Bayani behind the painting

This is not so much a tuorial as much as it more behind the scenes on how I paint.

These pictures were taken while the paint was drying (with my phone) so they're a bit blurry. I will explain more about painting here than on the piece.

1. The first step to painting in watercolor is a good color plan. In this case, I chose to warm this piece up by putting a flat wash of yellow down over the ENTIRE piece(I chose azo yellow, cadium yellow light, naples yellow and a smidge of ultramarine to cool it down).

My reason for putting a flat wash over the whole character is pretty simple. If it works for Peter de Seve, it'll work for me. And it does. There are no true whites in life, every white is actually a conglomeration of various colors.

For the wash I used a flat one inch synthetic brush. Before applying paint I sprayed down the entire canvas with a regular spray bottle with regular water, this helps to really cover the paper in color.

2. After letting the first wash dry, I go ahead and start in with very soft pale cadium red washes on the main character, visible in the 'full shot' at the top, on the legs. Here I used a number 5 da Vinci brush, made of real kolinksy sable. These are absolutely lovely brushes for watercoloring and retain their shape, soak up lots of color... I just love them. These washes allow me to see and plot where I want my lightest lights and my darkest darks. Watercolor is very much about lightest to darkest, it works reverse to acrylics and oils.

I use a lot of wet on wet for the first washes. This means putting down a wash of JUST water to the area to be colored, then dipping into the color I want, and going to town on that section. If I feel the area is too saturated, I'll LIFT paint off with my brush or a towel. Lifting is the technique of taking a rag to dab paint off one area. You can do the same thing by laying down a wash of color and then cleaning your brush out of paint. Once clean, dry your brush off a bit, leaving it slightly damp, so it can pull up some of the color. It's great for highlights.

3. Another way of getting gradations is dip your brush in a color, and put a line of color down in an area, for instance, the glove. Being quick is key with watercolors. Once you lay that color down, clean your brush off in clean water and then using the tip, brush against the color. It will drag it down. Clean your brush again, and repeat the process where you left off with clean water.

Hopefully this is somewhat helpful to beginner watercolorists. I'll get into details, using gouache, and cleaning up in Part Two.