Watercolor WIPs- Sharing and Learning

[maddog]

Hi maddog,
I'm glad the videos are proving helpful! That's what I make 'em for. I viewed the link you posted, btw. That guy is doing some great work! In particular, there are some wonderful black and white wet watercolor works that are really delicious. His retelling how he decided to roughly copy all the work from the book of an artist he loved is wonderful advice. I've done that for a few pieces, and learned some invaluable stuff.

I also find that copying the work of others with your digital watercolors helps you better understand what you'd like to be achieving. Sometimes, with digital work, I find a lot of people (legitimately) just haven't really LOOKED at a watercolor piece with the kind of clinical eye needed to really see what pigment and water and canvas texture are doing. You know, they're looking at the painting and feeling it's vibe, so to speak. They're not thinking about how water moved this way or that, or how pigment built up here or there, or what bleed back really looks like, or how tonal values shift here and there, etc. Really looking at that kind of stuff happens pretty naturally though, when you start to try and duplicate a work digitally.

I am a ravenous fan of the Wyeths and learned a trick from one of AW's watercolors where he would underpaint with an extremely vibrant yellow and after it dried, drybrush over it with a mud color. The result glowed. Imagine what he could do with ArtRage, if he had felt so inclined. BTW, your videos should be required viewing for newbies like myself. I had almost given up on working in digital art until I saw them. Artrage is so powerful, it's like giving a weekend mechanic the tools to tune a fighter jet and saying go have fun!

[Steve B]

Hmmmmm.... that's a very interesting idea. I'll be trying out that technique. It falls right in line with my video on Layers and how to use them. I don't know why I haven't tried laying down a base of yellow yet-- I do it with natural media. As long as you make your paint either 1) transparent enough or 2) of a low chroma value, I could see that you'd get good effects.

I'll be making more video tutorials, so hold on to your hat!

I have to say, your experience with feeling that digital work was out of your reach is pretty common, and disappointing. That's part of why I made the tutorials. I wish there were more alternatives that could be easily found. Working digitally does give you a lot of control, but its not as if its THAT easy to get it to work for you. Pretty complex in truth. People take lessons in natural media-- it seems like the sort of thing you'd want to be able to do digitally as well.

[eighty+]

hi Steve B tried to copy as you said for pratice so tried to copy one of P/Gramix just roughly as not worried about detail just wanted to try W/c ok

do you have to stick to the w/c brush or can u use the lot as when painting with w/c brush it seems to have a mind of its own

ok I'm gonna have bash at your nude for a laugh ......SLAINTE

[Steve B]

Oh, I think you can use any tool you want. Though I think you'd need to do a lot more Blending after the fact to make them look "watery". Chinapete got some nice effects by laying down color first with the Chalk tool and then blending that out. I do think the Watercolor tool blends color nicely, and that it reacts nicely to Layer Textures though. So that's something to ponder. I'm not sure what kind of effects you're going after.

Re: copying-- although I think there's stuff to be gained by re-painting images you find here, my point was more that I think there's a lot to learn by re-painting an image made from natural media, that has all those little bits of blending and pigment and grit that we often forget about when working digitally, and yet which help the painting really feel "alive." So, my thought we be more to find a natural media watercolor image you really like, and try and repaint that one. Just a thought.

It's cool you're giving this a go, btw! I haven't really seen you give the Watercolor tool a go before. That's not bad stuff you're producing.

[eighty+]

Thanks Steve effect's I haven't a clue I'll just keep trying as I'll know when I get there thats if the Reaper doesn't get me first SLAINTE

[chinapete]

@ 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 ....

[chinapete]

steve, I think you are using a pressure sensitive stylus, so you may find this of interest:

I retested the four settings for On/Off Paper Wet and InstaDry, using a Delicate on Dry brush, watercolor on AR Watercolor paper ... the image on the left was done on the iPad with an Adonit Jot Touch Pressure Sensitive stylus, same settings as in the original image (on the right), which was done in AR Studio Pro with a Wacom Bamboo tablet ...

