watercolor

Funky Watercolor Illustrations

paul0v2 — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 14:29:59 +0000

Daniel Mackie is an illustrator specialized in watercolor with a funky surreal style that catches the attention of the eyes. A mix of emotions going on at the same time on the same canvas with an amazing touch of watercolor. Check them out!

For more from Daniel visit www.danielmackie.com

Weighing the babies

Boxer, fighter in the arena

Converse All-Stars

Graffiti Wall

The flight of Icarus

Lord of the Dance!

Bully

The long distance Runner

Deep water

Forest Runners

Waterfall

Bottled Water

About the author

Hi there! I'm Paulo Canabarro, 26 year old web designer - paulocanabarro.com I'm from Brazil currently living and working out of Providence RI, USA. I'm truly passionate about design of all kinds, finding and sharing inspiration here has become part of my life. If you like to know more about me or get in touch visit my website paulocanabarro.com Stock me at Twitter and Dribbble

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Henry Darger: Art by Any Means

nathanbweller — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:21:15 +0000

This post is a bit different than what we normally share on Abduzeedo but I couldn't resist sharing it anyways. I recently watched one of the most inspiring documentaries I've ever seen, titled, In the Realms of the Unreal. In it acclaimed documentary film maker Jessica Yu tells the story of the mysterious self-taught artist Henry Darger. From minute one my jaw was on the floor and I was swept away into the fantastic world he had created. I hope you find his story as inspiring as I have, and if you'd like more posts of this nature in the future, please drop me a line in the comments!

Henry Darger was born in Chicago, April 1892. Tragedy found him early and often. At the age of three he lost his mother who died in childbirth and his would be sister was given up for adoption. Both events caused considerable confusion, insecurity, anger, and pain for Henry. Not many years later he became too great a burden for his father who had become lame and could not continue to take care of him. For a short time he was looked after by relatives, but on account of odd behavior at school Henry was sent to an asylum for “feeble minded children” at the age of seven, even though he was never diagnosed as being mentally ill. The asylum was reported to have been in notoriously poor condition in regards to sanitation and staff care, resulting in further harm or injury to patients. Though there is no account of abuse or other injuries to Henry specifically, one wonders what might have happened or been witnessed there when studying his art. To make matters worse, while at the asylum Henry received the news of his Father’s death and is said to have suffered great depression as a result.

Later in life, when he was still just 16, Henry ran away from the “State Farm” (an asylum work program) and made his way back to the area of Chicago where he was born. It was then that he got a job of the sort he would hold for the rest of his life, a janitor in a Catholic hospital. But this was not his real life. Though the domain of his public life spanned a mere four city blocks (with the exception of his time at the asylum) the private life of Henry Darger was one of biblical scope and fantastic imagination. It was a life of his own creation, only discovered upon his death in 1973 when his unsuspecting landlord happened upon a treasure trove of over 300 intricate watercolor paintings and an illustrated epic fairytale consisting of 15,000 pages as well as other works. The main work was titled: The Story of the Vivian Girls, In What Is Known As the Realms Of The Unreal, Of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by The Child Slave Rebellion. Or, In The Realms of the Unreal for short. And it was in these realms that Henry Darger lived the majority of his life, a brilliant artist hidden from the world in the guise of a simple, lonely janitor.

Art by Any Means

There are a thousand ways to approach the life and works of Henry Darger. His work is controversial and provocative, intimate and gruesome, sexual and childlike all at the same time. It’s easy to get caught up in discussions on his psyche or spiritual and emotional turmoil, all of which are extremely interesting discussions to be having by the way, but what I find most inspiring about his story is his unprecedented drive to create. He let nothing stand in the way of achieving his vision.

According to his autobiography Henry had a great love for children’s books and watercolor kits when he was young and living with his father. It’s no surprise then that when he wanted to tell his own story he looked for inspiration in similar places. He pulled images from magazines, coloring books, newspapers, and the like until he had built up a catalogue of sorts - pasting these images into old phone books mostly - for all of the characters in his stories. This way he could trace, collage, or copy images and then color them in, just like when he was younger.

