Gone Fishin' Part 3

I like using acrylic wash because it has the look of watercolor but it doesn't reactivate when it gets wet. This way I can do all my values and modeling first in a way that can't get messed up, then I apply the brighter but much more delicate concentrated watercolor as the final step to add all the chroma.

As you can see below I start adding the concentrated watercolor to her skin, then bathing suit next. I do the light colors first because if I did it the other way around there's the danger of the dark color bleeding into the lighter. At this stage I don't attempt any modeling, I only lay in the concentrated watercolor as flat tones. Modeling will only mess it up. The Lumas are completely translucent so the acrylic washes underneath show through perfectly. Next I move on to the orange of her hair and the blues for the fish and the ocean and sky.

I always paint a test subject simultaneously. I try my colors on the test first and if it looks a little off I can fix it for the real piece.

And here's a scan of the final art.

Gone Fishin' Part 2

The first thing I do after finishing the drawing is transfer it via light box onto the watercolor paper. Then I "ink" it with acrylic paint to make the line work as you can see on the left. In the right image you can see I started to lay in the shadows on the girl. This is all acrylic wash.

It's hard to tell, but on the left I strengthened the core shadows in the same areas. On the right I added the shadows to the fish and the ocean.

On the left here you can see a printout where I drew some test clouds in before painting them in on the right.

And here is a scan of the underpainting. This is as far as I take it with acrylic washes. Next post I'll bring it to final with concentrated watercolor.

Gone Fishin'

Recently I finished a pin up painting for a friend, who as you can see, is into fishing. I have a tendency to post my finished pieces before the early stages, but this time I think I'll go in order.

These are my rough concepts for the piece.

We went with that last one, then I tied it down as you can see here.