I’m enjoying documenting my working process lately, it somehow helps me to cement the way I work and makes the creation of each image easier and easier. This one was a quickie I worked on over the weekend, I’ve been wanting to get back into using traditional media as much as possible so I took out the watercolours and painted away…..
Materials used: Arches 300gsm hot press watercolour paper, art spectrum, Daler Rowney, Winsor & Newton and Schminke artists quality watercolours, Art Spectrum white gouache for highlights and my wife’s hairdryer to dry between coats (speeds up the whole process)
Here’s my studio space setup for this painting:
step one
this is the sketch I’ve decided upon. it’s not drawn too tightly but there’s enough info to carry an ink line over the top, (I like to draw with the ink pens a little for a slightly ‘looser’, more spontaneous look.
step two
inking over the lines with generic drawing pens (using a .1 and a .3mm tip) paying particular attention to the main elements of the drawing, remembering at all times we’re painting over the top, so not becoming too bogged down with unnecessary cross-hatching etc. this is a very important step in the process.
step three
Using artists quality watercolours (I’ve chosen tubes rather than pans for this) we begin to lay down flat colours and a little texture for the cave wall. (the texture effect is achieved by dropping clean water into the wet paint, the water causes the paint to disperse).
step four
Moving throughout the whole image, never settling on any one particular area, we’re playing with the ‘form’ of each element within the image. We also lay in some colour inside the cave to give the illustration of depth.
step five
Still working on strengthening form, laying in colour washes and generally keeping a balance of warm and cool colours for harmony.
step six
Here we get down to makindarkening and strengthening the illustration. this is achieved by building up wash after wash of colour washes, all the while building them up and paying particular attention to tonal balance. We’d like our figure to stand out but not dominate the illustration.
step seven
This is my favourite part- getting into the details. More work is done tonally to achieve the look of the cracks and craters in the cave wall, a wash is laid over the entire wall to bring everything into balance, this in turn enables the eye to settle upon the main element of the painting- our wizard. For the details, I’ve mixed a little local colour with white gouache to add touches to the rocks and ground floor and pure white gouache was used on areas such as the hair on the wizard’s face and the trim of his cloak.
