These are great ways to decorate your area, give as gifts, or just to try something new on an afternoon.

Using a technique I call "reverse painting ", you can use a paintbrush and water on a printed digital photo to manipulate the printed ink for different effects! In particular, you can turn a photo into a beautiful and unique painting.

Compare and contrast the two images shown (a "before" and "after") - make sure to click on the images to view larger versions and see the differences better.

The results shown were obtained with a digital photo print, water, a brush, and the techniques described in the next steps.

One day, I noticed that glossy photo paper is a little like the back of a postage stamp. If you wet your fingertip and touch the paper, you will find that it sticks.

Now, while the ink that the photo image consists of isn't necessarily water-soluble, the back-of-postage-stamp binding agent between the paper and the ink is .

This is why we can apply water selectively with a paintbrush to loosen, diffuse, and lift/wash away sections and layers of the printed photo. I call this technique "reverse painting" because instead of painting color onto the paper, you are instead selectively lifting it off and allowing it to remix or reflow (or be removed entirely). You control how this happens with your brush and water.

This process allows you to create beautiful and interesting effects, which I will cover in the next steps.

Note: In my tests, cheap photo paper ("Likon" 20-pack from the 1$ store) seems to work better then the more expensive kinds (such as HP Photo Print).