Another digital watercolour...

**Simon Beck** · 26 February 2006, 12:23 AM

Originally Posted by Ross Macintosh

Wire?

Wire knot?

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

Simon

**GroWeb** · 26 February 2006, 04:24 AM

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** · 26 February 2006, 12:56 PM

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** · 26 February 2006, 01:55 PM

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** · 26 February 2006, 03:04 PM

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

**Ross Macintosh** · 26 February 2006, 04:22 PM

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** · 27 February 2006, 09:10 AM

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

**Ross Macintosh** · 27 February 2006, 02:51 PM

Masque - It appears you are using a filter that adds edges at the boundries of each area of colour. To my eye it is problematic in that it adds excessive amounts of edge 'lines'. I'd really suggest only running that filteron a copy of the image that has been significantly posterized. It might also help if that copy were also processesd with the free 'Xpose' plugin from LittleInkPot. Xpose can be used to punch up the highlights and generally brighten the image. (It is one of my favorite plugins -- very useful). After the edge-creating filter is applied to the brightened, posterized copy it can be merged with the other filtered copies using Xara transparency effects.

I hope you can understand what I'm suggesting.

Regards, Ross

PS - By the way, when I use the BeyondEdger4 filter I always justleave it set at the default value of 10.

**panfer** · 27 February 2006, 03:11 PM

Thanks Ross

**masque** · 27 February 2006, 03:13 PM

Ross
All I'm doing is tracing a photo in xara, copying the result and removing the fill from one and the outline from another and superimposing the two. Using your method I inserted a copy of the fill only version with a fractal stained glass transparency, (instead of clouds).
I used a plugin filter to apply a grain to the base image and made a bitmap copy of the outline to make it more managable (4000+ shapes slowed things down a little), this also softened the lines a little and made it easier to adjust the transparency of the lines to make them a little less dark.
A base image of paper texture was inserted last.
Its not anything like as watercolour (ish) as yours but added the interest to anotherwise boring image and gave me the inspiration for the canal building photographs I'm fiddling with.