Well hello there, this is Tamil and let's get started right away. You can watch the video on youtube as well. I think it goes very well with the article.

 

Water color is the hardest medium to copy for digital. Here are some tips that helped me to create this artwork.

Textured Background

First of all, I would suggest using an actual paper for the background. You can download the one I made or make your own. Here is how I did it:

 

• Get a thick drafting paper

• Splash it with water a little bit. Make sure to not tear it off anywhere

• Let it dry in the sun

• Scan it with any available printer or anything close. Make sure to set the image type to PNG or TIFF. DPI should be 300-600 for quality. I did 600

• Bring into CSP and use levels to fix the contrast

 

Done!

Or just use mine ^^ it's free

Sketching

There are many ways to sketch it, but here are a few tips:

 

• Find a pencil brush. In real life, artists use a very light pencil for drafting, so I would suggest using that. More textured edges are nicer.

• Do not use pure black. Real-life pencil does not make black. Even if you do really hard, it will be in very dark grays. I suggest using this area for color.

• For line art, you can try using Overlay/Hard Light and play with opacity. More blending with the background will give a more natural feel.

Coloring

Get some nice watercolor brushes. I just downloaded these and they worked great!

I really liked them. The only thing I can say is that they are very light. They blend really(!) well, but you will need to use some curves or color correction in the very end to give it some contrast.

 

Keep in mind that blending will work better if you do it within the same layer. If you make a new layer it will start building the paint on top. It is a weird workflow and I think that is the main thing I had to practice to do better water color.

A very important part of coloring in watercolor is using white paper as part of your painting. Your brush strokes will always darken the image no matter what. Try not to go back and bring white, because that is exactly how the real medium works.

 

 

Also do not use black for the most part. I learned it the hard way. I would highly recommend using this part of the color without going too low.

If you want to go darker just use the wheel. Blue is darker, while yellow is brighter. The colors will mix well without too much effort. If you really need to go dark, just use saturated colors on Multiply and reduce the opacity.

 

If you want to erase something, use textured erasers! I used Kneaded eraser and it worked very well. Perfect edges are the opposite of what you want, so just use that to your advantage.

Finalization

Make mistakes! I kept a lot of mistakes in my painting because that is how it feels to use in real life. Use layer blend modes to fix it. I used Color/Multiply/Screen/Soft Light/Hard Light.

 

Color Balance is your friend. In the end, the post-process will work wonders. I would also sharpen the image in the end. Watercolor is very soft, and it is nice to bring out that texture.

Here are my socials and drop any questions in the youtube comments. I try to read and see if I can help people.