Printing A Digital Watercolour on Fine Art Paper

apple-still-life-dye-concentration-illustration

(First published on my Wordpress Blog Jan. /09)

I have been using the Red River Aurora Fine Art paper (White and Natural) for several months now and my results are getting crisper and more like traditionally painted watercolours. Many people have said to me that they can’t tell my art work was not painted with real watercolours. I am experimenting with ways to paint and print my work to produce a piece of art that can be hung with pride anywhere.

My other goal is to make my artwork available at a price most people can realistically afford in these tough economic times. I believe we all need art and beauty in our lives to nourish our souls and I am heartened by the resurgence of the act of creating. It is clearly becoming more important in many peoples lives as evidenced by the explosion of people communicating about it on the internet.

I am new to blogging and writing about what I am doing. The hardest part is overcoming the initial fear of putting a piece of yourself out there for all and sundry to view. It is a bit like putting out messages in a bottle…you never know who is looking at it or why. At least there are some advantages to having a blog rather than a bottle …like Blog Stats (a-a-a-rgh!), Comment forms (even if hardly anybody uses them, the choice is there), and you can’t fit much in a bottle and it probably will leak and you’ll end up with pollution on your art.

This is the why and I guess you are wondering about the how.

The first illustration today shows the settings for adding an Italian Watercolour texture to the painting. First, make sure you have chosen this paper from the Paper Palette, then resize the image to 100 dpi keeping the same dimensions ie; from 8x10 in. at 300 dpi to 8x10 in. at 100 dpi. Apply the texture using similar controls to mine, then resize the image back to 8x 10 300 dpi or 600 dpi. I have found doing it this way gives it a realistic watercolour textured appearance without making it too bumpy and losing all kinds of details.

Watercolour Texture Settings I used in this demonstration are:

Softness 0 %
Appearance of Depth:
Picture 100 %
Shine 40 %
Reflection 0 %
Light Controls:
Brightness 1.2 %
Conc 4.00 %
Exposure 1.41 %

I usually do this if I am printing on the Soft gloss paper I also use. If I am using the Fine Art paper I often do not add a texture this way because it is already slightly textured. I used the Red River Aurora Fine Art paper cards for all the Christmas Cards I sold this year and have received a lot of great compliments on them.

The next step is very crucial. Even after figuring out how to use colour profiles and experimenting with different papers, my results were still too dark and lifeless. Increasing brightness and reducing contrast in Tonal Effects either lightened it too much or not enough and was too dependent upon the original being a certain tonal level as well. So, I tried reducing the Dye Concentration which is found in Effects/Surface Control/Dye Concentration as shown in the next illustration.