workspace and watercolor board

I"ve been stretching my watercolor out on art boards, which are not meant to withstand the pressure of watercolor paper. They are too weak and warp once the watercolor paper gets wet. But I wasn't wiling to pay $40 for a watercolor board. It's justa piece of wood with a finish on it. So instead of buying a watercolor board, I made one. Well, two, actually.

I went to OSH and bought a piece of birch plywood which I cut to make two 20x24 boards. I lightly sanded the plywood on all sides, as I don't want splinters when handling the watercolor board. Then I dusted off one of the surfaces and applied a coat of waterbased finish (Minwax Polycrilic Protective Finish) to the dusted surface. After allowing to dry for a few hours I applied a second coat. Let sit for a day and voila! I've got two watercolor boards for a total of $13. I like to have two pages on boards at a time so I can make changes to the previous page based on how the painting on the current page is going. I can't tell you how glad I've been to have kept a page on the board after starting the next one.

I began drawing page 4 while I let page 3 stretch on the board. As you can see from my photo here I've got the pages I've completed on the wall along with some character designs of the characters appearing on page 4. Then I've got my reference photos and my layout version of the comic so I know what the hell I'm going to draw.