions (3.4 on) have room for more brushes.
Movie Brushes
Movie brushes allow you paint with sequentially numbered pictures.  So you could have, say, ten pictures of different flowers (flower00.rir – flower09).  Satori automatically detects sequenced files and asks if you paint them in a sequence, putting one down after another.  This means that making picture tubes is a piece of cake compared to software like Paintshop Pro.
I have used this feature to create naturalistic splatter and artist’s brushes.
Build button
Brushes that use imported files can sometimes be slow to paint.  The full version of Satori has a “Build” button that builds a temporary set of brush shapes at all sizes up to the largest one you select.
Pressure Sensitivity
Pressure sensitivity for graphics tablets is vastly improved in the full version.  Brushes can be set to vary in width and opacity.

Have fun painting!

Tim Ross
tim@rosses.force9.co.uk