How I create stronger watercolor edges using GMIC

[tachiko]

the gmic settings that produce a darker border:

this is the paint brush I use and like to experiment with other blend modes then parallel on the brush.

what I do is I make brush strokes with it. and duplicate the layer then do color alpha to it. then I run the gmic sharpen unmask and like to set channel to luminance.
you may want to run auto contrast here or play with levels
May or may not want to inherit alpha
now this layer i set to super light blend mode at about 50% opacity. i group the entire thing and set the group to P-Norm A blend mode.

i’m pretty happy with this but i bet there are other ways to use GMIC to make a nice effect. you may want to try some smoothing filters after too since it does sharpen the layer which you might not want.

Result:

[tachiko]

The placement of the strokes was place on her face randomly as I was just experimenting. When I have time I plan on making an artwork using this method
more testing, one on the left is just brush work, one on the right uses layer duplication + GMIC + filters and blend modes.
also deciding to do gmic before then color to alpha as second step is another thing you can try.

<<< before ]]]][[[[ after >>>

here I used bilateral

the reduce sharpness i used smooth diffusion like so:

if it’s too smooth you can add the krita sharpen filter.