Green Man pt. II

And the next stage of this small watercolor painting for Ruel Pascal's recent "A Moment Of..." group show. 

Click here for the previous post, Green Man pt. I. 

Truthfully, it's been a while since I've done a watercolor that was meant to be seen as a finished piece. Most cases, I'm working with a sort of watercolor "underpainting" with a digital finish. For my clients and projects this is the best, speediest way to go. But for a gallery show I'm obliged to stretch my traditional muscles a bit.

I'd love to move more towards traditional works again, and indeed I've been making the gradual shift back. It's slow though. 

That said, I had got a lot of enjoyment out of this little exercise. It was pretty smooth and went swiftly enough.

The basic idea was, with a brown Col-Erase pencil, get my drawing down (loose in the hair, leaves, and beard) and then paint washes directly on top. Over the years I've experimented with quite a few kinds of paper and different combinations of drawing, spray fixing, and painting and truthfully I haven't been too satisfied with any of them. In this case, and I'm trying to remember the exact kind of paper, I'm thinking it was some kind of Bristol. But I'm not sure.

After that it's just applying washes, drying, washes.

Next post, Wednesday. Final steps.