Go, dog!

Here's something to get you in the spirit for Christmas time, and maybe even wish you all wonderful holidays in advance. :)

This was painted for our promo Christmas cards over at Artil Studio - I hope everyone who received one liked his or her postcard!
I went for a children's book style with this one, trying to avoid lines and using a watercolor base with colored pencils for the shading. I had so much fun painting this! The initial sketch was quite a challenge though, and underwent quite a few changes in composition and style until both I and Marc were satisfied with it.
I'd say the result turned out very cute, in the end!

And here's what I drew for the back of the postcard:

Over at our Facebook page you can see what the final postcards looked like all niecely printed.

So anyway, enjoy! ^^

I don't want to be a princess!

On the Book Fair in Frankfurt Marc and I realized that our usual comic style is not very well received with children's book publishers (at least not in Germany), so we decided to make some pieces for our portfolio more suited for that market. After seeing all those pink and cheesy princess picture books for small girls (which I do not approve of), I doodled this little girl who would rather be a knight instead. I had so much fun with this, I'll have to paint more like it. I also like the chance to experiment with different techniques and styles.

This one might actually be still a little too comic-y for the publisher's taste, although the technique helps to make it more picture book-like. It was painted with a watercolor base, colored pencils for the shading and gouache for highlights.

Qilin process (2)

Right, so last time I showd you the steps I take to prepare a watercolor painting. Here's the actual watercolor process.

These are my beloved liquid watercolors. I have a couple of tones more (yellow, red and ocre), but for this illustration, these are all I'll use.

The first step is painting a light base layer which will give a tone to the whole piece. In this case, I picked a light blue and light green where the light sources will be.

I let it dry completely, and then I apply masking fluid. That's the darker blue-ish stuff you see on this photo. This is so I can paint the background without much trouble, so I mask off the edges where I don't want the paint to go in if I paint fast and sloppily.
Masking fluid is amazing, even though if I'm not careful to rinse the brush often with soapy water, it will destroy the brush because it sticks to it and is impossible to get off afterwards. So never use a good brush for applying masking fluid!

Here I start painting the background. I paint wet-in-wet at this stage, so I moisten everything I want to paint with water first and then apply the color.
I started with the firefly lights and went from light to dark. I'm leaving the ground out yet, because the color dries to fast to do it all at once.

Now the ground. Still, wet-in-wet technique, though I'm careful to not let any water touch the areas I had already painted. That would cause blotches.

I decided the background needed to be darker, so everything got a second layer. No wet-in-wet technique anymore.

After I'm satisfied with the background, it's time to rub off the masking fluid. I love doing that!
But before, I made the firefly-lights a bit greener.

Now, base layer for the foreground and the plants at the Qilin's feet.

And now for the Qilin itself.

First shading layer on the foreground. Here's when I start to flesh out the volume.

Annd first shading layer for the creature.

The second shading layer already adds SO much more depth.

More shading on the Qilin. This is starting to get somewhere.

Even more shading on the Qilin. Now it stars to look good.

Foreground also needs more shading. This is much better. Actually, I'm almost done!

Time to pull out my gouache colors to add some highlights. I mixed a yellowish light green which I used for everything except the eye (which needs pure white).
This is one of my favourite steps, it's like "bam!" and then it looks so much better. Especially adding a little highlight to the creature's eye gives so much life to it immediately.

Annnd it's done! =D
It turned out a lot more blue than planned, but who cares after 20 hours? XD


As a little extra, here's what the final finished painting looks like with the frame I had custom-made for it (please forgive the camera's flash) - I think it turned out lovely!

Process part 1
Finished piece

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

Qilin

Pheeeew... finally done! Though I won't be able to put this online until in 2 weeks. It's a wedding gift for my aunt, after all, who'll get married on october 6th - even though I'll have to give it to her one week before that.
I won't be able to attend (a very good friend's wedding happens to be the same day, and we promised to go to that one before we knew my aunt would be marrying the same day), so I hope this kind of makes up for it.

Congratulations in advance, anyway! =D

So, yeah. This pic took me over 20 hours of work. Twenty. Hours. I'm so glad I finally finished it - and quite proudly so, I must say. I do hope my aunt and her future husband cherish it!

As for the motif, I wanted to paint a qilin. It's a chinese mythical creature supposed to be a sign of good luck and protection and longevity (and the arrival of a wise leader, but that's irrelevant now XD ), and since my aunt moved to China a few months ago, I though it was fitting. Hydrangea flowers are also a symbol, according to this site, for "expressing love, gratitude, and enlightenment." Plus, they're native to China and seem to grow close to bamboo forests. And they're pretty.

Starting next week, I'll be posting a step-by-step guide of the process to paint this illustration, so check back! :)

Extra thingie: This little Qilin was drawn on their congratulations-postcard. :)


Process part 1
Process part 2

Northern Hunter

No weekly study this time. ;)
Instead I participated at the weekly character design challenge over at ConceptArt.org, which got me inspired to do something out of my comfort zone, and now I have a very different drawing to add to my portfolio.

The guidelines were:

"Northern Hunter
Design a hunter character from the frozen North of a fantasy world.

• Can be any gender
• Must be fantasy
• Must be dressed appropriately for their job and to survive the conditions.
• Will use weapons they can easily fix/create ammo for (Guns are allowed, but think about how they might make more bullets)
• They have to fight off other predators as well as taking down their prey so it is likely that they will carry scars and battle wounds."

So here's my character sheet and the final illustration, as well as a couple of WIPs. With the final painting I tried to go for something a bit rougher than my usual watercolors, I think it fits the piece better. Hope you like it!

