Photos with Watercolour Effect

I like making things by hand, working with my actual hands. Getting messy with watercolours or occasionally stabbing myself with the embroidery needle. ;-)

I forget that there's a lot of creative potential in my computer. I remember when I first learnt how to use Photoshop and Illustrator. OMG, the possibilities were mind blowing! I want to try and recapture some of that excitement.

These days I use Gimp and Inkscape, free alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator respectively. I have been using them for many years but I use them as tools and not so much for the creative things they can do besides editing photos and drawing my patterns.

I'm going to look for ways to be more creative with those two programs, on their own and combined. I already have a few tutorials bookmarked on YouTube. I'm looking forward to trying new things!

I started with this tutorial for making a watercolour effect on a photo using Gimp.

My first go is at the top of this post. I didn't have any pictures of mountains, as used in the tutorial, so I used a picture I took of my sister and her kids when I visited them last year. I kept the colours in my try quite close to the tutorial, just to get a feel for the technique.


The second try. Using another photo from my California trip, the orange tree in my sister's garden. This one is maybe not as successful as the first one, but it's all about the process, so I'm not going to beat myself up over it! :-)


This is my third go, I'm really happy with it! It's a picture I took in Sonoma. I think it actually does look like a splodgy watercolour. There's a sort of flatness in the building which works well with the watercolour brushes.

I really enjoyed making these. I've picked up several tips for using Gimp as well as learning how to do the technique in the tutorial. And the watercolour effect is definitely something I'll be using again. I don't know what for, but it's too fun not to use it again. :-)

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