Creating a Vintage Style Paint by Number Pattern in Painter 12

My finished pattern

One of Spoonflower's upcoming design challenges is to create a repeating pattern that looks like a vintage paint-by-number kit, the type that were popular in the 1950s and 60s. The design brief on the Spoonflower site states, "While your repeating design may take a bit longer to design than a traditional paint-by-numbers kit, it should capture the iconic styles found in the beginner-friendly technique: full opacity, crisp solid line work, clearly defined areas of color and a simplified take on your subject matter." The brief goes on to state, "Please remember to color your design in fully and leave the black and white only designs for our coloring book challenges!"

Animals and landscapes were popular themes in paint-by-number kits. I remember having a couple of paint-by-number kits when I was a kid and as I recall, one of them was a portrait of a horse's head.

Before designing my pattern, I decided to get some inspiration by googling "paint-by-number." I saved a few that I liked, including one of a group of flamingoes. For some reason flamingoes were popular subjects of these kits, possibly because they tied in with the 1950s love for exotica that had its aural equivalent in the records put out by composers like Martin Denny and Les Baxter.

vintage paint-by-number image found using Google

After deciding that flamingoes would be the perfect choice for my paint-by-number pattern, I next googled images of flamingoes. After saving a few photos, it was time to get started. For this type of pattern, I knew I wanted my pattern to have a painterly look so I decided to use Corel Painter (I have an older version which is Painter 12). You could probably achieve a similar look in Photoshop, but I've been using Painter for a long time and I'm more comfortable with its brushes. I also like it's wrap around pattern feature.

In this tutorial, I will explain how I created my pattern in Painter 12, but if you don't use Painter (and I don't think too many people do, at least compared to those who use Photoshop), you can skip to the end of this tutorial to see how I built up my pattern. Click on any image to see it larger.

To create a repeating pattern in Painter, one first needs to set up a canvas. You do this pretty much the same as you would in any program by going to File in the menu and selecting New. That will open up a dialogue window that allows you to input your size and resolution. Since Painter is a memory hog, and I knew I wanted this to be the size of a fabric fat quarter (18 x 21 inches) I made the resolution at 150 dpi, which is also the resolution that Spoonflower suggests for uploading to their site.

Once you have a canvas open, you can either begin to sketch or you can immediately set up the pattern feature. If you start to sketch before setting up the pattern feature, you won't get the wrap around effect when you reach an edge. It doesn't matter though, because you can "Capture" a pattern even if you have a blank canvas. The important thing is, when you use the "Capture" pattern command, you have to make sure you only have one layer. The base layer in Painter will show up as "Canvas" in the Layers window. If you have any other layers in addition to the "Canvas" layer, than the "Capture" pattern feature won't work. But don't worry, once you've "Captured" your image (or blank canvas) and reopened it to start work on your pattern, you can add more layers.

So, to set up the pattern feature, you need to make sure the Patterns panel/window is open. To do this, you go to "Window" in the menu and then scroll down to "Media Control Panels" and then select "Patterns." That will open up a panel that looks like what you see below.

Patterns panel in Corel Painter 12

You're next step is to capture your canvas. You do this by going to "Select" in the Menu and choosing "All," or you can use a keyboard shortcut (on a Mac it's Command A). Once your canvas is selected, go to the drop down menu in the upper right corner of the Patterns panel (see red circle in the below screen shot).

Go to drop down menu in Patterns Panel

Choose Capture Pattern

In the menu that opens up, there are a number of choices. The one you need to set up the pattern wrap around is "Capture Pattern..." I actually don't know what "Define Pattern" is for. I never use it. I've never used "Make Fractal Pattern" either. For this tutorial, all you need to worry about is the "Capture Pattern" feature.

Once you have chosen "Capture Pattern," you will see this dialogue box.

This is where you can name your pattern and decide how you want it to repeat. For my Flamingo Paint-by-Number pattern, I wanted it to be a "half-drop" pattern so I selected Vertical Shift and moved the slider to 50%. If you want a basic repeat, then you would select "Rectangular Tile" and leave the slider at 0. If you have already sketched on your canvas, then you will see your sketch in the Preview window. In this example, I captured a blank canvas so the preview window is blank.

