Digital Watercolour Techniques Used to Paint Winter Tracery Study- Lasso Tool

How to Use the Lasso Tool

This is a very important tool in my watercolour technique repertoire. You will need to master it.

I have mentioned my use of this very useful tool many times before in my demonstrations. It can be used in many more ways than just as a masking tool to preserve whites, which is the limited purpose of Liquid Frisket in traditional watercolour painting.

Other Ways I Use the Lasso Tool

Once you have made a selection with a selection tool you can do things to the area selected, such as adjust the Contrast and Brightness to lighten or darken a specific area. You can cut that area out all together (great when a specific area of the digital painting just isn't working...you can start over!) You can adjust the colour in the selected area, paint in it, add texture to it, soften the focus of it...just about anything you can do with all the tools and effects can be done in the selected area only. To paint inside the selected area choose the third choice of the three shown below.

In my study I painted outside the selected areas with a watery glaze.

A few other tips about using these tools

I don't mean to be sarcastic, but it also helps if you read the Lasso Tool and Magic Wand sections in the Help menu before trying these techniques.

the first choice on this flyout means you can paint anywhere in the painting. Another way to return to painting anywhere is to choose Select None on the Select drop down list. (If your brushes suddenly stop working, trying doing this because you may have an area still selected that you can't see because it's too teensy.)
use the plus sign to add to your selection. This is how I was able to select multiple spots. You can use the minus sign to remove selections.
you can switch between using the lasso and polygon tool by holding down the Crtl key.
you can hide the marquee (the dotted line around the selection) by choosing this option in the Select drop down menu. Helpful because those flickering dots can be very distracting.

There are a number of other things you can do with these tools, but for the purposes of this demonstration and my techniques, these simple explanations are suffice.