Digitally cleaned up Bird and Butterfly Riding Bicycles

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Ah, the magic and mystery of Photoshop! On one hand it gives, and with the other it takes away. I used PS to clean up the watercolor image I made a few adjustments and added some cleanliness at the cost of some of watercolor’s magic randomness.

I removed the background, added shadows and highlights, speed lines, moved Jimmy to the background, and re-inked the outlines of Jimmy and Buddy. This took about 2 hours. I’m quite a novice with Photoshop and tasks always take longer than I think they should. I always have the feeling that I’m fighting against an invisible giant when I’m in Photoshop.

One other big difference is that I switched to my pen display today. Lately I’ve been using my Wacom Intuos Pro, the big one, but I’ve been looking at lots of reviews of the new Wacom Cintiq 16 and got the itch to reinstall my Huion drivers. I made all of the edits with my Huion GT 220 V2, which also has a stylus with 8000+ levels of sensitivity. I do prefer the feel of the Wacom stylus, but I work much faster on the pen display. What’s more relevant: feel or speed? Time will tell.

Compare this painting to the original posted yesterday.

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In my hands, Photoshop removes much of the original watercolor’s charm. Sigh!