Digital Watercolor Experiment
Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 5:01PM When I started out as as an illustrator (wow! in 1996...), I worked in watercolor and pen-and-ink and pencil. I was getting good work from magazines and design agencies as my portfolio grew.
But one thing that was slowly becoming obvious as time went one: the time/money balance wasn't working in my favor. It was taking much too long to deliver editorial work for clients' budgeted fees. That's when I eventually made the decision to make the move to digital.
The move to digital necessitated a change in style as I was working in Adobe Illustrator. Several of my existing clients were really flexible and welcomed the change and let me use their assignments as testing grounds for what would work and what wouldn't. My clients were gems!
As I've begun the process of working on the overall ideas for my Sleepy Hollow project, I know that my usual style of work is not going to create the atmosphere I want to invoke. There needs to be more subtlety. So I've been experimenting with ways to achieve my old watercolor/pen-and-ink look in digital format. And I think it's working!
Here's an incomplete sample:
Is it perfect? Nope. But this is the closest I've ever gotten in trying to mimic my old style of work.
This is all being done in Photoshop using a few custom brushes and textures. Why not use Corel Painter? Well, I've never used the program. And while I'm sure it would accomplish what I'm looking for, I simply know Photoshop MUCH better and I want to hit the ground running, not try to run up a steep learning curve.
As I work out some of the kinks, I'll post some more experiments.
Legend of Sleepy Hollow, sketch, watercolor | in Sketchbook
Reader Comments (4)
This is amazing!!! I hope you'll post how you did it. I'm a long way from getting PS to do that.
Thanks, Laura!
When I finally figure out how to get PS to deliver just what I'm wanting, I'll make a point to write up or video screen-cap a walk-through.
Thanks for posting!
Watercolor is the most elusive mode to emulate with digital tools. You've pretty much got it under control, I think. Together with the wc technique in the Davis-Willmore book called <Photoshop for Photography>, this is the best wc work I've seen. And while their image aims at a more formal (traaditional?) wc image, your work is wonderfully illustrative. It's really very encouraging for us amateurs. Don't forget your promise!
All the best
BobB
Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia
Bob! Thanks for the encouragement!
Due to client obligations, I will be working on this as time permits but I hope to make this work nicely. Basically, with this technique you have to work to get the feel of the spontaneous results of watercolor. So it's basically a combination of brush settings and textures.