Digital Watercolour Techniques Used to Paint Banff Sunrise

• On a new layer (not the canvas) do a sketch of your image. I used a tiny watercolour brush rather than chalk this time because I have ended up with chalk marks showing in a wc (watercolour) painting by dropping the sketch layer. There won't be any problems with blending it in if it the same medium you are using to paint with.
• Open a layer and using the Gel Wash/Wet Blender technique I have outlined in prior demonstrations  Gel Wash/Wet Blender technique (click to see a demo explaining how to do this) paint a darkish blue wash over the whole page with the Gel Wash set to a large brush. Try not to overlap strokes too much and don't go over previous strokes. Think of doing a wash with a large brush in traditional wc and use the same actions.

 Your settings should be similar to the ones pictured below. I have highlighted areas that are specific to this technique.

 

 

•  Next I used the Wet Soften brush to remove some of the blue colour and painted some yellow in the sky and water. Don't drop any layers, you will need to paint on this one again. 
•  Then I opened a new layer (Composite method - Default), used the Lasso Tool to select the mountain area, and using the same method painted the area a dark blue. I used the Wet Rough brush instead of the Wet Blender to give it a grainier look. 

• On a new layer I used a tiny Gel Opaque brush to paint the tree tops (you could use a tiny pointed simple water as well)

 

• On a new  layer, I painted the tree bottoms with Gel Wash, then Wet Rough. I found that it was too dark so I simply redused the opacity of that layer. Because it was on a separate layer I could do this without affecting the rest of the painting.

• On a new layer (yes again!) using Skip's Runny Tree brush I painted the tree bottoms again and allowed some of the paint to run past the previous area painted.  

  

• As you can see I have three different layers for the trees. I do it this way in case any of the three need altering. I used the tiny opaque brush again to do the tree tops. Vary the heights and try to keep the details fairly distinct. I have found that keeping these kinds of areas in the painting distinct and 'clean' makes for a better, crisper print.

• I have painted the yellow in the sky more, and the greyish clouds making sure the edges are light. I used the Softener and erasers a bit here.
• then I decided to Group the layers, so I wouldn't crash Corel. I still haven't dropped any of them to the canvas yet, so I can work on them separately if necessary.

• I used Skip Allen's TexLite Fringe Dig to first paint a light layer of blue, then a darker colour to paint the reflections. Again keep the strokes clean and don't overlap and put too many in or you'll end up loosing the sparkle in the water. You could also use a small digital watercolour Wash brush, or a Simple Water brush.
• I would like to point out here, that you can use other Painter Digital watercolour brushes to achieve similar results in most cases in  this painting. Experiment and become familiar with the characteristics of your brush strokes. I am only showing one possible way to paint with digital watercolours. There are many possible ways! As long as you don't use a Watercolour Filter Effect on a photo and say you painted it. My pet peeve is that people do this and call their paintings digital watercolours...they should call them Watercolour Effects or Photo Manipulations! The following small illustration is an example of a small cropped out area from "painting' done this way. You can easily differentiate them because of the characteristic universal blobs and the darkened edges. Corel Painter 11 does not have an Effect that does this (that I can find anyway). I believe these had to have been done with Photoshop.

 

• Going back to the layer with the sky and water washes I used a large very low opacity eraser (4%) to erase some of the blue in the first wash.
• then I used the Lasso Tool to 'draw' the outline of the shadows
• then I used the Skip's Soft Pool watercolour to paint inside the selection with a pale blue to indicate the shadows.
•  Make sure you click the Paint inside Selection Only tab on the bottom left of your document. (It shows where to click in the next few illustrations)
• You can do this without selecting with a Lasso, but I find it gets the paint exactly where I want it and gives a crisper edge.

• Oops I spelled Lasso wrong when I did this!
• the illustration is self explanatory

 

• the above 2 illustrations show How I did the rocks in the water area.
• basically I selected them, painted the snow inside with Pointed Simple Water (PSW)and Gel Opaque
• then switched to paint outside selection and painted the rocks dark and began making a mess of the area between the rocks. The cool thing about the digital wc is that you can paint on top of another colour to change the colour. I blended the colours with an unsaturated PSW

•  I technically didn't drop the layers yet, in case I wanted to alter something, but Cloning the document will give you what is on the screen. I do that to check things at certain points or try something out.
• the fine tuning layer(s) involves taking a really close look at it all and making sure you have all the dark and light areas in balance. I often use a Glow Brush to lighten the colour in places. Usually needs a pale glazing to bring out some areas as well. It all depends on what your eyes tell you you need.. You can also adjust things by increasing or decreasing Brightness and Contrast.
• lastly I reduced the document size to 100 dpi and added a 5%  Italian WC Surface Texture. Then increased the dpi back to 200 or 300 dpi.
• that's basically it folks...nothing too mysterious about it all and I believe it could be accomplished with the default Painter digital and watercolour brushes. I do find that John Derry's and Skip Allen's brushes work well and are more specific to the look I want. The finished painting is in my Recent Artwork Gallery.

• I'd like to thank Philippe Widling again for allowing me to use his beautiful photograph of the Banff Sunrise!

Comments/Questions: if you have any comments or questions please feel free to email me!

Posted in Demonstrations of Digital PaintingTechnique. Updated March 5th, 2010. 3 comments so far. Share on StumbleUpon or Del.icio.us, or Digg this post.

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