NDA Art Critique Message Boards

Yush, as the title says. The mods can move this if I placed it in the wrong section.

Okay, Painter first.

I have Corel Painter X on my computer, but of late, I have gotten a problem with it (bad sentence). The thing is, I can only draw on the Canvas-layer. I can add as many other layers as I want, but I can't draw on them - that is, none of my brush strokes show up. The layer isn't locked or anything.

But when I create a new layer in Photoshop and fill that one with some colors, save the file and open it in Painter, it works, but only on that layer. And Painter is so huge and I'm not good with the technical stuff, so I have no idea what's wrong.

The other question is - I found a webpage some time ago with comic tutorials. It was called Joe Fedora or something, and it had links to different tutorials, among them a link to one McDuffin. I was so stupid that I didn't bookmark the page, and now I can't find it. I thought I found it here in the first place, but I honestly don't remember *feels stupid * So, does anyone know what webpage I'm talking about? An do they have the link?

Joel Fagin's tutorials. http://www.between-worlds.com/tutorials/
The other tutorials are found in the dropdown menus at the bottoms of the pages. Brilliant tutorials, I've learned a lot from this guy.

As for your painter problem, I'll try to help though I don't own the program. Here's a couple of questions:
1. Do you have a new computer?
2. Do you have a really outdated computer?
3. Have you rebooted the computer?
4. Have you contacted Corel about this problem?

1. If you have a new computer, there may be an OS confliction with Painter. In which case, download the new drivers.
2. If you have a really outdated computer, it may not be able to run the newer Painter with as much grace as a newer one. Old computers have a tendency to run a program fine for a time, then randomly blow up and say it can't run it. If this is true, you might never be able to run Painter without serious upgrades or a new computer.
3. Rebooting is often the answer to every problem. If you haven't rebooted the thing, do so then try.
4. If none of the above helped, contact Corel. They'll certainly be able to help seeing that they have a trained tech department whereas I simply fiddle with school-issued computers in the hopes of making them better.

I hope this helps in some way. And good luck with fixing the program.

Well, if you can draw on the canvas layer, it can't be an issue with your computer being incompatible with corel.

What I would suggest is checking five things:

1. Be sure your layers' transparency is set to 100%.
2. Look at your "Layers" bar .. and underneath the opacity slider there are two boxes there that say, "Preserve Transparency" and "Pick up Underlying Color". Both boxes next to them should be unchecked. Also, even if they are visibly unchecked, sometimes there's a bug where their still active; so try checking it and unchecking it and see if that works.
3. Check the layer's blending mode; if it's set to a mode like Screen where it filters out all the black stuff, and you're trying to draw with black, nothing's going to show up.
4. Restore all brush variants in the currently loaded brush library to their default state (Brush Selector menu > Restore All Default Variants).
5. Some brush variants only work on existing color, so if you try to paint on a new entirely transparent Layer or on transparent areas of a Layer, nothing happens. In the Brush Controls' General palette, check to make sure the brush variant does not use either Method: Drip or Method: Plugin. Those are brush variants that only work on existing color.

That's it, yeah! I just remembered the hat on that webpage, and whew, Joe Fedora was born xD Now I feel stupid.



That was the bug - I tried checking and unchecking, and now it works. Thanks a lot, both of you!