Digital Watercolour Demonstration - Pickerel Weed Part Three

So, in a new file I started another Water layer experiment. I've never done it this way, but I used a gradient paint bucket fill in light blue and a darker blue for the base. Then on a new watercolour (wc) layer, I started with a very pale sand coloured brown wash in broad long strokes tapering off into the blue. I softened the focus of that watercolour layer slightly and blended it with a large grainy water blender.

Tip: Blending on a Watercolour Layer: It is still on a watercolour layer, but you can use the blender brushes on a watercolour layer if you do something like change the brightness/contrast or soften the focus, however slightly, first. I do this if I want the change to affect the watercolour layer only. Otherwise, you can drop a watercolour layer to canvas and blend it there.

 For this painting, I am keeping my layers separate, so I dropped all the layers and copied the new water layer file into the original WIP and deleted the old water layer. I had to erase more white areas from the plant layer to get the water to show through. This way I can work on my water in a separate file and just keep inserting it and deleting the previous one until I am happy with it and want to start blending it in with the plant layer.

Tip: Experiment with making your airbrushes wet airbrushes by choosing Wet option in the General Brush controls, then set size at approx. 60 (on 5x7 300 dpi canvas), reduce the opacity to 13%, reduce the spread to less than 20, the flow to about 45, and set feature at approx. 10. This will give you a nice fine wet glaze. I don't remember which airbrush this started from, but it was probably Tiny spattery airbrush. The key thing here is experiment with your brushes until they make the mark you want them to make! You won't be wasting any paint or paper to do it, and you will learn a great deal and have tons of fun!

Tip:  Don't forget, once you have these glazes on the paper you can lighten or darken them in various ways. I mentioned the ones I usually use in my demonstration on Painting Rocks Under Water. If you keep them on separate watercolour layers you can change the opacity of the layer itself until you like what you see, then drop them all.