Traditional watercolour painting

Traditional watercolour painting

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After a long time, I’ve done a traditional watercolour painting.

Traditional watercolour landscape

After painting digital for a long time, it was nice to head back to traditional media with its challenges and limitations. I felt quite anxious about this one, but decided to be bold and go ahead with painting freely. I think it has come out better than I expected, since I wasn’t too sure if I could control the flow of water on paper. Unlike the standard practices of watercolour, I have made heavy use of colour and layering, and even used white paint. I must look to get better at this with more practice. Done on A4 size 300 GSM “Anupam” brand watercolour paper; it does take quite a bit of water without buckling.

“Night Driving”

“Night Driving”

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This time I wanted to paint something atmospheric and from imagination. Done with Krita using the RGBA brushes on my XP-Pen Artist 10s as usual.

“Night Driving”

For this piece, I went with my imagination and had a lot of fun doing the damaged road. On many Indian roads damaged sections are sometimes marked with a branch of a tree planted into the ground by the locals for motorists to sight and avoid, when there is nothing better like a reflective warning triangle available. Night driving is particularly hard on sections of damaged highways with no streetlights and on-coming vehicles, especially heavy vehicles, using powerful high-beam headlamps.

Resort

Resort

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My latest painting in Krita, using the WaterC brushes.

Resort

Again, an attempt using the WaterC brushes. I think my style tends more towards acrylic painting than loose and transparent water colours. Like many of my previous paintings, this one is also referred from one of my photos. I don’t know whether I will continue with this brush set in the future, since I like the RGBA impasto brushes better (they have great texture and character). But for now I am reasonably happy with the result of this one.

Lake view

Lake view

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Another landscape, painted using the WaterC brushes in Krita this time.

Lake view

Like many of my landscapes, this one too is based off one of my photos. The boat in the lake and the man watching from the foreground are my own additions. I am trying to do improvisations like this to develop my skills further. Though I am not totally happy with the level of emulation of watercolour in this attempt I like the brushes enough to try a few more in the future. Now, if only they weren’t so laggy on my laptop…

Old Red Bungalow

Old Red Bungalow

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Another landscape/scenery, based on another one of my photos. I really enjoyed doing this one, and I am reasonably happy with it, though I wanted to enhance the lighting/mood a bit more.

Old Red Bungalow

Again, painted using the RGBA Impasto brushes. The inspiration for this comes from this photo of mine. Obviously I have made a few improvisations to it.

The location is of historical interest and has a personal connection. This building is located in the same compound as “Sribagh” which is a larger bungalow built by one of my illustrious ancestors. The property was later bought by the owner of Amrutanjan, Kashinathuni Nageshwara Rao and is a prime piece of real estate in Mylapore, Chennai. It was also the place where the Sribagh Pact was entered into.

Broken mountain road

Broken mountain road

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Another landscape using the awesome RGBA brushes in Krita 5 beta 2.

Broken mountain road

This one is inspired from one of my photographs. I have got a bit more comfortable with the RGBA impasto brushes and I improvised a bit from the reference photograph (one of my own photos) by making the road a bit more broken and interesting than it actually was. Part of learning landscape painting is understanding where to deviate from the reference image to make it more interesting and I still feel like a newbie at this. In any case I am quite happy with the result.

Another landscape – Cliff

Another landscape – Cliff

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Yet another landscape, painted using Krita 5 beta 2 RGBA impasto brushes. I am enjoying the impasto brushes in Krita.

Cliff

This is a landscape painted using the RGBA impasto brushes in Krita. I am really enjoying these brushes, as they give a genuine oil knife painting effect to digital art. Mimicking real media using digital painting is very cool.

This scene is composed from my imagination, but I used references for the chalet as well as the dead tree.

Forest

Forest

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A painting using Krita’s new RGBA Impasto brush. This one was an experimental painting using a single brush and not sure whether it works or not, but I am glad to experiment like this once in a while.

Forest

As said before, I am trying Krita 5 beta 2 and it has some cool new brushes. This painting was done using the RGBA Impasto brush. I am not sure whether I achieved the effect I wanted1. However experimenting with different brushes is an interesting exercise.

Landscapes are always challenging and I’ve been trying a few lately, as a break from the usual portraits. My point in digital painting is to mimic real media as much as possible or at least keep my creations “painterly”. To that end, Krita 5 has made it easier.

  1. this painting is done entirely from imagination [↩]
Kolavai Lake Chengalpattu

Kolavai Lake Chengalpattu

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A painting of Kolavai Lake, Chengalpattu, using Krita with my XP-Pen Artist 10s.

Kolavai Lake Chengalpattu

Yet another landscape painting in Krita. I downloaded Krita 5 beta 2 to try out some of its new features. Though I tried the new brushes (RGBA brushes and the water colour brushes) I found the strokes to be extremely laggy on my laptop to the extent that I couldn’t create a painting with them. Maybe in future, when I get a more powerful laptop, I might use these brushes. For now, this painting is created using the default “Paint” set brushes.

Kolavai lake is a lake near Chengalpattu in Tamil Nadu and is a beautiful location. It is a major source of water for the nearby districts and is an ecologically sensitive area. I had already painted this beautiful lake a long time ago.

Landscape painting – Temple tank

Landscape painting – Temple tank

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After a few portraits, I usually feel the need for something different. So here it is – temple tank. Painted in Krita with my XP-Pen Artist 10s.

Temple tank

I thought of making this a monochrome painting1, but I like the subtle colours of this one. I am still not 100% satisfied with digitally painting landscapes and feel the need for a different technique. This one, I post-processed slightly in GIMP by adding the “cartoon” effect because the details felt a bit too muddy otherwise.

The biggest challenge in landscapes is not the detail or “likeness” to the reference image but how to subtract details from the source and get enough depth to stand out. A lot of the time, copying all the tiny details from the photographic reference can kill the depth and soul of the image.

  1. I did paint this monochrome initially and added a colour overlay layer afterwards [↩]