Cover Painting

I'm coming along with the painting a little slower than I'd have liked. Boy, am I cutting my time close. I want to send the comic down to the San Diego Comic Board on Monday the 1st to make sure I hit the Feb 6th deadline. I can probably finish the painting by Wednesday. Really I just need to get whatever I can get done this week, and hit the weekend real hard with my graphic design work and print prep.

I started the painting by going in and lightly hitting my shadows with cerulean blue. This helps set the tone of where I want my darks and lights. It also helps me to see the conrast I want to go for without getting too caught up in the colors I want to use. I'd already done a color study, so I knew basically the color scheme. Now it was a matter of seeing how dark/light the final image will be. I started on the sky first and did a little of the background buildings before I realized I really ought to focus on the main character first. I want to make sure the background isn't so busy that it distracts from the main character.

For painting the main character I'm using yellow ochre base, with some cadmium red, burnt sienna, and a touch of sap green over the cerulean blue shading. It's easy to turn skin tone into mud, so I'm trying to keep the skin as light as possible. You can always make watercolor darker. Lifting color off is not always so wasy, especially once I've put green in there. I'm using Windsor Newton watercolors and Monet brushes sizes 0, 8, and 12 as well as a flat 12 brush for washes.

I'll keep the images coming as I go so you can watch as the painting progresses.