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I recently acquired a copy of Corel Essentials 6 from the Bob Ross Humble Bundle as well as what was billed as the "Corel Painter Essentials Mystic Mountain Essentials Brush Pack". Much to my chagrin, when I started following their Mystic Mountain tutorial, I found it's apparently actually built for their Corel Painter product and another Mystic Mountain brush set. I've been able to adapt a fair amount of what they've suggested, but I'm slightly stymied where they're calling out for a "Foliage" brush. As best I can tell, as seen at 22:15 of the tutorial, this creates alternating diagonal strokes in the direction of painting in slightly varying shades of the color chosen. It provides a stroke that fades in from a narrow line to a wider one based on pressure, with slightly furry edges. It does certainly seem to do the job of drawing a lot of trees very quickly.

Is there a way to emulate this in Corel Essentials, or perhaps in GIMP?

As it is, I've adapted a few other techniques to draw some of the far-off trees, and I'm attempting to learn how to simply hand draw the trees with a few strokes, but my drawing tablet is in the mail, and it's tricky to quickly swipe the trees in with mouse movements. They look like much less than happy accidents...

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  • My essential question of how to create a similarly useful brush is still unanswered, unfortunately.
    – Sean Duggan
    Oct 19, 2019 at 1:38

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It's virtually impossible to paint with a mouse. Wait until your graphics tablet arrives. You should find that strokes like that are easily made with just about any small tipped brush. The pressure sensitivity of a graphics tablet will ensure you can easily get darker and lighter strokes. That's all that seems to be going in the video you linked to.

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  • I feel like there's probably more going on given that it looks like they were just scrubbing left and right, and getting something close to tree branches, but the tablet does arrive tomorrow, so I'll what good that does.
    – Sean Duggan
    Mar 15, 2018 at 15:52
  • Just to follow up, I have both found that I'm not very good at drawing with a tablet, so I'm largely using the mouse. Also through various shenanigans, I am now the proud owner of a Painter 2019 license and the Bob Ross brush packs, and the foliage brush indeed pretty automatically draws the right stroke, making this kind of painting virtually effortless.
    – Sean Duggan
    Oct 19, 2019 at 1:37
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    @SeanDuggan - I was in the same boat as you when I first got a tablet. It takes time and practice to get good with a graphics tablet, and to get over the disconnect between hand and eye. Don't just give up! The problem with a mouse is it has no pressure sensitivity - this is really a deal breaker for any serious artist.
    – Billy Kerr
    Oct 19, 2019 at 16:02
  • @SeanDuggan I just got Painter 2019 on humble bundle... but they no longer have the bob ross brushes available anywhere. Can you help point me in the right direction?
    – Curtis
    Dec 2, 2019 at 2:56
  • @Curtis: Tech support provided me with a copy of it after I told them that I owned the Essentials Brush Pack, although it took a fair amount of back-and-forth to get them to that point.
    – Sean Duggan
    Dec 2, 2019 at 4:31
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The Foliage and Trees brush in the Mystic Mountains brush set is a captured dab brush that creates a slightly flat profile with some variability. It adjusts the brush angle to follow the bearing of the stroke so that it maintains mostly the same profile. It operates at 91% opacity with said opacity being pressure-dependent. There is no jitter or variation in color or size built in although the method used to follow the angles results in slight seeming jitter for smaller movements as it jumps angles.

It is not possible to replicate this brush in Corel Essentials 6 because they don't provide editing of brush characteristics. In GIMP, it is possible to get a very similar brush by using the "Pencil 01" brush shape, setting Pressure to vary Opacity and Size, setting Direction to modify Angle, and setting Fade to modify Size as well. I suspect one could get even closer by using a more translucent brush shape and with a similar dab appearance.

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