WATERCOLOURS ...... part two

A young female human wizard with black hair who always wears white trimmed in gold.

The above sentence is the description that was given over on ArtOrder for the latest challenge that has been given. It is an extremely open description and leaves everyone plenty of room to play. the sort of description I really kind of like, and when I read it an image immediately popped into my brain and I quickly jotted it down  in the ol' sketchbook.

After I got the pencil down in the book, I went over it with my brush pen establishing some basic darks and such, then with my cheapo watercolour set, hit it up with some colour and with that all done I played with the figure and head a bit before I went on to the real paper and laid it all out.


The next step was the pencil....

.... here in the pencil of the piece you can see where I added a sword coming out from behind her back held in her right hand. After getting it all down in the lead I went in with a sepia toned ink to sort of out line certain areas. I use the sepia instead of a black ink because it is a softer line and does not leave you with the colouring book image...........this is something I learned from looking at Frank Frazetta's watercolours and cartoons. It truly was a brilliant idea and yes I did borrow it from him.

Now that I have all that down I wanted to get started with the colour, but first I needed to do her hair. As the above description said BLACK HAIR, and with that in mind I proceeded to lay in the hair with a black ink. I chose to use ink for her hair because I ultimately want to go back into it with the watercolours and add the glow of the fireball thing in her hand. 


With the ink, I can retain a black as well as dilute it and get some greys out of it. Personally I do not believe in ever using ink straight out of the well, not even on with my dip pen. I will almost always go into my water glass first on either one. I can always make the greys darker by going over them again with the ink, but I cannot make the blacks greyer after putting them on the paper.


Here is a real time video of the hair process being done.

.... and here is a look at the hair after it has been inked

I do know and realize that all this is pretty basic stuff, but it IS the fundamentals that we all seem to fall away from, and basic drawing skills are the true foundation of what we all do. Whether it be in a traditional medium or digital...........you have to have the basics.


Up next will be the colour .......... see y'all then.