In a world where nothing seemed to go right for Henry he created a fairytale universe where he made up the rules. He then wrote himself into it, allowing him to fully immerse himself in his art and render such sincere, unfiltered, beautiful, and disturbing images that the effect on the viewer is often dramatic and lasting. This is probably in part because he never intended his art to be viewed by others, lending it an unintentional mystique and voyeuristic magnetism. Instead of desiring commercial appeal, he made art for an audience of one, his own satisfaction of the utmost importance.

Lacking formal training of any kind, Henry knew only that he had a vision and that he needed to see it fulfilled. He cared little for the “rules” of the art world, allowing him to experiment like few others, incorporating advertisements in his art decades before the likes of Warhol or Lichtenstein. And even though he lived on a meager janitor’s salary, he would save his favorite images and take them to the local drug store where he’d have an expensive photo enlargement made. This allowed him to duplicate these images and use them over and over again in whatever scale he desired, to fantastic effect.

A brief study of his life and art have caused me to wonder how my own art would be affected if I adopted similar attitudes. How could I improve if I embodied Darger's desperation to create? What would happen if I wrote, designed, or painted for myself - with my own standards in mind - no matter what others were doing? And what sort of work could I produce if I were as doggedly inventive with the resources available to me?

It is the result of questions like these that have prompted me to share the art and story of Henry Darger. I think his contribution to recent art history and the questions it causes us to ask are healthy for the art community to consider and I hope it brings you an abundance of motivation and inspiration :)

Assorted Works

A Growing Legacy

Though fame and prestige was never his aim, Henry Darger finds himself (posthumously) a hero to the folk art or “outsider” art world. He is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished and prolific folk art masters the United States has ever produced. Many of his paintings, and most - if not all - of his writings, reside at the Folk Art Museum of New York where students and admirers alike come to marvel at his imagination and the staggering scope of his life’s work.

Links/Sources

The Henry Darger Wikipedia page

In the Realms of the Unreal - [video] documentary trailer

Henry Darger, Art and Selected Writings by Michael Bonesteel

About the author

Hi, my name is Nathan Weller. I'm a Columbus Ohio based artist, blogger and freelance consultant. I manage business development here at Abduzeedo. If you'd like to partner or advertise with us, email me at nathan[@]abduzeedo.com. I also write for some other cool blogs and post everything I write on twitter. If I'm not working then I'm either tinkering around with personal projects or posting cool stuff as I find it on my Tumblr. If you're passionate about art or even an artist yourself, I'd love to connect and learn about what you do :)

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Awesome Watercolor Illustrations by Dmitriy

PauloGabriel — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 03:02:10 +0000

Watercolor is definitely one of the most awesome techniques of illustration. I find truly amazing of how much control and precision artists have over their watered inks to form precise art.

And I'm probably overwhelmed by it because I have no idea how to do it... but yet, I know something beautifully done when I see it, and that's just the case of the work of Dmitriy Rebus Larin, an Russian in illustration that has done some great pieces of watercolor illustrations. Here I've placed some of them, but for more of his great work, you may visit his portfolio at Behance. I hope you all enjoy these! Cheers. ;)

Ironing the laces

British rock

Best friends

Football fan

Drinking

Kolomenskoe Art

Rebus88@rambler.ru

Freedom

Rebus & Den

Leisan

Arina

Mary Mastowka Kuzmenkova

About the author

Hello, everyone! I'm Paulo Gabriel, designer from Porto Alegre, Brazil, born in 1984. I have worked as a webdesigner since 2006, but websites and blogs have been a hobby for me since 1999. Here in Abduzeedo, I try to bring only the hot stuff for you... and hope that all of you enjoy my posts! For more cool stuff, you may also follow me on Twitter.

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Stunning Watercolor Illustrations by Grzegorz Wróbel

PauloGabriel — Wed, 12 May 2010 03:39:22 +0000

Watercolor is surely one great illustration technique, and we've seen some great pieces from artists such as Mathiole and Lora. Today, we introduce you another great artist: Grzegorz Wróbel.

