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Thread: Watercolor WIPs- Sharing and Learning

  1. #61
    Join Date
    May 2007
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    Rome (Italy)
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    24,186
    Marvellous variety of WC effects and styles again. I think I still miss, in my started collection, the Juz' Triangular Chaos and the Art Brush set with Airbrush Splats (unless it's within the standard AR resources).
    Do You have the relevant links, pls?
    Panta rei (everything flows)!

  2. #62
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Posts
    601

    Good Sticker Sprays to download and use for Watercolor Effects

    Hey Caeser,
    Thanks for checking it out!!

    The Airbrush Splats (which I didn't use in this pic, but did in the some of the tree ones one the last page) is part of Artrage 3-- they're Sticker Sprays and are in the Art Brushes group at the top of the list.

    Juz's Grunge Stickers are a Sticker Spray set that Juz made. Triangular Chaos is one of a set. I don't use the others much, but I use Triangular Chaos a lot for very soft ambient color noise. Set the Luminance and Hue dials under Random to 10-20% in the Spray Variations chart, and you'll get good results. You can see some of this in the greens I've laid in on the blue/black chicken,the green I lay in to the orange chicken to the far right, or some of the softer greens in the tree, etc. I often make a new layer, blow the brush up really big to 500%, dust the color in pretty lightly with it, gently erase around the object, and collapse the layer down. I don't build value much with it, but I use it at the end of the process to add good textures and ambient color. What it seems to do is emulate the effect of dabbing a color into a wet area-- there's a soft kind of "veination" to the spray, as it doesn't have a hard edge. Just play with it on its own first, and you'll see what it actually does individually. Then try laying down one color with a watercolor brush, then lightly painting a different "highlight" or "shadow" color over the top of it with the Triangular Chaos, and you'll see what I'm talking about. Here's the link to the brushes-- http://www2.ambientdesign.com/forums...ercolor-effect

    The other one I use a lot is Someonesane's Sponge Stickers. He made a "flat" set for me here, and its wonderful for watercolor work. I did the whole tree canopy with this sticker, with the Hue and Luminance dials altered again. Then I went over it with the Triangular Chaos brush.

    Hope that's helpful! I'll try and upload a Tutorial #3 here next week, and go over some of this more systematically.

    edit-
    I want to include a link to the Neil Brushes set here, with the various Superfuzz brushes. These are another great set of sponge-like stamps to use. Neil provided these a few years back, before the more easily downloadable sets were created by Artrage, for ease of sharing. So, you'll need to learn where to place your stamps, and where to place your presets. If you feel up to it, you should try them.
    Last edited by Steve B; 08-25-2012 at 06:16 AM.
    Check out and submit to the thread on Watercolor WIPs in Artrage-- lots of good tips and conversation
    My YouTube video tutorial series- How to Paint with Watercolors in Artrage
    Try out the free
    Artrage Pen-Only Toolbar to improve your workflow and reduce clutter
    List of other good tutorials on using watercolors in Artrage
    List of good sticker sprays for watercolor effects in Artrage

    My blog- art, poetry and picture books- http://www.seamlessexpression.blogspot.com/

  3. #63
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Posts
    601
    Quote Originally Posted by jbeau View Post
    I find myself gravitating towards the watercolor blend mode by duplicating the layer and pulling up the thinner with a narrow brush. I lighten up my Wacom pressure to give randomness. This controls removing and adding wet edges and contrast. The only bad thing about this mode is photoshop doesn't support it. I also like the highlight mode to pull whites back in without having to erase. Sometimes I'll duplicate the highlight layer and change it to overlay to give hue to my highlights. Then erase the overlay in parts that don't require color.
    Quote Originally Posted by jbeau
    I was just experimenting with locking the transparency last night I like using a dry brush to lay down the color and then lock the transparency. Then use a wet brush to remove some color or go wet on wet with different hues.
    Jbeau,
    I just saw these two posts you made a few weeks ago. Sorry so late for my response!! Can you go into these processes you're doing a bit more? It sounds very interesting, but a bit complicated to someone that hasn't tried them before. I'd like to try them out and experiment with them-- your results are usually very nice, so that's something I could really learn from! If you have any images that demonstrate the results that you're getting using these techniques, that would be very helpful-- then I can see how best to apply them.
    Last edited by Steve B; 05-17-2012 at 02:18 AM.
    Check out and submit to the thread on Watercolor WIPs in Artrage-- lots of good tips and conversation
    My YouTube video tutorial series- How to Paint with Watercolors in Artrage
    Try out the free
    Artrage Pen-Only Toolbar to improve your workflow and reduce clutter
    List of other good tutorials on using watercolors in Artrage
    List of good sticker sprays for watercolor effects in Artrage

    My blog- art, poetry and picture books- http://www.seamlessexpression.blogspot.com/

  4. #64
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    Pacific Northwest
    Posts
    2,614
    Steve B- I love this thread. Thanks.
    Be well,

    "Teach, Learn, Thrive"~DM


  5. #65
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Posts
    25,097
    Very impressive the range of watercolor effects you have been managing.

    How straight is this stuff as a technique and how much is clever manipulation? What I mean is whether or not the painting is direct and uninterrupted or do you find you have to stop and add a texture overlay or whatever? Long ago, before ArtRage, in Photoshop I would scan in black and white drippy and splashy and water color wet into wet marks that I would then import as a layer later to assign it a color(s).

