Garden Riot

The very same Art Director that called me when I just learned Painter on my Mac called again for another series for her Fine Gardening Magazine.  This was a series on Organic Mistakes, but with this particular illo, the concept was that the garden bugs were revolting: 

After turning the pencils into a cepia tone with Photoshop, I took it into Painter and made background passes of Digital Watercolor.  If you don't dry the initial layer, increase the diffusion and dryness tolerance (and varying degrees of those within each stroke), the impression of real watercolor as it dries on the paper comes through the best of any past Painter programs.

A white, Digital Watercolor brush cleans out any part of the wet paint, giving you a clean, white background for additional layers of color (such as in the plants, bugs, character, etc.)

Drying layers of watercolor and adding additional layers creates all the more authentic watercolor looks.

But if it weren't for Photoshop, those fun "blurs" and smears wouldn't be as easy to do at all.