He's a polish illustrator and I got to know him when Mathiole tweeted his DA portfolio... and I instantly knew I would have to post his awesome work. This guy is really good, and his illustrations/paintings are superb... he's probably one of the most complete watercolor artists I've seen. Anyways, for more of his work, you may visit his portfolio. I hope you all enjoy these! Cheers. ;)

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Playing with Watercolor Brushes and Masks in Pixelmator

abduzeedo — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:25:08 +0000

I have already created some tutorials about watercolor effects; however, I also want to create a workflow that is extremely simple but that produces a beautiful result. Therefore, I invented this tutorial, which uses only basic watercolor brushes, a photo, and a layer mask.

This tutorial is part of a series of tutorials I have been writing for Pixelmator and posting over at http://www.pixelmator.com/learn/

Step 1

Open Pixelmator and create a new document. As usual, I’m using 1440×900 pixels. Next, fill the background with #363636 for the color.

Step 2

Import a paper texture to your design. The texture I used was courtesy of Shutterstock, and you can get it here: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-20845342/stock-photo-old-yellow-paper-background-with-scratches.html

Step 3

Change the Blending to Multiply.

Step 4

Duplicate the texture layer (so that there are 2 texture layers). The other layers will be placed between these 2 original layers. For the top layer, use Linear Burn for the Blending.

Step 5

With the Brush Tool (B), select a watercolor brush. You can download the ones I used here. Next, add a new layer; then, with red for the color, paint a splatter.

Step 6

Now, use other types of watercolor brushes; paint with two hues of yellow, a dark one and a light one.

Step 7

Add some more splatters, now with green.

Step 8

The last spatter should be blue. Try to overlay the splatters, and change their Blending to Lighten.

Step 9

Place a photo of a girl in your document. The one I used is from Shutterstock, and you can download it here: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-46637950/stock-photo-beautiful-fashionab...

Step 10

Select the image layer and go to Layer > Add Layer Mask. Paint the layer mask with black so that the photo will be hidden. Then, with the Brush Tool (B) and using white for the color, start painting the mask with the watercolor brushes. This layer belongs on top of the paper texture and the other layers.

Step 11

Change the Blending to Multiply.

Conclusion

This is a very easy effect that creates a beautiful outcome. Once again, we used only brushes, masks, and blendings—nothing else. You can try adding this effect to different images as well.

Another Example

Download the Pixelmator file

Pixelmator file

About the author

Abduzeedo is a blog about design. There are all sorts of articles for those who want to look for inspiration. Also you will find very useful tutorials for the most used applications out there, with a special selection of Photoshop Tutorials and Illustrator Tutorials. You can get in follow us via Twitter at @abduzeedo

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Amazing Fashion Watercolor Illustrations by Kareem Iliya

PauloGabriel — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:52:30 +0000

Yesterday I went to a book store, and had a look at some great design and illustrations books. There, I found this great artist called Kareem Iliya, who makes some amazing fashion watercolor illustrations, pretty beautiful, so I just had to find her portfolio once I got home.

Her portfolio is pretty amazing, and I just had to share her work with all of you. For more of her illustrations, you may visit her portfolio. I hope you enjoy these! Cheers. ;)

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Incredible Pencil and Watercolor Drawings by Esra Roise

amanda — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:25:06 +0000

I've always been crazy about the careful combination of watercolor and pencil so you can only imagine my excitement when I came across Esra Roise. I can't get over how perfectly she uses light and shadow to fully model her figures. Her depiction of hair is exquisite, all while maintaining a very relaxed mood to her drawings. I recognized her work through some pieces she did for fashion and pop culture magazine, Nylon. Really awesome stuff.

I'm Esra, a Norwegian freelance illustrator, living and working in Oslo, Norway. I started out with two years at Einar Granum School of Arts, and I am currently taking my bachelor degree in Visual Communications at the National Academy of the Arts in Oslo.

