Textures in Watercolor Painting

House for Sale in Peggy's Cove (detail)

We tend to think of a traditional watercolor painting as two-dimensional. But, in fact, there are three-dimensional textures on its surface. What are the sources of those textures and how can they be emulated and, perhaps, extended in digital traditional painting?

Texture in Traditional Watercolor

Here are some sources of texture in traditional watercolor painting:

1. The surface of the paper (or other painting surface) has texture.
2. As watercolor washes dry, the granulation of pigment particles creates lovely texture. The size, shape, and weight of the particles influences the amount of granulation. All pigments, but especially those with larger and heavier particles, tend to settle into crevices on the painting surface. This settling is also influenced by ingredients that suspend the pigment and bind it to the painting surface—usually gum arabic, but sometimes other things like honey or glycerin.
3. Artists create texture by applying the paint with tools such as a stiff-bristled brush, toothbrush, or spray bottle.
4. Artists use stencils to channel pigments into certain areas or, conversely, with a frisket product (fluid, film, or tape) they protect certain areas of the painting surface from being painted.
5. Artists also move the wet paint around, piling up pigment particles here but not there, by adding wetting agents like water, alcohol, or India ink, or absorbing agents like salt, or rice kernels.
6. They make marks in the partially dried paint with tools such as a tissue, plastic wrap, palette knife, textured roller, or rubber stamps. They modify the dried paint surface with tools such as a burnisher, eraser, razor blade, or lifting solution. 
7. Finally, Artists create textures by decoupaging bits of textured paper to the painting surface, by making marks with colored pencils or pastels, by painting layers of acrylic medium, acrylic paint, or gouache, and so on.

(Apparent) Texture in Digital Watercolor

Textures in digital watercolor painting are only apparent, if we’re thinking about the image created on a computer screen. (Let’s ignore, for now, real textures that result when a digital image is printed and physically manipulated. Those textures could come from the traditional sources listed above.)

What are the sources of (apparent) texture in a digital watercolor painting? Here are some sources, with special reference to how they occur in Escape Motion’s Rebelle software, which does an amazing job of emulating water-based media. (I’ve used these processes in many paintings, like “House for Sale in Peggy’s Cove” above. For step-by-step examples of several of them in a recent painting, see the post “The Major’s Storehouse.”)