Once you have made your selections, you can click OK. Once you click okay, Painter will process your new pattern and send it to the Pattern library. While it's doing this, you will get the spinning beach ball for a couple of minutes. Once the spinning beach ball goes away, you can begin to work on your pattern, but there is one last step you need to do. After the spinning beach ball disappears, CLOSE your open canvas (the one you selected earlier to capture) and then go back to the drop down menu in the Patterns panel. This time select the "Check out pattern" selection.

This will open up your canvas again, but this time it will have the working pattern wrap around feature that allows you to draw off of one edge and have your line continue on the opposite edge. When you select "Check Out Pattern," Painter will always open the most recent pattern that you captured, but once you have built up a library of patterns you can select another pattern to open by selecting the small arrow in the little thumbnail image to the upper right of the Pattern panels preview window, but that's getting ahead of myself and something you don't need to worry about for this tutorial.

Now that I have a canvas that has the working pattern wrap around, I can begin to sketch. For my flamingo pattern, I added in some of the photo reference that I found so that I could easily draw my flamingoes. I put the photos on a separate layer and lowered their opacity so that I could easily see my pencil lines.

Sketch with photo reference visible on a separate layer

After I had my sketch completed, I checked out how the repeat worked. I did this by saving the file as a photoshop file and then, after opening it in photoshop, I created a large photoshop file (30 x 40 inches) and cut and pasted my 18 x 21 inch Painter file into that new canvas. I then duplicated it several times and lined it up so the edges matched. I could have also checked the repeat in Painter, but it would have meant flattening my image and Capturing the canvas again, waiting for the spinning beach ball to disappear, etc. I have found it's faster to just save my work periodically as a photoshop file and go to Photoshop to check the repeat. By the way, that brings me to a very IMPORTANT bit of information - when working in Painter, for the pattern feature to remain functional, before you ever close your work, you need to save the file as a native Painter file which is called a 'rif' file. If you were to save your work as a photoshop file, then close the file in painter and then try to reopen the photoshop file in Painter, the pattern function would no longer work. So make sure you save your file as a "rif" file before closing your canvas.

Here's how the sketch looked repeated in Photoshop

Once I liked how the repeat worked, it was time to start adding color. Back in Painter, I opened up the Flamingo paint-by-number image I found on Google and used the eye dropper tool to sample some of the colors. The number of colors used in most paint-by-number kits were limited and except for the darker colors seemed to be somewhat low in saturation. I don't think I've ever seen a vintage paint-by-number kit that used neon colors. The colors always seemed to have a sort of milky look to them. By sampling the colors from a vintage image, I was able to get some of that vintage color look into my pattern.

I began by blocking in my colors very roughly, not caring whether or not I was going over the lines. After I had most of the canvas covered in colors, I checked again how the repeat was looking.

At this point I decided to move two of the baby flamingoes over closer to the nest and to add another adult flamingo that would be looking down at them.

I moved two of the babies and added another adult

I continued to add color. In the early stages, I had several layers. A separate pencil sketch layer for the flamingoes, another sketch layer for the trees and plants and then three different layers for the colors - one for the flamingoes, one for the water and another for the plants.

screen shot showing the various layers

Almost finished with the coloring

Paint-by-number images were known for their flat areas of color. There was no blending of colors, any shading was done by adding a darker color next to a lighter color. Since these kits came with a pre-drawn image, created as an outline with each color done as a separate outlined area containing a number corresponding to a color, there was little in the way of fine details in these paintings. Keeping that in mind, I tried to make my color areas somewhat broad. I tried not to use fine lines, although I do have a few that might have stretched the limit of what you would have found in an actual paint-by-number kit. Also, these paintings tended to look somewhat "blobby." It was hard to place one color up next to another without painting over the adjacent color so often the edges were squiggly and somewhat rough. Knowing this, helped free me up to not be too precise in my coloring. The shapes were often simple, which was another important factor to remember as I colored in my image.

As I got closer to finishing, I eventually combined the layers that had my tree and plant colors with the layer containing the water and sky. Doing this helped force me to keep my shapes and coloring somewhat simple.

In conclusion, to create a faux paint-by-number, do some research of actual vintage paintings, decide on your subject, sample colors from a vintage image, keep your color areas broad and flat and don't worry about your edges being precise. All of these things will help give your image a vintage feel.

My finished pattern which works as a half-drop repeat

The finished pattern shown as a repeat

Evolution of an illustration

The final image, showing Henry
Bergh jumping through the skylight.

