Making an image a brush?

[Heather]

HI all!
 
I am looking for some guidance on how to make an image a brushstroke, for instance, a computer cord being used as a brushstroke...is this possible?

Thanks!

Heather

NOTE artwork is copyrighted. this is not my work, but the work of Tsevis.

Screen Shot 2016-11-04 at 11.57.06 AM.png

[Synthetik]

Yes, you can use an image or a movie file for a Brush Source if you want to, in addition to others like computational. Under the File : Paint Synthesizer menu there are 2 options for loading an image or movie file as the Source Brush

File : Paint Synthesizer : New Image Brush...

File : Paint Synthesizer : New Movie Brush...

Here's a tip on making a movie brush to create a photo mosaic.

Here's a link to some discussion that points you at other online resources associated with learning how to create photo mosaics in Tsevis styles.

[Omar B]

While it is clear that Charis Tsevis uses the movie-brush photo mosaic technique extensively for much of his work, I'm not sure how it could achieve the "computer cord" aesthetic that is featured in the attachment above or in these three collections. 

Perhaps this is related to the Stretch2 Source Brush Type approach as described in this Tip.

"Stretch2 Source Brush feature [used] in conjunction with a movie brush allows for innovative new kinds of photo mosaic imagery where the individual sub-image elements of the mosaic can twist and flow while following a paint path".

For what it's worth, according to the source of that quote, this feature had not even been released at the time that Charis did those pieces. 

[Synthetik]

Sorry if i misunderstood part of the question. I was responding to 'image brush', not the notion of painting cords.

'Stretch Brushes' have been around for quite awhile in Studio Artist before 'Stretch 2' became available. We had some examples using sections of metal chain for example in V3, and there were stretch the cat head and other examples prior to that back in original V1. Stretch 2 probably gives better quality over the earlier stretch brush type options, and we added additional improvements in V5.

Now, if you look at what is being done in the electric cord art examples provided by the links above, if you analyze them, it should become obvious that it's not necessarily a stretch brush that is being used. I say this because the cord ends aren't stretched at all. A stretch brush would stretch out the entire image along the path. But it appears that the cord end is only painted once with no stretch in a single brush nib.

So, how could you do that using paint synthesizer existing features. Here are 2 thoughts off the top of my head. One approach would be to fake it. Use a nice 3d looking paint preset for the main body of the cord. And then carefully hand paint the end on it using an image brush of the cord end.

Another approach would be to use a movie brush, where the first frame in the movie brush was the cord, and the rest of the frames were a spherical brush nib. If you then used an appropriate MB 1D Frame Mod option for 1D frame indexing into the movie brush, you could paint the cord end once and then the rest of the cord as a spherical brush. Stroke Restart Cycle Forward might work. Path Length modulation would probably be more sensitive, since depending on how long your movie brush and paint paths were, you might ned up repeating the initial frame image (or not).

I guess another 3rd approach would be to do 2 separate passes using a recorded bezier path. You could paint in the entire path of the cord using a spherical 3d like paint preset. Then run a second paint pass using a cord end image brush, and set it up so that it only painted one initial paint nib at the beginning of the bezier path and then stopped.

There are probably other approaches to doing it. I'm just spouting these suggestions off the top of my head. One of Charis's artistic gifts (in addition to having extremely good visual taste and an eye for detail) is that he spent a lot of time when he first acquired Studio Artist learning the technical features and depth of the paint synthesizer, and then figured out unique and interesting ways to use them in his own personal artwork, creating unique and interesting personal artistic looks for his artwork in the process. So he didn't just grab existing factory presets and then run with them, he took the time to play around and understand what the paint synthesizer could do and then developed his own unique approaches to using some of those features in his personal artwork.

[Omar B]

In fact, mid way through the steps described in the Stretch2 tip, we get to a state where the beginning of the stroke is not stretched, but then gets stretched indefinitely for the rest of the stroke, which could provide the cables with nice unstretched ends. 

However, the additional elements/effect that I note when looking at Charis' work up close are that the cables appear to be more complex, i.e. truly 3d elements that are intertwined, have with reflections, shadows, etc.