1. The final canvas imparts a texture; it may look like paper, stretched cloth, wood, or another textured painting surface. This apparent texture emulates the texture of a traditional painting surface (in #1 above) very well. Artists can change canvases at any time during the painting process (I’ll say more below about how I use this feature). But here I am thinking of how the canvas in effect when the completed painting is saved in a graphic file format (e.g., JPEG, PNG, TIFF, or PSD) looks like a physical painted surface. Of course, you can save the painting multiple times with various canvases, and these may not be the same canvas (or canvases) you used during the painting process.
2. Texture appears as the digital color flows into crevices of the canvas. This apparent texture emulates the textures based in the traditional pigment particles and binding agents (in #2 above) to some degree. For instance, Rebelle 3 (2018) added a very sophisticated Watercolor Behavior Panel that allows users to control (on scales of 1 to 10) three aspects of the flow of digital watercolor washes: how quickly they are absorbed by the canvas, how distinct the dried edges remain, and how much color flows into canvas crevices. These parameters can be adjusted individually or together in presets (five presets come with the program, but users may define custom presets). The digital wash flow can mimic granulation of traditional pigments only to some degree, because this apparent granulation is not associate with certain pigments but applies to any hue being used at the time. For that reason, it does not really distinguish between granulating and non-granulating pigments. Rather it’s like this: on one of the presets every wash, regardless of hue, appears granulated; on another preset every wash is quite smooth.
3. Some digital watercolor brushes impart apparent texture. All digital brushes work by repeatedly stamping a spot of color on the canvas. If these spots are relatively smooth and have even edges (e.g., they are solid circles of color), and are stamped close together (and, perhaps, even blurred together), then the resulting brush mark will appear to be very smooth. But the brush marks can be much more textured (and, perhaps, more like the marks of ‘real’ watercolor brushes) if the stamped spot is given a rough pattern and its edges are irregular (in Rebelle, these two features are produced by the Shape and Grain of the brush respectively). Brushes can create more texture when the stamped spots are placed a bit further apart linearly (in the direction of the stroke) or side-to-side (perpendicular to the direction of the stroke), or are rotated; and things get even more interesting when the placement of the stamp (either linearly, side-to-side, or rotationally) is randomized. Also, some brushes cause textures as the size and opacity of the stamped spot varies, or the canvas texture influences the spot, and so on. The Rebelle Brush Creator Panel allows the user to manipulate these parameters of the stamped spot, and more. It’s possible to create brushes that make textured marks that emulate the marks of traditional tools like a stiff-bristled brush, toothbrush, or spray bottle (in #3 above) very well.
4. Digital stencils and masking layers fully emulate the textures introduced by the traditional processes of using stencils and frisket products (in #4 above). Indeed, the digital tools offer many additional opportunities: digital stencils and masked areas can be duplicated, adjusted in size, reversed in orientation, rotated, and so on. They can be inverted, such that masked parts are unmasked, and vice versa. Further, masked areas can be turned on and off easily. The stencils created from masked areas can be saved for reuse in other paintings. 
5. Special digital brushes emulate selective wetting and drying of the canvas (in #5 above). In Rebelle 3, for instance, a group of Wet brushes make marks with no pigment but with a user-determined amount of water (on a scale of 1 to 100). The preset brushes emulate adding water with sponges and spray bottles, but users can design other Water tools (within the parameters of the versatile Brush Creator Panel mentioned above). Another category of Dry brushes offers tools to do just the opposite: make a mark that absorbs water from the canvas (on a scale of 1 to 100). For instance, the Splat Brush in this category somewhat emulates spreading salt on a wet wash; other brushes emulate using sponges or tissues to partially dry a wash. Users can create digital brushes that emulate a ‘thirsty’ dry sable brush, and so on.
6. Digital erasers produce a variety of apparent texture effects in drying or dried paint; these can emulate marks by a variety of traditional tools (in #6 above). The standard erasers in Rebelle 3 are not subtle, and their names give this away: Round Hard, Round Soft, Square Soft, and Square Hard. They are mainly useful for removing unwanted color (on a scale from 1 to 100), as the category of eraser implies. Yet there is a fifth eraser, called the Splatter, that suggests a world of possibilities for creating apparent texture. Since Erasers are just digital brushes that remove (rather than place) color in stamped spots, they can be as texturally sophisticated as any of the digital brushes described above. The Splatter eraser is a good example, but users can design a huge variety of erasers (with the Brush Creator Panel) with marks more like sponges or tissues or patterned wraps. Furthermore, in Rebelle 3, any digital brush can be converted to erase with the press of a button. I use the excellent Wood Ink Pen as an eraser to scratch away subtle lines in wet and dry paint.
7. The apparent textures from (digital) mixed media emulate their counterparts in traditional media (in #7 above) in varying degrees. Indeed, it is a hallmark of digital painting that artists can switch quickly from one simulated medium to another. It’s quite easy to add graphite or colored pencil marks, pastel marks, layers of opaque paint with or without apparent impasto depth, airbrushed color, and so on, to a digital watercolor painting. You can even switch canvases in midstream, which can cause apparent textures that are like those Gerald Brommer (1927- ) pioneered in the 1950’s when he began decoupaging varieties of textured paper to his watercolor painting surface.

The six ways above to produce apparent texture are “realistic” in the sense I discuss in “How Being Cheap and Lazy Made Me ‘Realistic.’” That is, they track the traditional watercolor painting processes and, unsurprisingly, can generate results that mimic the textures produced by those traditional processes.

I can think of these other digital ways of creating apparent texture that are not much like traditional processes. However, their results, or products, can look traditional.

• Canvases with natural texture can be created and used in combination with digital processes #2 through #6 above. For instance, a canvas might be derived from a grayscale photo of river rock, and when the canvas is painted, sketched, or erased on, that rock texture is imparted to the digital image.
• Layers of texture can be blended in a variety of modes. Digital artists often paint on layers to simulate adding glazes of color over dried paint. When the digital processes #2 through #6 are applied to either a new layer or a duplicate layer, and those layers of texture are blended in modes other than Normal (e.g., Multiply, Darken, Lighten, Overlay, Soft Light, Difference, and so on), interesting new interpretations of the texture can result.
• Layers of painted texture can be transformed—e.g., enlarged or shrunk, stretched, rotated, blurred, sharpened, adjusted in saturation and contrast, changed hue, and so on—to produce new interpretations of the texture.
• Stencils created from layers of texture can preserve the textured pattern for duplication, adjustment in size, inversion, and so on. These stencils can be reused with the same or another digital medium, and in the same or another painting.
• Finally, accidents can happen when multiple layers (especially duplicated layers of texture with various blending modes) are collapsed into one layer: very dense impasto effects occur, which look as though thick paint was applied to certain areas. Sometimes these accidents are ‘happy’!

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Thanks for reading!

I hope that you enjoyed this post and that it inspires you to enjoy digital painting. If you find this post helpful, please share it with your friends. And please send me your insights on digital painting and suggestions for Digital Paint Spot.

Bob Kruschwitz