This step move you closer to the final composition as you can sketch out how the final image will be. You should know about the final render image, so you can prepare accordingly. For this piece, I know that the final result will be 600 x 800 (portrait) but I want to have some room to crop for a specific shot. Hence my proportion for the document size may not be exact.

After I started a new document, I created a new layer (Default mode) as I wanted the lines to reside atop the canvas. At this stage, my primary tool is still Pencil (2B). Again, what I want to accomplish here is just a starting point for the final painting. In fact, you do not need to put much details at this point, instead just concentrate on the overall look of the image itself; the character position on screen, etc.

For me, sometimes this step is the quickest one and sometimes it can be most time consuming as you may want to try out different angles to represent your character. For this establishing shot, I wanted my audience to see the character's face clearly first. The next thing that should catch the eyes would be the strange looking arm. I decided at this point to make the background a bit plain but somewhat gloomy (to fit in with the character universe) as I don't want to emphasize the background too much that it'd deviate the attention from the main character.

A quick color study is essential, at least for me, to get an idea of the mood and tone of the final piece. It may not be exact and the final result may change as pieces come together.

	My favorite painting brush for a color study is Digital Watercolor, "Simple Water" as it allows me to glaze over the canvas. As previously stated, the pencil works are all sitting on one layer. This allows me to paint the digital water color directly on the canvas itself and still has the "pencil line" showing through.

While I'm defining the color space, I also add the chosen color to the Color Sets (Swatch) for future usage. The Color Sets resides beneath the main Color panel and Mixer tab (in default state) To add a color to Color Sets simply click on while the desired color is active. I do use this feature quite often as it's an easy way to store what color I used in the project. But try to keep the number of color low as Corel Painter itself is a very powerful tool to blend color and adding too many would be confusing sometimes.