my design process usually starts with painting. before i build anything digitally, i make a large number of watercolor paintings. sometimes twenty, sometimes closer to forty. these aren’t finished artworks. they are experiments with texture, movement, and atmosphere. out of all of them, usually only one or two contain something that feels right for a design.

for this piece i found a watercolor texture that worked perfectly for the lower part of the composition. it had a softness and depth that matched the feeling i was trying to capture. once i find these elements, i photograph the paintings and start assembling the design digitally on my tablet. i often combine fragments from several paintings. a texture from one piece, a light brush movement from another, sometimes just a small section that helps balance the composition. it’s less about drawing something from scratch and more about building an image out of pieces that already carry the right atmosphere.

in this design, the watercolor textures create the surrounding space for the figures. they give the image movement and keep it from feeling static.