This was done using Painter 8 and the trusty Wacom, but can be achieved with photoshop and a mouse, if you're very, very patient.

Question: is Painter 8 a good program?

I like Painter a lot.

However... to be perfectly honest, I've had the program for several years now, and I feel as though I've barely scratched the surface of what it can do. It is very good at imitating most 'real' media, but sometimes it falls a little short. For example, the colored pencil tool, instead of building pigment to peak at the set color (say you have the palette set to bright red) the more you color over an area, the closer it moves to black. Which is really irritating. I don't know if they've fixed that in later versions.

Usually I stick to the pen tools and the blenders... even just using those two tools, there are well over twenty sub-sets within each category. For pens, you have options like ballpoint pen, fine point pen, flat color pen, jittery pen, leaky pen. Plus tons more. For this tutorial, I only used three tools-- the fine point pen, the soft blender stump, and the flat eraser.

In some respects, it is overkill for what I use it for. But it's practically built for use with a tablet, unlike photoshop, which is, at its root, a photoediting program, not an art program. However, there are some things Painter is simply not meant for, that photoshop is far superior at. The line/shape tool in Painter is totally counter-intuitive, with strange properties that make in very difficult to work with. putting in panel borders with Painter is enough to make me rip my hair out. Also, inserting text with Painter is a trial, and, for some reason, it will raster the bejesus out of any blambot font you try to use. So, even though I do all my art (including, grudgingly, panel borders,) with Painter, I turn to Photoshop elements to insert voice bubbles and text.

You can get painter for about $100 with a student ID, and if you're the kind of person to sit for hours in front of your computer just figuring out what a program can do, you'll be great at it.

I don't know how intuitive it really is, though. I understand it fairly well because I had the chance to fool around with earlier versions at my school, and many of the menu commands are similar to photoshop, but there are some options you may never find just by playing around with the program, so in that way it isn't the user-friendliest.

Hmmm. Okay, that was a lot of rambling. The gist of it is: Painter is a fantastic program that will utterly spoil you for choice. But it can be overkill for webcomicing, especially for the price tag.

Cool. I like this tutorial a lot~ Good job. It's similar to my way of coloring hair.

Very nice tutorial! May I save this on my compy for future reference?
Also, does the Painter program come free with Wacom tablets?

Please save away!

My Wacom (Intuos 2 Platinum, 6x8, factory refurbished) came with Photoshop Elements 2.0 and Painter Classic. I think they still give these programs out with Wacoms... but I bought mine a little over two years ago, so I'm not positive.

Painter Classic really doesn't compare at all to the newest versions, but much of the interface is similar, so it might give you a decent idea of how the program operates if you're looking to buy a 'real' version. It's just a very, very basic program... not as many options as the newer ones, and some of the media aren't as lifelike as the new versions.

great tut

Thanks, subcultured.