Joan A Hamilton's Digital Painting Site News

It's Hard to Paint and Blog at the Same Time

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:03:46 CST

It's Hard to Paint and Blog at the Same Time:

I’ve noticed this before and if you have followed my blog you will have noticed I have a hard time with multitasking this way. Here are a few of the reasons - off the top of my head…

· It feels a bit like when somebody is standing over you watching you type, and you keep making dumb mistakes. Despite the fact that I have invited you to look over my shoulder, it still feels different than just painting.

· I feel sort of obliged to stick to plans and things that I have outlined even though I might have scrapped the painting at a much earlier stage.

· I find myself trying to stick to easily described techniques and minimal steps because it’s so much work to capture the screen, make notes on diagrams and write it all out.

· You have to think of too many things at the same time….lol!

· I am still learning so much all the time, but I need lots of freedom to try new brushes and new techniques without having to worry about what it will look like in a tutorial, and whether it is possible to explain the steps taken.

That’s all the reasons I have for now…now I’m going back to my painting. I might post some Work in Progress shots (if it doesn’t distract me too much! J)

Thanks for stopping by,

Joan

PS (I would love to hear from others how they manage this process.

Drop me a line! You can use the Comment box, your email is safe!)

Digital Watercolour Painting Tutorial for Summer Walk Part Two

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 09:11:14 CST

Digital Watercolour Painting Tutorial for Summer Walk - Part Two

I'm not entirely sure I like the way this painting is going, but I shall carry on because the tips and techniques I'm showing you are the information you need. What you do with that information will probably be quite different from what I do. You will discover and learn the properties of these brushes as you 're using them. It will be daunting at first; they do such a variety of things and you can change the variables seemingly infinitely! I still don't have good control over the watercolour brushes, especially the runny wet ones. As you may have noticed, my style is fairly detailed and controlled (too neat and tidy sometimes), and that's why I don't tend to use those brushes or paint with such abandon! Not sure how all that kind of stuff looks printed out! It's definitely something I'm working on and experimenting with. I tend to use them inside a selection because they go further than I want them to, and reducing the size gives a very different effect.

Illustration No. 8 Summer Walk

Lots of rocking going on in this illustration
Used a dark grey Sharp Charcoal pencil to draw some cracks in the rock (I chose charcoal because it's open to more softening and blending methods than a fine digital or watercolour would be.)
I used a Wet Pepper Spray Airbrush; you have to chose Air brush - Pepper Spray- change dab type to Wet Airbrush, pick the Gradient as Colour Variability, and chose Stainless Steel Gradient (a greyish mixture, then I used a pale brownish gradient Eucalytus Bark, then I reduced the size of the brush and did the dark brown and green areas.
The above step was done inside the selection which was picked by using Lasso Tool, and Paint Inside selection on bottom left bar of document.) You can click on Lasso Tool to access How to Use the LassoTool Post.

Illustration No. 9 Choosing the Soften Effect from main menu

Illustration No. 10 Set Slider for Soften Effect

Digital Watercolour painting tutorial for Summer Walk

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:51:50 CST

Digital Watercolour painting tutorial for Summer Walk:

First two steps are a repeat of using Value Sketches in Digital Watercolours

Illustration No. 3 Summer Walk Demo

This step makes use of the Gel Wash/Wet Blender technique I've outlined so many times. There is a link to it in the sidebar or click here Gel Wash/Wet Blender technique
I'm not really happy with these trees, but no doubt I will get better at them after a time.
I used the Painter default Pointed Simple Water brush quite a bit for the tree branches, trying out different ways of accomplishing the same ends.That's why it's not looking very cohesive. Not a good idea to switch techniques so obviously. The whites added back in with erasing look to regular as well. Should have done it with the Lasso and cut to get more irregular shapes.

Illustration No. 4 Summer Walk Demo

I like the way I left some white edges in this area. It is a bright sunny day, so there has to be a lot of light in the painting. Since it's hot too, the further away trees can look slightly hazy. I used the Skip Allen's Dry Sumi E brush to get some dry brushwork bristles

Illustration No. 5 Summer Walk Demo

This area was done with the Gel Wash/Wet Blender technique. The idea was to have a layer of further away shorter bushes in the value indicated in our Values Sketch. Keep it on the side to refer to. Having it in the document on a layer that is locked is okay because you can turn it on and off or change the opacity of the layer, but it's risky becuae it might get unlocked and dropped and then you can't separate it from your painting in progress.

