mateuszurbanowicz
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Printing for watercolors
🕑 Added 2018-12-05 14:51:24 +0000 UTC One of the problems of coloring a piece traditionally, and especially so with watercolors is making mistakes. If we make a big mistake when coloring a line art, not only we lose the time we spent putting the colors in but also the original line art done with ink or pencils.To be less stressed while coloring and to allow myself bolder use of colors I often scan the line art and test the colors digitally to be sure that the coloring scheme I have in mind will really work. Also, having a high-resolution scan of the lines comes in handy (especially with pencil lines) because it can be used on the finished piece to make the lines appear darker using Photoshop's "multiply" layer.
Recently Kana started doing watercolor illustrations, and she wanted to test her colors directly on the watercolor paper - using a printout copy of the lines. And since we have a printer (Canon PRO-10s) that prints using pigment inks we wanted to test if printed lines can be used for the final coloring work.
The print went well: nice and sharp on our usual watercolor paper (300g Waterford white cold pressed), but when we started painting, strange things started to happen. Waterford is a good paper, I used it for many illustrations but we had problems to make our washes look like they supposed to.
Even simple washes that were done without any hesitation, pausing or correcting did not come out as expected. Mostly in the area of lines the paint wouldn’t just dry properly and evenly.
I did some testing and discovered that the printer's ink (or clear coating that the printer apparently also applies) does not play well with watercolors. The watercolor's pigment seems to be repelled by the lines resulting in very uneven washes.
Even in places where there is nothing printed the paint behaves weirdly (?) so I guess that the whole printing area could be covered in some sort of coating.
The paint behaves in completely different way than usual, the moisture being “sucked into” the paper really rapidly behaving more similarly to alcohol markers.
I tried to do some simple color gradients from full color intensity to transparent and failed on the printed paper. What’s more the washes had strange blurriness and blotchiness to them.
Overall - the fact that we can print lines on regular watercolor paper is a step in an interesting direction. The printed lines are certainly waterproof and sharp enough to be useful, but the watercolor repelling properties make them only a test ground for colors. For now, for the final pieces, the original pencil or pen lines have to be used.
Comments
Yes, you have to decide by yourself what part should be perfect and what part more “loose” and playful for a good balance! :)
VitAnyaNaked
I agree completely! I remember when I just started drawing all the time I tried to follow the rules that we were taught in art school. She shook over each contour and was very afraid of blots. It was torture! Only then I realized that irregularities can play a positive role, and what goes against the rules is a feature, not a defect! Rules are necessary, but who need to work, which are made from a template, such damage if there is a place art?!
Yes, It seems that it's possible! Thank you for the advice! I'll have to try to make the necessary mask file and try the result when I have some time to do the tests!
You can specify what part of a print has clear coating applied, perhaps you can use this function to apply the coating to an area outside where you want to paint like the border area you cut off after you have finished painting. It is a bit of a workaround but it should work. <a href="https://ugp01.c-ij.com/ij/webmanual/PrinterDriver/M/PRO-10S%20series/1.0/EN/PPG/dg-c_clearcoating.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://ugp01.c-ij.com/ij/webmanual/PrinterDriver/M/PRO-10S%20series/1.0/EN/PPG/dg-c_clearcoating.html</a>
Yes, we tried fiddling with the settings but apparently it's difficult to turn the coating completely off in this type of printer. There is still some research to be done :)
If the print dialog settings doesn't work, you may also have to look into the "printer driver settings" to turn off the clear coating settings.
