Deep In The River Part Five: The First Print

Once I had the creature roughed out I went back and used the Warp transformation to make the fins finnier, then used an airbrush in combination with layer masks to blend the separate parts into a solid object.





Then I scanned in a section of a large piece of watercolor paper over which I'd poured alternating layers of black and white watercolor washes over the course of a couple of days.



An enlarged section of this scan forms the background of the print. I used levels adjustment layers to get the contrast between the figure and the background to read properly.




Then, with the initial image at 300 ppi at 7.5 by 10 inches, I converted it to a 200 ppi bitmapped image. Then I changed the image size to 240 ppi at 15 by 20 inches. This generated a clear image that still had clearly visible bitmapping.

Then I selected the white sections of this image and erased them. I created a layer underneath the layer containing the bitmapped image and use the pencil tool to lay down a layer of solid color under it.


And then I use a brightness and contrast adjustment layer to make the colors what they ought to be and there we are. It's ready to print.