Illustration No. 6 Summer Walk Demo

Everything is still on it's own layer. I can further adjust the look of these layers singly before Grouping them (to avoid a crash)!
I like to use Digital Watercolours for the base and Wet Watercolours for the additional colour and texture! That leaves the brush choices subject to lots of choices at this point. I am showing you one possible way, but there are more ways than mine to do it.

Illustration No. 7 Summer Walk

I have Grouped all the layers as shown in the layers Palette above. This view also shows how I have reduced the opacity of the Value Sketch layer to 0%.
I could have Closed the Eye too.

On that note...this will be continued in the near future! I usually Twitter when I post a blog, so if you want to be informed sign up to follow me.

Gel Wash/Wet Blender Watercolour Technique with Corel Painter

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:35:53 CST

Gel Wash/Wet Blender Technique

You will need John Derry’s Watercolour Brushes to get the random roughened edges, but this technique works using the default Painter Digital Watercolour brushes and other brushes as well.

Open a new layer and using this Gel Wash/Wet Blender technique 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 watercolour 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.

Gel Wash/Wet Blender Technique Screen shots:

Illustration 1 In Gel Wash/Wet Blender Technique

Illustration 2 In Gel Wash/Wet Blender Technique

In the above step I unclicked Pick Up Underlying Colour, and clicked Preserve Transparency. This has the effect of masking the areas painted with the Gel Wash. The paint on the Wet Blender brush will only go there. You will find moving the Wet Blender brush in different directions will give you different values of your chosen colour. This helps give it a more authentic traditional watercolour appearance. You can introduce new colours, as if you were dropping them in with a wet brush. You can pull white in from going outside the painted area. You can use the Wet Soften Brush to remove some colour and soften edges...experiment and play around with these brushes on a separate paper to see what they will do. Then when you use them with what you have already painted you will get some effects you might not have expected, but really like! There you go, some randomness, the hallmark of traditional watercolours.

The Use of Value Sketches in Digital Watercolour Painting

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:04:38 CST

The Use of Value Sketches in Digital Watercolour Painting

Many of the painting books and online art instruction sites recommend doing a Value sketch and working out the value, and shapes in painting before working out the colour. I’ll have to admit I only do it occasionally. Funny thing is, the ones I have done them for are the better paintings (in my opinion)…so why don’t I always do it? Well, because often I can’t make it past that part, and I start adding colour thinking I may as well…It’s starting to sink in that, if a value sketch doesn’t work, the finished painting won’t be right either.

So, I have done one for a painting I’m working on. It is of typical northern Ontario small dirt road. Wildflowers grow on the verges. Tall coniferous trees offer patches of shade from the hot sun. You can hear bees and other insects as well as further away bird calls. It is very pleasant and adds excitement to the treat at the end of the road.

Illustration One Using Value Sketches in Summer Walk

IllustrationTwo Using Value Sketches in Summer Walk

Step by step instructions to paint a Value Sketch in Digital Watercolour

· Open a document 9.5 x 7.5 inches and 200 dpi (this is a size that is easy to increase or decrease proportionately)

· Using grey scale colours sketch your scene lightly with a pencil, chalk, or charcoal, variant.

· Starting with the darkest values first, paint the different areas loosely with a digital watercolour variant. Simple Water would be fine.

· Mask any areas that you want to remain white (as necessary). In this painting I wanted the daisy heads to remain white, so I used the Lasso Tool to select the areas. Make sure you use the + selection to allow you pick multiple areas at once.

· There are so many colours of green in such a scene that it really will help to have the lights and darks worked out, not to mention some of the shapes.

· When you are done, drop the layers, copy the canvas layer by selecting all of it, paste in place which gives you a copy on a new layer. Select all of canvas again and delete it from there. Lock the Values layer. This is really important because you want to use this as a guide for your painting, but you don’t actually want it in your painting.

Note: A tutorial on this painting “Summer Walk” is in a separate blog post. Look for it in the Search Bar or under Digital Watercolour Painting Demonstrations