About the author

Amanda Macedo is a designer and blogger by passion and profession. Living and working out of her backpack, she can now be found in San Francisco, CA, biking, writing, dancing, and tweeting .

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Beautiful Watercolor Illustrations of Super Heroes and Villains

PauloGabriel — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:00:53 +0000

I've probably said it before, but watercolor is definetely one of the greatest techniques of painting there is! It's truly incredible what a good illustration will do with it... so I thought it would be cool to find some watercolor illustrations of Super heroes and villains.

And as usual, I started looking for some cool illustrations at DeviantART, and found a whole bunch of sweet, beautiful illustrations, and they're listed below! The colors give each illustration a particular feeling, a single mood for every and each one, and that's exactly what I found fantastic about it. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy these as much as I did... and please, don't forget to give some love to each artist by visiting their galleries!! There are much more great art at their galleries. Cheers. ;)

Doudourock

Kameron Gates

Brian Shearer

Marcelo Di Chiara

Chris Stevens

taguiar

Matthew Fletcher

Garry Brown

Julia Bax

Matthew Fletcher

Leinil Francis Yu

duss005

Ryan Ottley

Lora8

KidNotorious

duss005

Paul Renaud

Stephen Arthur Schaffer

duss005

mbreitweiser

Mike Mayhew

duss005

Mike Mayhew

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Seriously Cool Watercolor Paintings

PauloGabriel — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:34:03 +0000

One style that really has caught me lately is watercolor! I find those painting of such a great taste that I cannot express how much I like it. We've seen some artists doing some great work on watercolor, such as Mathiole, and I found a girl artist who is just incredible!

Her name is Lora and she's probably British because of her website url (.co.uk). There's not much information on her DeviantART account, and all we can say is that she pretty much does some seriously cool watercolor paintings. And, she's cute... so that's like a plus, because Abduzeedo supports cute artist girls. lol

So, you should really check both her portfolios, at DeviantART and her personal website. You guys won't regret! That are dozens of works there!! Anyways, I really hope you enjoy these as much as I did! Cheers. ;)

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Beautiful Illustrations by Ana Maldonado

abduzeedo — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:00:05 +0000

Yesterday I was chatting with one of my professors from college and that brought me back some quite nice memories. Ana Maldonado taught me very important things about design workflow and presentation that I have been using since then. But we also talked about some of her new illustrations, which by the way, are beautiful.

All the paintings are done with Indian Ink, watercolor and acid free paper. What is really cool is the use of colors and subjects with a big influence of the indian and western culture.

For more information visit Ana's Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/maldona/

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Super Cool Watercolor Effect in 10 steps in Photoshop

abduzeedo — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:17:42 +0000

Last year I wrote a Photoshop tutorial for PSDTUTS showing how to create a very nice design using watercolor brushes. It was inspired by the work of guys such as Bruno Fujii, Margot Mace, Raphaël of My Dead Pony and Stina Person. This time I will create another effect but it will be using Masks and Watercolor brushesl; it's inspired by another great digital artist, the master Scott Hansen the mind behind ISO 50 and also some images from the Daily Inspiration.

So in this tutorial we will use Photoshop, some brushes from Brusheezy and some stock photos.

Step 1

Open Photoshop and create a new document, I'm using 1920x1200 pixels.

Step 2

Add a new layer, fill it with white then make sure you have black and white for the foreground and background colors. Then go to Filter>Texture>Texturizer. Use Canvas for the Texture, 75% for the Scaling, 3 for the Relief and for the Light choose Top Right.

Step 3

Let's add a nice texture. You can use the image of your choice it could be parchment paper for example. I'm using a image from Shutterstock that you can buy it at: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-20845342-old-yellow-paper-background-with-scratches.html

Place the image in the document on top of the other layers. After that, change the Opacity to 75%.

Step 4

Now let's place an image in our document. I'm using a photo of a guy walking in the field from Shutterstock, you can get it here. The image has to go beneath the texture layer. After that go to Layer>Group Layer. The layer of the image will be inside a folder in the Layer Palette. Select the folder and go to Layer>Layer Mask>Hide all.

