Qilin process (1)

While I did the illustration for my aunt's wedding, I decided to take pictures of the process to show you a step by step of my watercolor paintings. In case anyone's interested. Maybe it's helpful to someone in one way or another. :)

First things first, here's the rough sketch for the illustration. There are a few things I tweaked digitally after scanning the piece, like the Qilin's legs, which were a little too long.

After the sketch looks good enough, I print it with very high contrast so I can trace it onto watercolor paper. I trace very lightly first, and rather roughly, and after that go over the whole thing again, defining and detailing everything.

Finished pencil artwork.

Before doing anything with the watercolors yet, I do a very rough color test digitally. That way when I'm actually mixing the watercolors, I can just pick the color on the digital color key and mix accordingly - otherwise it happens that my eyes deceive me, because colors are perceived differently depending on the other colors surrounding it. It usually looks quite differentl in the end anyway (you might notice the final painting is a lot more blue-ish), but at least it gives me a starting point.

Just like the base colors, a quick digital shading test, so I know more or less where the lighting will be and all that.

Okay, these are the steps I do before any actual watercoloring - next post will cover that, it's too much for a single post! =D


Process part 2
Finished piece