John Derry Gallery
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John Derry
From The Painter 7 Wow! book, by Cher Threinen-Pendarvis
© by Corel Corporation
John Derry created Piece of Cake --an homage to the artist Wayne Theibaud--for the promotion of Painter 7, using a variety of tools including Pencils variants, colored shapes and thick Impasto. To begin, he drew a tight, black-and-white sketch using the Thick and Thin Pencil variant of Pencils. In the sketch, he established the shape of each element and the cast shadows. He drew each element on a separate layer, so he could move the elements around as he fine-tuned the composition. (To add a new layer, click the right triangle on the Layers section bar, and choose New Layer from the menu.)
When he was satisfied with the composition, Derry drew a final clean, colored line sketch using a dark purple that would be used later for the shadows and the contour lines around many of the objects in the illustration. With the layered sketch active, he chose File, Clone to create a flattened duplicate of the sketch. So that he could use Tracing Paper, he deleted the contents of the clone canvas by choosing Select, All and pressing the Backspace/Delete key. To activate Tracing Paper, he chose Canvas, Tracing Paper and carefully traced the final shapes of the elements.
Using the drawing as a guide, he drew colored shapes with the Pen tool. The vector-based shapes gave him the capability to finesse the color of individual elements by simply refilling rather than repainting. When the basic color areas were as he wanted them, he flattened the image by choosing Drop All from the menu on the right side of the Layers section bar.
Using a custom Impasto brush based on the Dry Ink variant of Brushes, Derry added the texture of thick brushstrokes to the image. (To sample color from each area, he pressed the Alt/Option key to temporarily change from the Brush to the Dropper tool.) He painted subtle brushstrokes that followed the forms to make contours. For the cake icing, Derry used a modified Gloopy variant of Impasto to dab thick paint in-between the layers of the cake slice and around the top of the cake. Using a small Opaque Flat brush, he also painted varied color on the contour lines around the cake, candles and plate. To add more realism to the paint for the table and wall, he applied more paint in a few areas to build up thicker bristle marks. To complete the painting, Derry adjusted the lighting on the Impasto brush work so that it would have more subtle highlights and shadows. He chose Canvas, Surface Lighting and reduced the Amount and Shine settings slightly.