Second Emulation/Experiment - Using Watercolour

For my second emulation, I wanted add colour to my work this time but I wanted to use another form of colouring rather than just digital. I thought Watercolour would be a suitable starting point, as watercolour paints can give some very beautiful and traditional effects to work, and I was sure I could produce some creepy/eerie looking work using them.

I wanted the image to link to the story of the pied piper, so I decided to draw one of the scenes from it. The scene I chose was where the Piper enters into the council chamber with the mayor and corporation sitting at a council table discussing the rat infestation.

I started the process by drawing a pencil line drawing that I could perfect my design on. I decided to set the scene using a design based around the camera shot angle of an over shoulder shot, although decided to base the image around the side angle of the Pied Piper, and have the Mayor and Corporation sitting in the background around the table.

Now, I decided that if I used purely watercolour I would lose detail in areas such as the faces and hands. I came up with a solution for this by tracing the line work image onto another piece of paper using ink and a brush. This would then let me define more detail, and the colours that would have run into each other during the painting process would be defined between the lines and give the whole image a unique and cartoony style.

Next step was to start watercolour on the pencil drawing. I wanted to separate light and dark tones in a way that gave the impression of true lighting. I did this by using the complimentary colours Blue (to show the shadows) and Orange (for the lighter areas). This made the room look dark, but also gave the appearance of light coming through the window behind the mayor. This worked very well, as when it came to adding the colour to different areas of the image, there was little need to change colour to get darker toned of the same colours. I did ass to some small areas of shading using black paint, just to make the depth of shadow more visible. The colours also hint that he mayor is a innocent person (use of warm colours e.g. Reds, Oranges) and that the Piper is a eerie and strange person that might not be trusted (use of colder colours e.g. Blues, blacks).

Next step was to fit the watercolour with the line work in Photoshop. I edited the colours using Levels in Photoshop to make them more vibrant and darker so they stood out.

Next I added the lines by thresholding them so the lines turned black, and then used the magic wand tool to erase the white, leaving a transparent layer containing only black lines which I then copied onto the water coloured image.

This was essentially the whole image finished, but I wasn't totally happy with the sharp edge of which the image finished. So, I decided to create a border for the image that made it look like chipped paint.

I started with using a coarse brush and some black ink to make a rough and scratchy black line.

I then took it into Photoshop to be thresholded to make the lines darker.

Then using the magic wand tool, selected the white edge around the outside of the black lines.

I then used the keyboard shortcut "cmd J" to duplicate this white edge, leaving me with a white scratchy border.

I then copied this onto the other image to give it a scratchy white border that looks like chipped paint on an old canvas or piece of wood.

This last touch finished the whole image off and made it look even better. I will definitely consider using watercolour in the future, possibly for the whole front cover and few pages I will be creating.