Wedding invitation (Commission)

Here's a commission I just finished for a couple who wanted me to paint something for their wedding invitations. They'll also be getting the original illustration to hang on their wall, which is really sweet and it kind of honors me. ^^

I wish both of them very, very good luck for everything and lots of happiness as a married couple!

Os deseo muchísima suerte en todo y mucha felicidad como matrimonio! :D

Info about commissions

"Year of the Dragon" - FOR SALE

Yay, first painting in our new home! Okay, so I actually started this before we moved, but I finally got around to finish it.

2012 is the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese calendar!

In the end the illustration a bit late since the "Year of the Dragon" celebrations are already over, as far as I know. But I hope you still enjoy it. Everyone loves dragons, right?

The original painting is FOR SALE in my new web shop - go check it out!

Oh, yeah. Here's a step by step of the piece before starting with the watercolors. :)

Daisies and Oboe

 Oh, masking fluid, how I love thee! How come I had never even HEARD of you until some weeks ago? My life would have been so much easier! Especially when I was painting this piece here.
So. Thanks to the wonderful masking fluid*, doing the background was a lot of fun! Yes, I COULD have done it without it, but it would be much less clean, and it would have involved a lot more frustration and swearing on my part.

Anyway. I painted these for my parents, as a thank you gift for helping us so much with our big move to Germany. Getting paperwork in order, organizing what we already had at their place, passing on the electricity and water contracts on to our name... And of course, helping us to set everything up now we're here.
So, I'll say it again: Thank you SO much, we really, really appreciate it! ♥ ♥ ♥

By the time you read this (I'm writing this like, a month ago), we should just have arrived in our new home! Wheeeeeee! =D

Both illustrations are meant as a diptych (as you can see), with the daisies and notes flowing from one to the other. The daisies, because my mother's name is Margarita, which means "daisy" in Spanish. And because she's Mexican, it felt right to paint a darker skinned female character.
The oboe and the music notes because my dad plays the oboe at various amateur concerts.
By the way, what a complicated instrument to draw! And I had never noticed how steampunk-y an oboe looks. I hope I got it about right, I had lots of reference photos, but there might still be mistakes.

Yeah. So. I really like how they turned out. Hope you do, too! ^^


*Masking fluid: It's a liquid you paint on like, well, paint, wherever you want to leave white areas. When it dries, it becomes solid and rubbery, and you can paint over it with watercolors without fear of messing up your beautiful white areas. When you're done, you just rub the stuff off carefully (a kneaded eraser works great!).
A word of warning, though: Do not use one of your good brushs for this, as the masking fluid can easily ruin your brush as it dries.

Pin Up Girl

This is a gift for a friend who's going to help us move to our new house (soooooooooon now!) - driving the van with all of our stuff from Spain to Germany.

It was really fun to draw, I had never actually done any pin ups before. It also was a great study for the back of the girl. Could have turned out better, but it's okay. The bad thing about watercolors is that you can't re-paint too much when you want to improve something. Nevertheless, I still like it.
And our friend liked it a lot, too! :D


Muchas gracias por ayudarnos con la mudanza, David!

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ORIGINAL ARTWORK RAFFLE

If you're on Facebook, you might be in luck!

I'll be raffling this small watercolor illustration (8,5 x 12 cm) among all those who share this image on their wall. For more information, check out my Facebook page!

Okay. About this piece.
Some very old followers of mine (those who've known me for, oh, over 10 years) might recognize this character. Yup, it's Din. ;)

I wanted to do something rather simple for the raffle piece, because it had to be on such a small format. When this image came to my mind, I thought it was perfect. Initially, I thought if just painting a boring blue background, but I thought, "Hey, Din's supposed to be fire element, so how about a fiery sky?".
That also gave me a chance to challenge myself both in the perspective of the face (I'm not too sure about the nose...) and in painting the sky and the lighting - and I want to try and challenge myself whenever I can to improve faster. And I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Hummingbird

This is a very quick watercolor painting I did as both a goodbye and get well gift for a friend. She came out of the hospital not long ago, and I probably won't see her again in a long time (since I'll be moving away), so I wanted to paint something for her. But I had to do the sketch on saturday evening and paint everything on sunday morning, which is why it's a rather simple piece.
I still think it turned out cute, and my friend certainly liked it. :)

Love is...

This was a commission by my aunt as a Christmas gift for her fiancé. She wanted something similar to the cartoon characters from the "Love is..." comic strips. Well, my style's quite different of course, but anyway.

I used the "Love is..." typography for the text on top, so all copyright for that goes to them.

Soldier of Silence

Ah, Sailor Saturn. I've been meaning to draw her for a long time now, but I was never able to portray her just the way I wanted to. This one's not quite it either, but it's close. I liked her expression in the sketch better, though. And her skirt should sit lower on her hips, it looks weird.

Sailor Saturn always has, and always will be, my favourite of the Sailor Senshi.
The sickly young girl, barely starting to become a woman, raised by her tortured single father, so fragile and shy. And yet, she awakens to become the most powerful of all the Senshi (with exception of Sailor Moon, who surpasses her after SuperS), able to destroy a whole world with one blow of her Silence Glaive if she wishes to do so.

It's a shame she doesn't appear much in the show.

I've never been too fond of her Super costume, it doesn't really suit her. So here's her original form.

No hugz!

Here's a little piece I did just for fun.

You should not bother a Tasmanian Devil - he could rip your arm off. Even if you're a demon.
Still, Tazzies are just terribly cute.


Related posts:

Parasol

Another old piece I never posted. It might not be very fitting for this time of the year, but anyway.
It was an illustration I made for Audrey Diallo, as a gift for the years we worked together and as a thank you for letting me stay at her place when I went to the Japan Expo.