Not surprisingly, the pressure sensitive stylus on the iPad creates very different-looking brushstrokes, even though the settings are identical to those on AR Studio Pro, except for an increase in brush size on the iPad to accommodate different resolution ...

1. With Adonit, the brush does not seem to "hold" as much water, the stroke "dies out" quickly, perhaps as a function of pressure sensitivity -- I kept the pressure constant through the stroke, but obviously lifting off the page is registered as a (gradual) reduction in pressure, and with Paper Dry On, pressure set to 50%, the result is a truncated, rather dry looking, dot-riddled tail-end ...

2. With Paper Wet On, the Adonit brushstroke tapers off into an odd-looking (and for me unwanted) angular pattern ...

3. More dramatically, pressure sensitivity causes the stroke to pale more radically at the turn of the brush (fourth brushstroke in the image on the left, Paper Wet On and InstaDry Off), and creates a "ghost" image outline to the right of the basic stroke ...

4. The Adonit feels like a mechanical pencil, and not at all like a brush (compared with, say, a Nomad Brush), or a Wacom stylus (imperfect in its rather cigar-shaped design and hard nib) ... This tells me that I won't be using the Adonit much for brushwork ...

...btw, when pressure sensitivity is on, regular touch is minimized, and if you try to draw on the iPad screen with your finger nothing happens, or you get tiny dots and strokes, so first you must disable the pressure sensitive brush ... this inhibits workflow, I happen to be left-handed and I use my right hand to assist in design when I draw on the iPad ... also, on the iPad it isn't possible to listen to music when "detect stylus" in ArtRage is selected and ArtRage is active ...

[eighty+]

Hi M ASTER I like yuh aster yeah I must admit I'm just lazy no cleaning up to do ok

[Steve B]

How come you all are trying to imitate the real thing? Why not letting the digital “Watercolour” being what it is in it’s own respect? Why trying to fake it and trying to make your audience believe that it is a real watercolor pinting? Why being ashamed of using digital WC as digital tool? Why not letting it’s own uniqueness as tool speak for itself? Why not let the digital “watercolour” tool loose for it to express it’s own potential?

That's a interesting question to ask Aster. Natural media watercolors are a wonderful thing in their own right, or course. I love to do abstracts with them, and find it hard to replicate in Artrage, for example. Playing with water is fun!

However, the same could be said of Oils or the Pencil and Ink tools in Artrage, or the Airbrush tool as well though too, don't you think? Why do any of us here at these forums try to emulate anything that looks like their natural media cousins? Why not just do "digital pixel art"? Why aren't we just going and doing watercolors or oils or pencil or pen and ink work? I mean, it's pretty clear for all of them that they're not exactly like their real world cousins.

I'll admit that personally I think digital watercolors, as I think you are suggesting using them, are aesthetically uninteresting. They're visually and texturally flat, and often muddy with their colors. The truth is I don't feel like I'm doing much out of the normal with some of my suggestions-- bringing in textures is very digital, so is blending. Using Layers and blend modes is digital too. I don't know-- I mean no offense, but I'm having a hard time really seeing what you're thinking is "digital watercolors". Could you provide an example of a compelling piece done digitally that fits what you're thinking and doens't look "watercolory"? I would love to have that shared here.

Beyond that esoteric reason, I use digital watercolors instead of just painting with watercolors because
-I'm busy and have a 4 year old, and so can't set up stuff
-I want flexibility in my composition, and working digitally allows me to change things after the fact
-once you get the process down its not very hard at all to get interesting and realistic watercolor effects
-I think its fun to play with a program and see what I can get it to do!

Please share some images Aster that show what you're discussing. It would be nice to understand what you're meaning, and to see why you think those pieces are successful.

[maddog]

I kinda see M. aster's point and would like to respond through an anecdote from my father who was grousing about some fake wood trim in a car, to which the owner told him it was real, real fake plastic wood. Not to wax eloquent, but all art is an artifice. A real master artist convinced me that there cannot be any rules in art and while he felt there were some real posers out there that could never make a living at their trade and therefor went into teaching what they did not know, ultimately the real test of any 'art' was whether someone paid for it. My 2 cents with 1 cent back. Sorry to digress, let's get back to more training!