I have learned from experience not to take any Painter feature at face value. The Kaleidoscope Plugin is a classic example of a feature which may appear an interesting novelty, and after a few plays, is left in the bottom of the toy cupboard and forgotten about. In this article, we will resurrect this plugin as I demonstrate a technique encompassing the following;

• Use Painter's Kaleidoscope plugin to obtain new symmetrical imagery from a photograph or existing artwork.

• Capture the plugin produced imagery as a custom paper.

• With the aid of a custom variant, use the above paper for design and inspiration in creating concept and fantasy artwork.

What I find interesting about this technique is that it is possible to begin with for example, a cute photograph of a puppy dog as the source image, and derive from this imagery which can be emotionally very dark and disturbing. The Kaleidoscope plugin can also produce tiles of great elegance and beauty.

Sorry for the poor image quality with this one, but can you see the four alien skeletal figures making up each corner of the central floret?

Each captured Kaleidoscope tile originated from the default 100 x 100 pixel size, selected via the kaleidoscope dialogue. You can of course choose a larger size. After capture as a paper texture, by means of the paper scale slider in the Papers palette, the tile can be enlarged up to 400 percent (albeit with some loss of resulting image quality). In this example, another custom kaleidoscopic texture was used to render the border.

Please click in image to view a slightly larger version. 

The custom variant used to render all the images in this article employs the Soft Grain Colorize subcategory in Corel Painter. This allows us to simultaneously apply both the main and additional colors selected in the Colors palette, which in turn are influenced by the luminosity of the currently selected paper texture. For a more natural media appearance, any grain exhibiting variant such as the default Square Chalk may be substituted.

In the case of Soft Grain Colorize based variants, unlike the default Square Chalk variant, when painting at 100 percent opacity on the canvas or default layer in combination with a high contrast paper texture, the painted regions corresponding to the white paper texture areas will be covered by the main selected color in the Colors palette (even if that color is white). However, by painting on a layer with the composite method set to Gel or Multiply, transparency corresponding to the white areas of the paper texture is again achieved (although tinted by selected main colors or values other than white).

Experiment with adjusting the Paper Brightness and Paper Contrast settings in the Papers palette, as these can significantly effect the appearance of the rendered stroke.

In this case, when the additional color is set to black, and the main color to white in the Colors palette, there is a direct WYSIWYG relationship between the imagery viewed in the Paper Preview Window of the Papers palette and that rendered by the custom variant used. This means that the results of changing paper brightness and contrast settings in the papers palette may also be previewed before making the stroke.

Regarding the example on the left, the imagery was modified top centre by painting in black over some of the existing imagery to form what looks like the beak of an alien bird (viewed from the top). A little known feature of the Soft Grain Colorize algorithm is that by setting the Paper Contrast to 0 percent (no grain visible), with the additional color set to black and main to white, the Paper Brightness slider can be used as a near linear 'grayscale' value picker. In this case, the value displayed in the Paper Preview Window will also correspond to that rendered by the variant at 100 percent opacity.

Here I have modeled the form by using an eraser to cut away selected areas. Other than that, the custom kaleidoscope texture and selected main and additional colors make up the rendered stroke as depicted.

As a side note, I feel it is important to mention symmetry at this point. When symmetrical modeling by erasure or painting over the texture imagery, it may be better to proceed as follows;

1. After creating the desired profile, choose the best side of the imagery and using the Rectangular Selection tool, select that side, with one edge of the selection exactly (as near as possible) on the vertical axis (or horizontal axis, depending on the symmetry you require) of the shaped imagery.

2. Click inside the selection using the Layer Adjuster tool to float the selection to a new default layer. Reselect the Canvas in the Layers palette, Select menu> All followed by the Backspace/Delete key. You should now be able to see only one half of the original imagery.

3. Reselect the layer in the Layers palette and choose Duplicate Layer from the Layers menu. With either of the layers selected, choose Effects menu> Orientation> Flip Horizontal (or Flip Vertical if horizontal axis symmetry is required).

