Kai

For the longest time I've used Corel Painter for nearly all my portraits. About 2 years ago I – foolishly, in a moment of weakness – opted for a new subscription model for Painter. So instead of evaluating and deciding if new upgrades were worth the cost of upgrading, I would automatically get the new upgrade as part of my yearly $200 subscription fee.

Well, it's been over two years without any upgrades in Painter, and frankly, I think I got screwed on the deal. I've used Painter for at least 26 years, but a few months back I began looking for alternative painting software, partly because I was angry at the useless subscription model, and partly because as much I liked Painter, there were some irritating aspects about it.

In particular, it seemed difficult to get my digital brushes in Painter to respond to the grain of the canvas. Most of the time the stroke looked too smooth, and not enough like painting on canvas.

Then I found Rebelle, a relatively young painting application from Escape Motions and – Wow! – did it respond to the surface texture! You can see what I'm talking about in the image above the headline. Those dots are the highpoints of the canvas texture, and to my mind, THAT's how oil paint should look.

It took a while for me to get the hang of how Rebelle works, and to make needed adjustments to how I digitally paint to take advantage of the application's strengths.

I'm not totally there yet, but this portrait of Kai was done completely in Rebelle, and I'm very happy with it, and so was my customer.

For the time being, I'm sticking with Rebelle as my starter, and moving Painter to the bench until my current subscription runs out. Then Painter will be retired.

Kai (11x14 digital painting). Using my new painting software, Rebelle.