Painting a Holiday Christmas Tree with Corel Painter

When you begin to paint close the "Eye" on the Canvas layer, this will help you to monitor your progress. Paint on Layer 1, from the center out, leaving the outside edges untouched. You will want most of the inside of the mask painted out so you have nice edges to work with.

From the Brush Selector choose the F-X category and the Fairy Dust variant. Change your brush color to Black. You may want to experiment with the size of the brush. The idea here is to create a frame or vignette around your tree. These masks can be used again and again in your creative process. You may want to experiment with different brushes a well.

When you have finished it's time to save the mask. Name the mask, "mask-1" save in the RIF file format. Select, File > Save As. Close the file completely. You will open it again shortly.