This is an attempt to achieve a hand painted water-colour look to an image in Expression.

It uses the same techniques as those that I am experimenting with, to enable the easy creation of foliage for trees. Actually, I was playing around refining the techniques, when a few strokes appeared that looked a bit like plant leaves (well, in an impressionistic sort of way). Anyway, I copied the strokes into a new document, added a few more, twiddled the settings to get the effect of flowers, and then just dabbed strokes around to create the stem and pot.

I then spent nearly an hour trying to paint some sort of background. I had a wall, with window, a table for the plant to sit on, and was starting work on the curtains when I realised that the background was starting to overpower the main subject. So I deleted the background layers and tried again.

I found a new brush in the Water folder that I hadn't tried before (I've only had Expression 3 for a few days) About a dozen or so strokes in just two colours, and I had a background that gave the plant somewhere to sit, and still retained the loose look that I was aiming for.

I quite often waste time doing things the hard way, only to find that a simple approach, gives a better result. Still, it's all part of the learning process.