Well, it has certainly been a while since I've put anything artistic up and this is supposed to be an art blog! For shame...
Anyway, that sketch so long ago now has some color on it. Mind you, I LOATH these jpgs if only because the colors look muddy and dull. The green is supposed to be a vibrant sap green and the blue is ultramarine. Apparently, I still need to work with my new scanner.
So, to go along with my tutorial a while back, this is the first stages of my watercolor layers. Get washes down, think about values and basic colors, a bit of shading taking form, very loose and transparent.
Next, start building up your layers. Preserve your whites, put in your darkest darks (yay Payne's Gray!), develop texture and form, mix in colored pencils to get your sharp edges and fine lines. Then step back and look at the over all composition, values, and the way it "fits" together.
So, I noted here that the boy isn't standing out to his best advantage and the top left corner isn't falling back like it should. Still, pushing it back into shadow hasn't helped much. Also at this stage you are just "working the surface" putting in details, texture, interesting little pockets of stuff.
And here's a version that's closer to the actual painting... still not quite right, but closer than straight out of the scanner! So, I've added a green layer behind the boy to push him up in space and developed a lot of the surrounding plants and animals. This basically putting on the final watercolor touches before it is sealed and then worked in acrylic glazes.
