Another digital watercolour...

[Ross Macintosh]

Wire?

[Simon Beck]

Wire?

Wire knot?

Seriously, I think he meant "wireframe" as in "outline".

Simon

[GroWeb]

Thanks for this excellent tutorial, Ross. Now I just need to find out if I can replicate it somehow (that Jiggle filter might be hard to find or to substitute).

Thanks again,
Glen

[Ross Macintosh]

Glen
There are other filters that can be used to give linework results similar to 'Jiggle'. I believe the Redfield filter called 'Water Ripples' is available freely. To use it you need to move all the option sliders to their zero points. Then adjust the 'wave placement-vertical' sliders slightly. For my example I just adjusted the wave2 one, altering it to a -30 setting. That was the only setting change I did. Note however that if you are applying it to a bitmap you'll also need to adjust the brightness sliderto its maximum. Also note that when 'Water Ripples' is applied to an image it can make the edge of the image become visible -- you may later need to crop those edges out if they interfer with your drawing.

There are probably other filters than could distort linework suitably. The trick is to try them at their minimum settings and adjust from there.

Regards, Ross

[Ross Macintosh]

Above I noted the techniques can be applied to almost any image. I thought I'd try and back that up with an example. The attached self-portrait is the result. You can print it out and use it to frighten small children and scare away squirrels.

Regards, Ross

[masque]

My go at a water colour. I used drier paper.

[Ross Macintosh]

That's an effective drybrush look. My only suggestion is to try brightening the image early in the process. When I did the self portrait I used an image of clouds as an overlay to lighten and breakup the tonal values. Try something like that and you'll find your final product can have a looser look.

Regards, Ross

[masque]

Slightly re-worked attempt of water colour effect hopefully lifting it a little, i.e. not so flat.
I would like to point out that this is pure Xara though, no ketchup.

(The building is the backside of the veterinary surgery my wife has worked in since slightly after the Normans elected themselves into power here in England back in 66).

I'd like to thank Ross for bringing the whole water colour technique up, as it may be just the thing to liven up a group of photographs of old canal side buildings I'm doing which at the moment simply lack character and interest,(the photographs lack the character, not the buildings) this might be just what they need.
Derek

[RTK]

Super thread! Thanks for sharing (great work on visualizing your concept too, Ross.)

[Ross Macintosh]

Thanks Guys.

I'm very pleased that Graig has recognized that filters have lots of creative power when the effects are layered using Xara's flexible transparency tools. Many people seem to think that applying filters as one-click-effects. In fact sometimes their minimal settings can produce dramatic effects when layered with other equally subtle effects. It's the old sum is greater than the parts thing at work.

If others want to try this kind of filter-effect layering try it with a portrait. It certainly doesn't have to look like a watercolour -- the point is to have some good clean creative fun.

Regards, Ross