In this tutorial, I show you how I used one of my favorite default brushes in Corel® Painter™ IX, the Sargent brush, to create a rich, oily and painterly rendition of a couple dancing the tango.

Inspiration
My inspiration for this expressionistic painting, called Moment in Time, was a photograph I took of professional tango dancers Christy Coté (www.christycote.com) and Darren Lees performing at Pena Pachamama in San Francisco. I loved the connection between Christy and Darren that was captured in the image, a fleeting moment of stillness within the dance (hence, the title for the piece). Within the stillness was passion and feeling. It was that emotion that I wanted to evoke in my painting. My first step within Corel Painter was to choose File > Clone, which created a clone of the original photo. I used this clone as my working image for painting.

Sargent Brush
I decided to use the Sargent brush variant from the Artists category for this painting. This brush, named after the famed 19th-century painter John Singer Sargent, has a luscious oily feel to it and works well at both large and small scale. I love the way it breaks up the paint at the end of the stroke, especially when I give the brush stroke a little twist at the end. I started with a relatively large brush size (I chose Windows > Brush Controls > Size to get the size preview palette), and I used Clone Color (check the Clone Color icon in the Colors palette).

"Muck-Up"
I worked over the whole image, losing detail as I went, covering the entire canvas in broad, bold brush strokes. This technique creates a rough underpainting, which I call a "muck-up." I saved my working image at regular intervals, always using File > Save As and giving my file a sequential version number and a short note in the filename. I labeled this stage of my image "muck."

Controlling Focus and Adding Accents
I used the muck-up stage as a foundation from which to control the focus in the image, altering the overall lights and darks, getting rid of distracting detail, and adding little accents, such as the touch of bright teal in the highlight on Darren's forehead. I reduced the brush size and started working into the details in the face where I wanted to draw attention.

Increasing Tonal Contrast
With the Burn brush variant from the Photo category, I selectively increased the depth and darkness of the shadows, especially around the focal points of the image, using the increased tonal contrast to draw the viewer's eyes toward the dancing figures. Use this brush very lightly and sparingly. It's easy to overdo it!

Brightening Highlights
I completed the image with a light application of the Dodge brush variant from the Photo category to lighten and brighten highlights in the figures. As with the Burn brush, use the Dodge brush with caution—it's easy to blow out the highlights. For the completed image, a beautiful 40 x 50-inch print, I used the Epson Stylus® Pro 9600 printer with UltraChrome™ inks on PremierArt™ Water Resistant Canvas for Epson. You can see the final print in the background as Christy and Darren dance in front of it at an art showing.

Jeremy Sutton is a portrait artist, educator, and author based in San Francisco. Jeremy teaches Painter workshops, is a featured platform speaker at international conferences, and has published books, DVDs, and videos. See examples of Jeremy's artwork at www.jeremysutton.com. Learn about Jeremy's newest book, Painter IX Creativity: Digital Artist's Handbook, his new DVD tutorial, Painter IX Simplified for Photographers, and his classes and seminars on his educational Web site (www.paintercreativity.com). You can contact him at jeremy@paintercreativity.com.