For the past three months I've been working on a non-fiction children's book that will be released next Spring. I am very excited about this project, not only because of the fascinating subject matter (more on that in a second) but because it is my first assignment with a major publisher (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). The book is titled "Mercy, The Incredible True Story of Henry Bergh, Founder of the ASPCA," by Nancy Furstinger.

April of 2016 will mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of the ASPCA and being an animal lover, I'm very excited that the book I am illustrating will be released in conjunction with the ASPCA's anniversary celebrations.

For this posting I am going to let my readers in on the process of how I went about creating one of the illustrations for "Mercy." In the book's introduction, author Nancy Furstinger relates a suspenseful incident involving ASPCA founder Henry Bergh and his attempt to put a stop to a dog fight. The scene describes him waiting on the rooftop of a building where a fight was about to take place. He and another officer are watching the activities of the dog owners through a skylight. Just before the men release their dogs, Henry leaps through the skylight. I won't tell you how the scene ends, you'll have to read the book to find out, but in this post, I'll show you how I came up with the illustration that will accompany this scene in the book.

Reference books from the library

The action for this scene takes place in 1866. So, before beginning any sketching, I researched the time period. Henry Bergh was born in 1813 and died in 1888, his life spanning much of the nineteenth century. To begin my research, I checked out a number of books from the library, including books on fashions of the period and references for both human and animal anatomy. Much of my research though was done online. For this particular illustration I needed an image of a man jumping down through an open skylight. One of my favorite online sources for visual reference material is Getty images, which is actually a stock photography site for purchasing the rights to hi-res images for use in publications. But it's also a great source for reference images to aid in your drawings. The previews that come up when you do a search will be at screen resolution and have a watermark across them, but since they are to be used only for drawing reference, they are extremely useful for finding people in various poses, styles of dress, etc.

The leaping man in this image became my reference
for Henry Bergh jumping through the skylight

To start on this illustration I entered a number of search terms, things like 'man jumping,' 'man jumping down,' 'man leaping,' etc.  I not only used Getty images, but I did "Google" searches as well, using the same search terms. Once I started finding some possibly useful images, I downloaded them in to a folder on my computer. Using Adobe Bridge, I was then able to organize and look at thumbnails of all of my downloaded images. While using Getty images, I discovered some wonderful late nineteenth century illustrations from a periodical titled 'Le Petit Journal.' These illustrations were loaded with action and great period details and provided useful reference in several of my illustrations including this one.

An early attempt at a layout using
cut and pasted reference material

Once I had enough images, I did a rough layout by cutting and pasting some of my reference figures into a sort of collage. These collages were my early attempts at getting the illustration to match how, in my imagination, I felt the scene should look.  I played with several poses from various images and if things didn't look like how I imagined them, I would start over from scratch.  This scene on the left is my first attempt at a layout.

If I were an expert at drawing anatomy and perspective from scratch, I might have opted to just sketch out my idea. But since I had already downloaded the reference images, I found it was quicker to do a rough cut-and-paste job of my reference materials. That way I could move the elements around, scale them, flip them, etc. until I achieved a layout I was happy with.

Below are some examples of how my collage layout changed to reflect my evolving idea of how I wanted the scene to look.  Once I had the main figures positioned where I wanted them, I began to draw. I drew the dogs freehand, without much in the way of reference. I also made up whatever figures and elements were missing from my collage. The sketch shown at the bottom below displays the final layout, although I did make some changes to the dogs before I began to ink and color the illustration. I did all of my coloring and painting in Corel Painter 12, primarily using the digital watercolor brushes.

a second attempt where I've changed
some of the reference elements

The scene is starting to come together
 although the foreground is too
crowded, with no room to show the dogs.

Here I have begun to sketch out the scene based
on my cut and pasted collage. Some elements,
like the dogs, and some of the faces in the crowd,
I made up without much in the way
of any reference.

Illustration Friday - Lost

I've been very lax about posting to this blog.  Lately, I've become addicted to tumblr and have two blogs there where I post sketches and other items of interest with minimal writing attached (vincentdesjardinsdraws and Jumbled Planet).

But, today I wanted to post and talk about the image I submitted for this week's "Illustration Friday," challenge which is the word 'Lost.'  I was originally inspired to create this illustration by a photo of a spooky, moss covered forest (you can see the original image, below left).  I created the final image in Painter, but before I began, I opened the photo in Photoshop and created a threshold layer so that I could better see the lights and darks in the image. I then used this as a visual reference to create the darkest shapes in my image.

