Digital watercolour demonstration - Pickerel Weed Part Two

Note ~ September 2011

For some reason, this series of posts get a lots of visitors! I would like to point out that I painted this in August 2008 and my techniques have evolved since then. Please have a look in the Favourite Posts Area on the Home page for more current techniques and brushes.

Thanks,

Working with Layers:

I am able to erase as planned! I locked the canvas layer and water layer so I won't erase on it or drop it by mistake. ( I've done it often enough.) You can see I have started to erase the white areas of the plant layer. I can vary the opacity of the eraser and the directions of the strokes. I used the eraser on the Toolbox varying it's properties as needed. I could have used one of the Eraser Brushes as well. I have some diffusion marks left over from blending on the leaves. I have a way to clean that up later, so I'm leaving it for now. Now working with the following layers: 1) Canvas which is blank. 2) Water layer which is bluish. 3) Plant layer. (the two text layers are for demo purposes only) The water layer has to under the plant layer and the erasing is done on the unused portion of the white plant layer. Using the Lasso Tool on these areas to remove them is another way to do it, but with such fine detailed lines erasing the white was a lot easier. Make sure you lock the layers you are not erasing, so you don't accidentally drop them or erase on them.

Tip: Locking the Layers: Select the layer you wish to lock, click once on the padlock icon in the Layers Palettte. To Unlock Layers, simply click again. Continued in Part 3.