Add complex watercolour textures to your digital paintings.
Textures add depth to digital paintings. Use the Adobe Fresco toolset to layer and blend paper texture into digital watercolours.
Transform your painting with watercolour texture backgrounds.
Watercolour painting has captured the imaginations of generations of artists, thanks to the subtlety and accessibility of the medium. From abstract watercolours to landscape paintings or even still lifes of watercolour flowers, washed watercolour paints over paper create a play of texture and colour that can stun and enrapture an audience.
Learning how to control paints and mix watercolours is a challenge, but it’s one made easier with digital tools. Ground yourself in the techniques of physical watercolour painting to help your growth as an artist. Once you’ve got comfortable with physical watercolours, you can move to digital and Adobe Fresco makes the transition simple and efficient. Elevate your art with digital layers, blending and the ability to erase paints.
Translate watercolour to digital in Fresco.
Many tools in Fresco, Adobe Photoshop and other drawing apps help artists create watercolour art more efficiently while also preserving the strengths of the physical medium.
Easier-to-use equipment.
Transitioning to digital tools means that you don't require as much equipment. To assemble a traditional watercolour painting set, you need different brushes, paints, palettes and the necessary studio space and equipment to get to work. But with a digital tablet, Adobe Fresco and a digital pen or stylus, you have all the equipment you need. Additionally, the use of different background textures and canvases (like watercolour paper) can be accessed in the app or downloaded as free texture packs to help you to create imagery with its own unique character.
Painting with true watercolour texture.
In the past, painters and illustrators who wanted to replicate the texture and flow of watercolours had to work with a stamp tool or brush preset. This meant bringing a physical piece of artwork into the software. An artist needed to blot a piece of paper with ink, scan it and create the brushes and stamps from there. Fresco was designed with this technique in mind. The intention was to create software that lets you customise every aspect of the brush and paint. This results in brushstrokes that blend together in real time.
Wet and dry mixing and texture.
Part of the beauty of working with Fresco is that the paint doesn’t dry until you want it to. Using a combination of wet and dry brush techniques, you can mix paint or change the individual behaviours and textures of brushes. From the Live Brushes tool, you can control size, colour flow and water flow. And the Wet Spatter brush can add an interesting splatter effect when painted on top of a digital watercolour background texture like wood or canvas.
Experiment with paint texture.
Set up layers:
Fresco is optimised for work on a tablet, so it simplifies the creation and management process of layers for painting. Tap Add Layer on the taskbar and you can manipulate and move the layers around, group them or make them into pixel or vector layers for different effects.
Find your watercolour texture pack:
Look for different types of high-resolution watercolour background textures in the app or on Adobe Stock and place them on their own layers. You can adjust the Layer Properties settings to create a background that is textured like your preferred medium. Good textures to search for include wood grain, asphalt, concrete and tree bark.
See how watercolour paint brushes interact:
Fresco has two main types of live brush: watercolour and oil. Both of these brushes have built-in textures that simulate their respective materials. From the Brush Settings icon, you can adjust colour flow and water flow to get the look you want.
Make watercolour paintings in Fresco.
This tutorial will take you through the process of creating a watercolour painting using live brushes and texture options.
Go on a journey with artist Paul du Coudray as he learnt to loosen up his style of illustration using digital brushes.
Whether a colourful watercolour splash or an abstract painting is your goal, explore more Fresco tutorials and learn how watercolour textures and other features can bring depth to your digital paintings.
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