Learning to paint digital watercolours by doing studies of traditional watercolours

 

  

I found a watercolourist from the UK on my internet travels the other day whose work I absolutely love. I immediately Twittered about it because I like to share! My second reaction was to try and see if I could paint like her to improve my digital painting skills. Her name is Susan Shaw and here is a link to the painting I did the study on. Winter Tracery by Susan Shaw 

I emailed Susan and asked her permission to use her painting first of course, and at first, she admitted, she was going to say no because she had done all the hard work. She went on to say, that it was a compliment to her and realizes this is how we all learn...and wished me luck! (For the most part I find other artists and photgraphers most generous about sharing their skills and helping others learn, but you have to ask and you have to acknowledge the original artist's work.)

 

Below is Susan Shaws original painting Winter Tracery:

 

 

Susan states in her notes with the painting that she "spent quite some time preparing with masking fluid, and pouring, and spattering paint, before I even put a brush to the paper."

I don't have the option of pouring paint, but I can mask and splatter!

As you can see, this painting has some really good examples of watercolour techniques such as wet into wet, masking, and what I think is a rigger brush used to paint the darker branches. I expect Susan used a number of glazes to build the colour, or her painting would not have the beautiful luminosity it does.

 

Below is my study of the painting:

 

 

 

I made a sketch of her painting using the Quick Clone function because the drawing has to be right on if I am trying to make it as much like the original as possible. The point of doing the study in the first place is to figure out how to get the same look with the digital brushes. Other than that the study is completely done by my hand, brush stroke by brush stroke and not copied or cloned from the original. (You don't learn anything by cheating!)

I think my effort turned out pretty well and I learned a lot doing this study.

 

I will isolate various parts of the painting and try to explain how I did it digitally. It might take some time to get that all done, so it will probably be done over a few days.

 

I'm going to start with the Lasso Tool.