From there, I began sketching in Painter 12.  Originally I had thought to do this as a digital oil or gouache painting, but then I thought it might be more dramatic to do it as a black and white digital pen and ink drawing.  From the very start, I knew I had wanted to have a rabbit in the image.  I like rabbits and I thought it might provide some tension to show an innocent looking little rabbit lost in this rather imposting and dramatic looking forest.

Beginnings of digital pencil sketch

In the above image, I've begun to map the darkest areas

After I had blocked in the darkest trees, I added additional layers to fill in the background shading.  By having the cross-hatched background shading on a different layer, I could erase areas of it without damaging the main shapes.  This came in very handy when I decided to add some shafts of sunlight to the image. As I continued to work, I began to deviate from the original photo and started adding branches and leaves where I thought the image could use some texture and visual interest.

Here, I'm filling in the background with lots of cross hatching.

As I darkened the background, I decided to add some rays of sunlight, to help guide the viewer's eye toward the rabbit.

Finally, after finishing the image in black and white, I decided it might be fun to do a colored version.  Since I had created the black and white image on several layers it was easy to add another layer underneath to create the color.  All I did was flatten the black and white layers to a single layer and changed the resulting layer to a 'multiply' blending mode, which allowed the color to show through in the white areas.

Above is the finished piece and below, you can see what the watercolor layer looks like without the pen and ink layer.

What Makes You Jump?

"Jump" was this week's 'Illustration Friday' word and I had quite a bit of fun coming up with ideas.  Since I couldn't decide which idea I liked the best (and since I was also looking for a way to procrastinate working on another project), I actually ended up doing three interpretations.

My first idea was to see if I could make the word itself into things that seemed to be jumping. My first sketch was with letters shaped like people, but I couldn't get that idea to work, so I tried it with animals. The "J" duck, the "U" fish and the "M" dog came easily but I had a hard time coming up with something for the "P." First, I tried a Giraffe, but, even with it's long neck, it wouldn't cooperate.  When I thought about the elephant and it's trunk, I knew I had my solution.

My next idea was inspired by my dog.  Fortunately she doesn't have fleas, but she does scratch herself once in a while, which gave me the idea for this drawing. Fleas are powerful jumpers.  I think I read somewhere, that a flea's jumping ability, if it were translated to a human equivalent would be like a man jumping over a building.  I actually did two versions of this drawing.  In my first one, I sketched the dog very quickly and though I liked its face, the body seemed too rigid and stiff. I was going to go with it anyway until at breakfast this morning my dog began scratching and I could see all of the problems with my original pose.  So, I tackled it again.  I've put the two of them side by side so that you can see the difference.  The one on the left is my first attempt.  On the right is my final version.  You can see I decided to add some more fleas. I also changed their size and the color of their trajectory lines.

I hadn't planned to do a third interpretation but this idea came to me this afternoon and it seemed too great to pass up. I did it fairly quickly, in just under an hour, using Painter 12's 'real' watercolor brushes. I think anyone who's gone to see a good scary movie can identify with what it's like to almost jump out of your seat when an unexpected scare is sprung on the audience. I wanted this illustration to have a spontaneous and 'alive' look to it, so I didn't do much in the way of cleaning up the watercolor.  I used 4 or 5 layers and painted in the dark blue gray first.  I like the way it sort of pooled into dark spots behind the figures, almost as if the light from the movie they're watching is casting a shadow behind them.

Illustration Friday - Heights

Giraffes see the world from great heights, which is why I chose it as my subject for this week's 'Illustration Friday' challenge which this week is the word "Heights."

I've been playing around lately with Painter 12's watercolor brushes. I've also been using some brushes that I downloaded from Skip Allen's Painter tutorial blog. Whenever I get a chance I try and do a quick illustration where I experiment with the various brushes. This week's 'Illustration Friday' illustration is the result of one of those experiments.

I started this illustration by painting in a background and then creating a new layer where I drew a pencil sketch of the giraffe (see below). I wanted the giraffe to appear to be stretching up into the sky, the tallest thing around, but in my original sketch, he seemed kind of lonely.  Not only that, but the image seemed rather boring.

I decided I wanted to have something at the giraffe's eye level, so on another layer I sketched in a flying bird.  To emphasize the giraffe's height, I decided to have him towering over some shrubs. To paint the giraffe's body, I created another layer and, using one of the soft chalk brushes, filled in the body's shape in a light tan. Above that layer, I placed a new watercolor layer where I painted his spots.  On yet another layer, I used some sketchy pen brushes to draw in his eyes and also to add a few lines to his face and legs.

