The secret brush settings for drawing a watercolor rose

In this tutorial I will not only explain how to draw a rose in a watercolor style, but most importantly the settings that make the brush look like watercolor.

 

 

Step 1: Paper!

The trick to making a digital drawing get a traditional feel is using a paper texture. For this you can go on the internet and take any free scan or scan good quality paper yourself. Add this image to your drawing and set the layer on multiply. To avoid doing anything dumb I always lock this layer. at the end of a project I’ll make sure this layer will be the top layer to tie everything together.

Step 2: The sketch

Now we’ll make use of the biggest benefit of digital drawing, a seperate sketch layer with (seemingly) infinite undo buttons.

When drawing a rose keep in mind that the flower is made of many different layers of petals and that each petal on the next layer is not aligned with the layer before. The petals will also, depending on how open the rose is, slightly curl around the edges.

Most cartoon roses will have one leaf but to do it realisticly a rose has a branch with usually three leaves on them. (AI also gets this wrong a lot of the time by the way)

Step 3: The brush settings

To edit the brush settings go to the little wrench in the right corner of the tool property tab.

 

I use a brush I bought from a very nice artist named Jazza which was a nice brush but didn’t entirely do things they way I wanted it. The base tip and texture are still really nice. Search yourself a nice brushshape that feels flowy to change up is my advice here since I sadly have not yet figured out how to make custom brush tips

3.1 Ink settings

For starters when doing watercolour imagine the color never being the full color you choose from your pallete but a watered down version. It helps to lower the opacity (I usually work at around 50%)

 

The second option I screw with is blending mode: I put this one on compare density. The color mixing mode is not always on when only doing one color layer. (which is the option that makes that part greyed out in my sub tool details screenshot above) Compare density blends the brushstrokes together instead of creating those harsher colors where strokes meet.

The third option under ink I mess with is color mixing. I choose the blend option for this project but I definetly recommend messing around and testing with this particular setting.

within color mixing I take the perceptual mixing mode because it feels closer to real life. Then I up the brightness correction to avoid everything getting very dark.

3.2 Inbetween other settings

This brush came with a texture in the texture tab that I did not mess with, if you want a watery brush I recommend starting with a brush that comes with a watery texture.

Other then that this was a dual brush, I removed the dual brush part so that I could add the next option.

3.3 Watercolor edge

This is the one that finishes the brush, the one that makes it complete.

Tick the watercolor box, then adjust the thickness, opacity and darkness to what feels right to you.

3.4 A nice little tip about erasing with a water color edge

If you want to erase a part of your colored part and want to keep the watercolor edge, don’t grab an eraser but use the same brush with the transparent option, it still adds the edge where you erased a part.

4. Start drawing

4.1 The base colors

First, I put my sketching layer on multiply and lower the opacity. (I do this so the lines of my sketch layer stay visible to me, on this project this isn’t really necessary but it puts my mind at ease) Then I put a base layer of color for the stem and the rosebud on different layers and add a layer mask to both so I stay within the lines.

4.2 Adding shade and lighter parts

Next up is adding shade, I use the same blue for both the stem and the rosebud so it ties together. My tendency with shading is using either a blue or a purple to get cold shadows but this is a stylistic choice, if you prefer a warm shadow then go for more of a brown color.

 

a little trick to add highlights is making it look like you removed some of the water from that area with a brush. To get this effect you choose the transparent coloring option but use a 50% opacity so it seems you were able to remove some of the water and color but some stayed on the paper.

4.3 Adding some pencil

I’m adding some blue pencil shading on a different layer set to multiply and some white highlights on the rose layer itself. For this just any pencil brush should do the trick.

 

later on I’ll lower the opacity of the blue pencil layer.

4.4 pulling the image together with an overlaying glaze color

To tie all the colors together I add a soft overlay color. The layer is once again, set on multiply.

4.5 merging layers and blending the colors a bit where they meet

As a finishing touch I combine the stem and the flowerbud layer and blur the edges where they meet. This way it feels more cohesive and like there was some slight accidental bleeding over of color.

Finished!

And there you have it, one digital painting that looks like a traditionally drawn rose!