@ chinapete-- I find this technique you're using/exploring with the chalk pretty interesting. If I might as a few questions--
- what sort of color are you applying with the watercolor tool? Or are you only spreading and blending the chalk color, because you're using the Watercolor tool as a 100% thinner?
- on a more esoteric level-- what's your purpose behind the process, instead of another? Was the intent to have the benefits of a line drawing without having a final piece that featured them? If so, why not just layers and hide the layer when done? My guess is that you had something more sophisticated in mind than that, and so I ask.
-I can see something like this would provide interesting grain texture results if the Chalk tool was used at a larger size and then grazed on the surface. Then you could decide where you wanted to take advantage of the dry textural artifacts of the Chalk tool in some spots, and then the Watery blended effects in another. Alternately, I can really see the interesting benefits of using Chalk on top of Watercolors. That's also very interesting, and not something I've done much of.
I don't want to run away with ideas for this technique though, before you've even had a chance to more fully reveal what you're doing and why. Do you have any finished images you could post in this thread that more fully demonstrate how one might use this?[/QUOTE]
Hi steve,
The thread is looking great! ... recently I put up some notes on "chalk washes," but took them down because they seemed arbitrary -- now that you've asked specifically about them, I'll say a few words and hope they are in theme with your communal blog on watercolors ...
I set for myself the problem of how to integrate drawing (line) with water-based media (ink, but it could be watercolor), so that I could produce certain brushstrokes common in some forms of Chinese painting ... Turns out there are many single-stroke effects that I cannot do with existing digital tools, I began to think it might be interesting to build up the impression of a single brushstroke from many smaller strokes, and this led me to experiment with ways of blending the underdrawing (line) with washes ...
ps: I have just gotten the Adonit Jot Pressure Sensitive stylus, and am able to use it on the iPad, so far with mixed results, maybe I can report back on that soon, or others will share their experiences ... I envy you your Cintiq 18x :-)...
Anyway, in traditional Western-style watercolor, drawing (graphic line) is a preparatory step to a painting ... Line may show through to good effect, but usually it plays a subdued role, and serves more as scaffolding for great brushwork ... When line is prominent or featured, we tend to think of the finished work as illustration (as opposed to fine art), so Rackham and Potter are book illustrators (this is not to judge them as artists, but to define their space), while John Marin, when he suppresses line altogether, is thought to be an (abstract) painter ... With this in mind, it occurred to me that in digital art we have the best of both worlds, because the underdrawing (line) can be blended with the washes, and line can be modulated or even made to disappear, at will, and all this is made possible because, unlike real media, in digital there is no real difference between a pencil stroke and a watercolor wash...
So that was my thinking ... In my post on this thread of the flexed muscle, I showed hastily done cross-hatching in a single hue, but of course the idea is that the cross-hatching can be multi-colored and complex, and results when the wash is overlaid will be that much more blended and complex, yielding better results than repeated applications of wash might produce -- at least, that was my working theory ... Beyond that, all of your points about the technique are well taken, thank you ... I use ~100% thinner with base colors in the cross-hatching, and rely on the color sampler for the highest degree of harmony ... My purpose is limited to a specific effect I'm trying to achieve, but one that I hope later would have greater application ... I was challenging myself (irrationally, as your videos demonstrate) to work in a single layer, to map closely to real world experience ... And chalk on top of watercolor is a side benefit of working digitally, definitely ...
A few months ago, I was able to come close to what I envisioned to be Chinese inks using a "chalk wash" -- and as an example, I've attached here an image of a pomegranate I posted on the forum in June ....