4. Using the Layer Adjuster tool, drag the imagery on the selected layer to align with the opposite side before selecting Drop All from the Layers palette menu.

Creating and Capturing Kaleidoscope Tiles as Paper Textures

The image above shows the five original Kaleidoscope tiles (actual size 100 x 100 pixels) used in creating the previous imagery in order of occurrence. Discovering suitable and interesting tiles is like embarking on a treasure hunt armed with a magnifying lens (although the Kaleidoscope window does not actually magnify the underlying imagery). I must also warn you that the process can become very addictive. The suggested steps are as follows;

1. In Painter, open an image over which the kaleidoscope lens will be used. The source imagery should ideally contain areas of contrast and detail. It may be preferable to work with a copy of your original source image, just in case it is accidentally saved after modification.

2. As the purpose in this case is to produce paper textures, we are not interested in color, so I suggest first desaturating the source image via Effects menu> Tonal Control> Adjust Colors, and in the Adjust Colors dialogue, move the Saturation slider all the way to the left before clicking OK. Depending on the image, you may also wish to make adjustments in the Equalize dialogue to improve contrast (Effects menu> Tonal Control> Equalize).

3. Invoke the kaleidoscope plugin dialogue, which in Painter IX is achieved via Layers menu> Dynamic Plugins> Kaleidoscope, or by clicking on the Dynamic Plugins icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and selecting Kaleidoscope from the drop down menu. If a tile size other than 100 x 100 pixels is required, enter the new size in the Kaleidoscope dialogue before clicking OK.

4. You will notice that a new Kaleidoscope plugin layer has been automatically created in the Layers palette. The Layer Adjuster tool has also been automatically selected and a Kaleidoscope lens window has appeared in the centre of the open image.

5. With the Kaleidoscope layer selected in the Layers palette, use the layer adjuster tool to slowly drag the Kaleidoscope lens over the underlying imagery. As you do this, you should notice that the imagery in the lens continually updates.

6. When an interesting tile is visible in the lens, cease dragging and then fine tune the lens position to obtain the best tile imagery.

7. Again, with the Kaleidoscope layer still selected in the Layers palette, choose Drop and Select from the Layers palette menu.

8. Choose Edit menu> Copy followed by Edit menu> Paste in New Image.

9. With the new image document to the front in the application, choose Select menu> All.

10. From the open Papers palette menu, choose Capture Paper, and in the resulting Save Paper dialogue, move the Crossfade slider all the way to the left (0.00) before naming the paper and clicking OK. The new texture should now be visible in the Paper Preview Window of the Papers palette.

11. Create a new custom papers library via the Paper Movers dialogue (Papers palette menu> Paper Mover), and drag the newly created texture icons from the left hand pane of the Paper Mover dialogue to the new library in the right hand pane before clicking Quit in the dialogue.

Resource Downloads

The following download folders contain the following;

• a Paper library (Kaleidoscope1 or Kaleidoscope1.pap for the PC version) . These should load successfully in Painter 7 and above via the Load Library option from the Papers palette menu. The Paper library contains 9 custom papers (including the ones used to create all the images in this article). I recommend first copying or moving the library to your Painter application folder.

• a folder containing 3 individual brush variant xml files (again for Painter 7 and above). These variants employ the Soft Grain Colorize (SGC) algorithm, and in combination with the above paper textures (after appropriate adjustments to Paper Scale, Brightness and Contrast settings), will produce imagery similar to the examples in this article. Each variant file must be moved or copied from the containing folder and individually placed in an existing Brush Category folder (i.e one already containing xml brush variant files) in a library of your choice.

There are no restrictions on use, other than the resources are not to be offered for sale or redistributed without my prior consent.

Download kaleidoscopy_pc.zip (74 KB) for the PC platform

Download Kaleidoscopy.dmg.gz (75 KB) for the Mac platform