Step 5

The image is hiding because of the mask. So now, let's use some Watercolor Brushes. The ones I use are from Brusheezy and you can download them here http://www.brusheezy.com/brushes?search=watercolor.

So select one of the watercolor brushes and them white for the color and paint on the layer mask of the group. You will notice that the image will start showing.

Step 6

Pick another Brush and paint again.

Step 7

Keep painting untill you can see the image without losing the brush splatters.

Step 8

Now add another layer, this time beneath the Folder that the image is in. Then again using the watercolor brushes paint over the layer using colors like: pink, blue and yellow. Use the image below for reference.

Step 9

Let's just adjust the color of the image. Select the image and go to Image>Adjustment>Photo Filter. Select Warning Filter (85) and 55% for the Density. Also select the Preserve Luminosity option

Step 10

Select the image and go to Filter>Artistic>Dry Brush. Use 0 for the Brush Size, 9 for the Brush Detail and 1 for the Texture.

Conclusion

Just place your logo and that it you will have a really cool effect and super simple to achieve. That can be used for website headers to create a simply awesome design, and, of course to create posters. Also you can reduce the opacity of the paper texture. I reduced to 50%, that way we can drive the viewer's attention to the watercolor effect.

Version 2

You can try different images as well like the one below.

Download the Photoshop File

Click here to download the Photoshop file used for this tutorial

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Hannah Stouffer Amazing Illustration mixing Watercolor and Textures

Sanid — Mon, 18 May 2009 11:16:19 +0000

If you are looking for Illustrations with an unique style , then I got the right artist for you. Hannah Stouffer combines cool Illustrations with watercolor textures and the results are awesome.

Los Angeles-based illustrator Hannah Stouffer finds a great deal of comfort in imagery- it's an admiration that is often times overwhelming. With an infatuation for icons and images that reflect and categorize historical eras, genres and subcultures, her work is an opulent, elegant and beautifully intricate mixture of illustration and design. Her densely-packed compositions consciously recall classical elements from our past and combine them with our modern attractions, creating cohesive yet opposing array's of imagery and embellishment. She focuses on the contrasts between periods in time, subcultures and social trends- and merges them together with a high regard for traditional decoration.

Check out her Portfolio or Flickr account for more cool artworks

About the author

My name is Sanid, I'm a 17 years old student and Design-freak from Berlin.
Feel free to contact,would be really happy:
Site: http://www.ikab-mag.com
Twitter : @ikab
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ikab1

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Video of the Week #33

PauloGabriel — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:06:12 +0000

During this past year, we've seen plenty of watercolor inspirations, which were pretty awesome! Sometimes we get to see trends repeat from time to time. The video of this week is an awesome Donald Duck cartoon, the one where he visits Brazil for the first time.

Once you start watching it you'll realize why I say that trends repeat from time to time. This cartoon first aired in 1942 within Disney's project called "Saludos Amigos". Take a good look at this cool cartoon, and we'll get much more than just watercolor inspiration. Enjoy, and Cheers! ;)

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Beautiful Watercolor Inspiration

PauloGabriel — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:15:49 +0000

Sometime ago we had an awesome tutorial about Watercolor; today, we bring to you an awesome set of watercolor pieces, really beautiful actually, made by Stina Persson, an illustrator based in Stockholm, Sweden.

I'm very impressed on these. I wish there was a way to measure beauty, but unfortunately, there isn't. So you guys should really check these out, and if you want to try something similar, check the "Create Cool Watercolor Effects in Photoshop" tutorial made by Fabio to PSDTuts. Also, you should really check Stina's Portfolio. You'll really like it all. Cheers! ;)

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Stylish Fashion Illustration Inspiration

abduzeedo — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:16:24 +0000

When it comes to traditional art, one of the techniques that most come to our minds is watercolor. It is a great beautiful technique that come handy for digital illustrations: it just gets awesome!! Some artists out there have been doing some great stuff, and their inspiration are from many fields, like fashion! So check out these awesome works, and if you got any of your own, please, drop a link!! thanks.