Painted with Water Design Ready to Score

Last month I mentioned I was going to take some time off Derbies to concentrate on Threadless. I have to say, it's been very satisfying to be able to devote a lot of time to one design and not be rushed. I enjoyed being able to work on it and then come back the next day with fresh eyes and refine it. The design I'm referring to is Painted with Water, inspired by Paint with Water books.

I thought it might be fun to share the entire process of it. To begin, I have to thank AdderXYU again for reminding me of those books. One of our conversations made me think of the design.

The first thing I did was order a couple books to experiment with. I found a new one and an old one. The old one was so old in fact, that it didn't work! It was still great to study though. The old ones used more artsy and decorative patterns, like the snowflakes on Barbie's sweater here:



The new one used simpler patterns, but at least the paint still worked. I dripped water on it instead of painted to see what it would look like, because that's what I had in mind for the design.



Then I drew for a long time and finally came up with a sketch of things that depended on water. (If you need to, click on any of these images to see them larger.)



I inked it in Photoshop:



The easiest way to color it, I thought, was to first make it look like it would before water was applied.



And finally I "added the water." During the critique process at Threadless, the drops of water caused minor controversy. A lot of people thought they were distracting, but when I took them out, it looked too flat. I really wanted to accentuate the water so I decided to keep them.



Even though the process was lengthy, I enjoyed it--especially the "painting" part. It reminded me of painting watercolors with my dad when I was younger, except with less risk of me absentmindedly drinking out of the water cup with paint in it (which I did, once.) Anyway I hope you found this interesting and please take a moment to score it if you can here: Painted with Water

Thanks for reading!