Fun with Digital Watercolors
By Lori Kerfoot

The Digital Watercolor brushes in Corel Painter IX can help you produce realistic watercolor effects. Let's take a look at some ways you can experiment with Digital Watercolors.

Experiment with different Digital Watercolor brush variants
You can choose from twenty-seven preset Digital Watercolor brushes. Try some specialty brush variants such as Salt or Spatter Water.

To choose a Digital Watercolor brush, on the Brush Selector bar, choose Digital Watercolor from the Brush Category selector, and choose a brush from the Brush Variant selector.

The Digital Watercolor brushes used in the example above are (from the top): New Simple Water, Broad Water, Coarse Dry Brush, and Flat Blender Brush combined with the Salt brush. The Spatter Water brush is applied over the other brush strokes.

Choose different paper textures
Digital Watercolor brush strokes reveal the Paper texture you select, so try choosing different paper textures. You can choose from various watercolor papers or experiment with paper textures that you wouldn't traditionally use with watercolors, such as Wood Grain, Linen Canvas, Pebble Board. Also, unlike traditional watercolors, you can use one paper texture for some brush strokes, and switch to a different paper texture for other brush strokes.

To choose a paper texture, in the toolbox, click the flyout arrow on the Paper Selector, and choose a paper texture from the list.

You can choose a paper texture from the Paper Selector in the toolbox (circled in red, left) to change the appearance of Digital Watercolor brush strokes (right).

Try blending colors
Digital Watercolor brush strokes affect each other as you apply one brush stroke on another. Experiment with different brushes and colors to get a feel for how colors in Digital Watercolor brush strokes blend.

Combine wet and dry strokes
You get different results when you apply a new brush stroke on a "wet" brush stroke rather than on a dry brush stroke. Try drying your brush strokes before applying new ones to achieve a different effect.

To dry brush strokes, choose Layers > Dry Digital Watercolor (Ctrl + Shift + L).

Both brush strokes are wet in the example above.

The green brush stroke was dried before applying the yellow brush stroke in the example above.

Adjust the Wet fringe setting
The Wet Fringe setting, located on the property bar, controls the amount of pooling of water and paint at the edges of Digital Watercolor brush strokes. Try adjusting the Wet Fringe setting to change the appearance of all "wet" brush strokes. When you're satisfied with the results, it's a good idea to dry Digital Watercolor brush strokes. This lets you adjust the Wet Fringe on new Digital Watercolor brush strokes without affecting existing brush strokes.

Changing the Wet Fringe setting from 15% (left) to 85% (right) has a dramatic effect on the appearance of the brush strokes.