    It was in an effort to make my computer stuff look more like it was done traditionally, while keeping the edit-ability for doing variations etc. Was more like working in Illustrator - slow and laborious, but it has its uses.

    It worked, but it was very indirect, and it totally lost the spontaneity that makes direct painting expressive and feeling.

    I'm sure you do different methods and thus they have their respective qualities of experience. Which technique would you say effects the best balance between getting the right look with the most facile, natural method?
    "Not a bit is wasted and the best is yet to come. . ." -- remembered from a dream

  6. #66
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Posts
    601
    Well, I would say that last summer I was having to go through what were, in my estimation, back flips to get reasonable results- lots of stencil work, pushing pigment around while switching presets, etc. It was, by my estimation laborious. I'm much happier with my current work flow. This last piece with the chickens took about 3 hours in Artrage to paint-- considering I printed it on a 12 x 24 piece of watercolor paper, 3 hours seems pretty reasonable for the color work (plus about 2 hours sketching before hand, plus about 2 hours of roughs and concepts a while ago). The two "tree" images on page 6 took 30-45 minutes each, in total. So, I feel like the "speed" and spontaneity one might associate with watercolors is working out digitally, all in all.

    As for process, I still have that preliminary "setup" phase, just like with natural media-- I just do different things. No soaking paper for 15 minutes and stretching it. Instead, I pull up a big canvas, set my bottom layer to white, import a ambient background watercolor image on a layer, stretch it to fit, desaturate it to black and white, make it Overlay. Then make my new blank painting layer between the "white" layer and the Overlay imported image layer, and I'm off. That takes a few minutes in the beginning, but then its there the whole time. Then I just get painting.

    What's been appealing to me about this method so far is that I get those "ambient" bits of watercolor texture as I go, as I'm painting, because the hidden background Overlay Texture is there from the beginning, waiting to be used. No importing and tweaking after the fact. This allows to me to realistically build the painting as I paint, which I prefer as an artist, rather than spending a bunch of my time "tweaking" it digitally after the fact.

    I spend the majority of my time in Artrage switching brushes, changing settings, opening Layers and setting their blend modes, etc. Things like--
    1) changing Layer Textures, where I up the Grain Size
    (I do this to get the rough bits around the edges)
    2) changing my Brush Settings to reduce the Loading or the Thinner, depending on the effects I want
    (low Loading= drier brush techniques, like in the edges of the chickens, vs.
    high Thinner= more pigment at the rims of the brush stroke, as in the dust cloud)
    3) switching to Sticker Sprays, and changing the Hue and Luminance settings in the Spray Variations chart for effects in certain areas-- the Triangular Chaos gets used a lot, as does the Sponges stickers I mentioned above, as does the Airbrush Splatter Art Brush spray.
    4) switching to blenders for some mild effects
    5) picking colors
    6) making new layers, setting blend modes, etc. for when I'm laying down new coats of color, shadows, highlights, etc
    7) zooming and panning and resizing my brushes (although zooming and panning should largely go away once I get my new (used) 18sx Cintiq today!! oooh la la! It's "out for delivery" right now)

    So, I suppose that's a matter of opinion. I don't find that to be particularly anti-"process". As before, the trees I did on page 6 were done in under an hour. That seems quick and straight forward to me. I don't know if importing the Overlay ahead of time and doing what I'm doing sounds like digital fakery to you and you don't like that idea on a personal level (??), or if it was just the laborious "I'm not really getting to even do real painting" feeling that was bugging you about those Photoshop days, but it's a work flow that's been very nice to me. I feel like I'm painting. A lot of the digital "heavy lifting" is done in the beginning, which lets me get down to image making more smoothly after that.
    Last edited by Steve B; 05-17-2012 at 04:26 AM.
    Check out and submit to the thread on Watercolor WIPs in Artrage-- lots of good tips and conversation
    My YouTube video tutorial series- How to Paint with Watercolors in Artrage
    Try out the free
    Artrage Pen-Only Toolbar to improve your workflow and reduce clutter
    List of other good tutorials on using watercolors in Artrage
    List of good sticker sprays for watercolor effects in Artrage

    My blog- art, poetry and picture books- http://www.seamlessexpression.blogspot.com/

  7. #67
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Posts
    601
    This is the one from today. This is a slightly older image that I reworked-- added the dragon, as its from a picture book-- and pushed the shadows and highlights more, etc.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Click image for larger version. 

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    Check out and submit to the thread on Watercolor WIPs in Artrage-- lots of good tips and conversation
    My YouTube video tutorial series- How to Paint with Watercolors in Artrage
    Try out the free
    Artrage Pen-Only Toolbar to improve your workflow and reduce clutter
    List of other good tutorials on using watercolors in Artrage
    List of good sticker sprays for watercolor effects in Artrage

    My blog- art, poetry and picture books- http://www.seamlessexpression.blogspot.com/

  8. #68
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    New Zealand
    Posts
    724
    That is gorgeous Steve. It has such a great atmosphere and mood to it. Very cool!
    Visit my gallery here.

    =========

  9. #69
    Join Date
    May 2012
    Location
    Now I work and live in Abu Dhabi
    Posts
    11
    a profisional art indeed
    so wonderful
    i liked it very much

  10. #70
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Rome (Italy)
    Posts
    24,186
    Another good example indeed!
    I still have one question about the magical Triangular Chaos I wasn't able to use this far.
    Once You get such a .prs file, where is it supposed to be placed (within the resources)? I mean it's a pre-set of which tool?
    Thank You!
    Panta rei (everything flows)!

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