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Digital Watercolour Demonstration -Time To Blossom Thanks to Luigi on Flickr for permission to use his photo as a reference. By the time I was halfway through this and committed to the colours and values, as well as the subject, I realized it was similar to one I painted last year around the same time. It was wild white roses though. White with the stamen things anyway! Guess I still had the image of how I thought it should turn out in my head. I actually didn't want to use such dark blues and greens so much, but I needed the contrast beside the white petal. A branch full of cherry blossoms is too many to to see the intricate detail of them all, so I decided to focus on one and kind of suggest the others. I realize the less detailed bottom left flower is in front of the main subject and should rightly be as focused and detailed, I didn't want it to be a focal point. I used the spotty blender I have to put some grainier areas in and change the edges in some places. Then I dropped all the layers, dried the digital wc and lifted it to a watercolour layer. Then I wet the watercolour layer very slightly and added a a very small amount of French watercolour paper texture. I labelled it right on the painting in Edwardian Script because I'm planning to make a calender of flowers, hopefully painting one blooming in the month I'm painting. April is a bit too early for cherry blossoms in Toronto, but maybe some of the rest of the world is seeing them now! This is a very fresh, clean, green and spring season looking . I picture it printed 11.5 x 11.5 inches matted in a white frame. It could hang in any room.
The text and the green border are optional.
Work in progress Copyright Joan A Hamilton 2009 I am using a combination of watercolour brushes, digital watercolour and airbrushes (wet and dry) to try and get a soft diffused background, with a hint of another blossom. I also used the lassoo tool to select a certain area to lighten it, by adjusting the brightness and contrast. I suppose the action would be similar to lifting colour from your watercolour painting with a tissue,while still wet. Found that by wetting the airbrushes and playing around with them to get a fine spray, I could sometimes get a (sort of' ) 'wet into wet' look. Setting the colour variability to a Gradient helps get the colours mixed together, as does Softening the Focus very slightly. These different techniques were used on separate layers because some were wet watercolour layers and some were just regular layers. Besides, this way if I didn't like the result of the brush strokes and effects on them, I could just delete the layer. It's very helpful to learn to use the layers when you are just starting out with digital painting. The results will be so much more realistic and your options increase greatly. For example, you can chose to soften only the watercolour layer you just applied, rather than having to soften the whole painting thus far. Does that make sense to you? Related postsAdd a comment |