Next, on a separate layer, I played around with adding another tree.  But when I added the large tree, suddenly the giraffe didn't seem so tall, so I got rid of it. I also ended up changing the foliage underneath the giraffe. It originally looked too dark and thick, so I thinned it out a bit and lightened the color.

As you can see in the final image (see below), I ended up flipping the bird horizontally over to the right side of the giraffe. 

Illustration Friday - Vocal

My first thought for the word 'Vocal,' which is this week's "Illustration Friday" challenge was of someone singing or yelling.  When I sat down to start sketching I began to draw a little boy.  During my lunch break, just prior to beginning this drawing, I had watched an early episode of "The Andy Griffith Show," and my drawing ended up looking like Opie Taylor as played by a very young Ron Howard. When I realized I was turning him into Opie, I googled the character and came up with a reference photo of Opie singing (or maybe he's yelling, though I don't recall too many episodes where Opie yelled). Anyway, I used the photo as a guide for the mouth, but as you can see I made some changes. I gave my boy, a gap in his teeth and I decided to have his eyes open.  I also turned his head slightly.

Below are a couple of early pencil sketches.  As I worked on the image, I decided the composition needed something else so I added a dog, which I based on a photo of my own dog, Poppy. The pencil sketches, as well as the finished illustration were done using Painter 12.

First sketch

Sketch after some clean up and shading

Are there places you'd like to return to?

The first version, painted in Corel Painter 11.

The word for this week's 'Illustration Friday' challenge is "Return." I've been thinking a lot lately about a place where I use to live. It was an old farm house in Washington state that was situated across the road from a meadow on the edge of a small forest. It was a place where I use to walk my dogs every day. I moved away from there 5 years ago when the relationship I was in fell apart and I've never felt as homesick for a place as I have for that house, meadow and forest. Lately I've begun to dream about it. For the past couple of months, I've had a dream almost every week that I have returned to that location. The house has since been sold and someone else now calls it home. I will probably never go back there, I think it would break my heart to go back and see someone else living in a place that I once felt was mine. But it did inspire me to create this image of an old woman returning to a favorite spot. Maybe it's a spot that she's never left, but returns to every day on walks with her dog.

I painted this illustration in Corel Painter 11 and then played around with it a bit, creating a new version by tweaking it in Photoshop using a Mister Retro filter to give it a sort of aged graphic feel. I then imported that version into Illustrator where, using the 'Trace' feature, I turned it into a vector image which simplified the shapes.  I saved that image as a tif file and then reopened it in Photoshop where I adjusted the colors.

The 2nd version, using the Mister Retro filter in Photoshop which added halftone dots.

The vector image version created in Illustrator and then adjusted in Photoshop.

My First Story for FarFaria

FarFaria is a recently launched storybook app for the iPad.  In early January I was contacted by one of their Art Directors who had seen my online portfolio on the SCBWI site.  To make a long story short, after a nice phone call from their CEO, I was hired to do illustrations for one of their projects. I began work on the story at the end of January and finished it about 5 weeks later.  The app was launched on February 14th and my first story, "The Magic Fish," was published last week.

After they sent me the manuscript, I was asked to do a series of thumbnail storyboard sketches plus a color sketch of the main characters.  Once these were approved, I proceeded with the final art.  For the final art, FarFaria provided me with a template and detailed instructions on how the art needed to be set-up for their app's layout.

Here is one of the thumbnail sketches and then a cleaned up version that I prepared for the final art.

Here is the sketch that I submitted to show the characters and my color scheme.  The first draft of the manuscript that I received had the fish changing color as the story progressed.  After some revisions, it was decided to have the fish remain the same color throughout. 

Below is the final version of the art that is shown in the sketches at the top.  I created the final art using Corel Painter 11. This scene takes place after the fisherman has returned for the second time to ask the Magic Fish for a favor for his greedy wife. Each time he returns to the fish, the sea and the winds have gotten rougher.

The top image shows the illustration with the template turned on.  The shaded area around the edges is a padding area which is like the 'bleed' area for a printed page.  the white space in the lower half of the image is where the text will be dropped in.  The main part of the image needed to be visible in the upper half of the image above the white area and not be hidden by any of the shaded areas.  The bottom image shows the illustration with the template layers turned off.