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Realistic Watercolor Effects with Painter 6 and 7.

One of the things I have always loved about watercolors is their bleeds, diffusions, artifacts, and feather strokes within the painting. These "imperfections" give watercolor painting their unique look. For a long time I have been trying to get that look into my images with only marginal success until now. Although Painter 7 offers users some unique watercolor brushes, I have discovered that there is another way to create very realistic watercolor looks that can be done in Version 6. In many ways this technique produces even more realistic looking watercolor effects because it actually uses some true water color brush strokes.

How it works

This works by scanning in watercolor brush strokes which will serve as our template pattern. We'll then copy it and paste it as a layer into our new drawing.

Painter offers a number of ways to handle layers. The ones we're interested in are the soft, hard and overlay methods. There combine the two images together in unique ways so that the grains and patterns of our watercolor template show through and combine with our original artwork.

Step1

Create a series of watercolor brush strokes on any good quality water color paper. You don't have to any artistic talent for this. Just experiment using any neutral color.

Scan the image in at 300 DPI and save it as gray scale. This is important since it will pick up the colors of the final image.

You will want the image to have sufficient contrast to show gradations of texture and density.

Step 2

Create the "base" image. This is one that I created from a rodeo photo using a variety of effects. The colors have a semi-translucent look that will work well with the final merge of the pattern.

Adjust the size of pattern to approximate the image you are going to merge it into. You can use the Select All and then orientation to adjust the proportions.

Copy the Selection (Select All or part). Then paste it onto the artwork. Painter will create a layer using the default composite method. This shows up as opaque.

Change the composite method to "overlay". This merges element of both images together. Then play with the opacity slider on the layer to adjust the look. Since the tones of both images are merged, the contrast and saturation will be greatly altered. Controlling the opacity will decrease this, but lessen other aspects. If it still looks too contrasty you can try to "Soft light" composite method, or if is not contrasty enough, try the "hard light" composite method. Alternatively you can play with the base images contrast and saturation until you get the desired look.

Final Image

The final image captures the feathered brush look from the pattern template and the little "artifacts" and paint grains to create the realistic watercolor effect we want.

Detail View