Digital Real Watercolors

For the month of February, my digital art course is using real watercolors in Corel Painter. I've always had a time with traditional watercolors, so this is quite a learning experience for me. I used a reference photo from a very talented professional photographer friend of mine, Genine Gehret. Our subjects are to be animals. Below is my cardinal.

the first assignment for the month was to do this puppy from a reference picture provided by the instructor. This was my first time using the real watercolors, and I struggled with them so the painting is not as good as I would like.

Good start, Judy. There is something amiss about his chest and feet areas. The colour looks really good!

hi Alan
It's funny that you mention that, because the thing that was bothering me was his muzzle. I guess I didn't get enough shaping into his legs to give the feeling of roundness. He is a puppy so that he does have big feet compared to his body, but his legs do look flat to me now that you mention it. Here's the reference picture.

Actually, I think the photo makes the chest and paws look strange. Anyway, the cardinal looks great! I can't even imagine how you would paint watercolors on a computer. It's looking good, though.

Yes, the painting is faithful to the photo. There is so little of his upper chest showing in the image that it looks odd, but it's caused by his little puppy proportions. That's a challenging image to paint, and your are doing well!

The cardinal was much easier. Thanks

It seems to be a real oxymoron to say digital real watercolors but you've done well with both of them. Love the background on the cardinal but the branch hanging in the air bothers me since it isn't attached to anything.

The puppy looks good but maybe you could add a highlight on the viewer's left on top of the paw to make it look rounder? It is an odd sort of pose but really cute.

Within Corel, they have three different watercolor type brushes; watercolor, digital watercolors and real watercolors. The real watercolors only work on special watercolor paper while one of the others works only on regular paper and the third works on either. It is confusing and I haven't quite figured it all out yet, but it is starting to work for me with just using one of the types.

The real watercolors (Corel) are applied and react pretty much the same as traditional ones. They diffuse, depending on how moist you make them. They get very light as they diffuse, and you have to keep slowly adding paint until you get the saturation you want. It is interesting to experience it.

As far as the branch goes, I guess I'm used to looking at Audubon prints where he does the same thing. I probably could have splintered the ends more to imply continuation of them, especially the left one which king of stops abruptly.

On the puppy, I spent a lot of time and never did get it to how I really wanted it. It is one just to put aside and move on.