For those of you less familiar with art creation software, Corel's Painter series are pieces of software whose purpose is to help you digitally create art that has the look and finish of real drawing and painting media, such as oil, conté crayons, watercolors, pastels or ink.
Of course, it won't create your art for you -- it sure is no replacement for raw talent. But nevertheless it's a great tool for professionals and amateurs alike, and you can spend hours fiddling with it.

The latest version in the Painter series is Painter IX.5. You can get a free 30-day trial on Corel's website.

I recently got it for myself, and I just started toying around with it yesterday evening. I created this little painting (gouache on canvas) in less than 2 hours.



















Better yet, if you have the chance to get yourself a Wacom Drawing Pad (I've been using one for over 10 years now - if you don't know what it is, check out http://www.wacom.com/), you get incredible stylus control and flexibility over the tools available in painter, for this natural look you want. Try it yourself !

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