help with digital watercolor

lmrush

Trying to teach myself digital watercolor, not having very much luck in this one, it doesn't look watercolory, any tips or tricks learned would be very much appreciated- I would love to watch @Lee-White demo one

Joy Heyer

Will Terry's Mixed Media video has some good tips on making your digital painting look like a water color. I found it very helpful!

lmrush

@Joy-Heyer Thank you Joy I have not seen that yet. I will definitely watch it next! Thanks!

lmrush

@Joy-Heyer I have no idea how I missed that class Thanks!

Dulcie

@lmrush I loved Will Terry's Mixed Media class, really inspiring, I'm sure you will like it too! I don't know if you saw it before but back in February @Lee-White posted a demo of him doing a black and white composition in digital watercolour, you could download the video, link here (hope it still works):

http://forum.svslearn.com/topic/1114/demo-series

I don't know if you have got these already but Kyle does an amazing set of digital watercolour brushes (Ultimate Real Watercolour): www.kylebrush.com

evilrobot

I find that you can get the nice texture if you use an overlay layer with a water color texture on it and make sure the texture in the brush you use matches the overlay texture (same scale and depth) Another thing that seems to work well is set your flats layer to multiply. Then work under that layer for your shadows and set that layer to multiply as well and adjust to your liking. For some reason working under the flats seems to look better than working over them. Also a nice smudge tool helps you can find Sam Neilson's tool presets if you search for them and he has a couple wonderful smudge tools that look fantastic (just add water and Nice smudge I use all the time) Also I try to use as few layers as possible the more layers you use the color becomes more solid and looks less and less like water color. Hope this helps some.

Krister Eide

Are you using Photoshop or an iPad? If you're using the iPad, Procreate has blenders like 'Just Add Water' and there are particle brushes that really run as if they were watery. If you're in Photoshop, try making the brush bigger and softening. That way you can see more color mixing. Play with the opacity to mix more colors. I'm no expert though - I've only started doing digital watercolor this year. Will's class was really helpful.

lmrush

Thank you so much @Joy-Heyer @Dulcie @evilrobot @Krister for all this information, so so appreciated!