I thought it might be fun to document what I do when I create my paintings, in case anyone is interested. Unlike most people who use watercolors, I don’t layer all that much so I don’t know how informative this will actually be. But still fun! WOOO!

I’m currently working on my rendition of a scene from Little Red Riding Hood, since I’m trying to get a children’s book portfolio done. In this scene I picture Red saying something along the lines of “Um, your teeth are pretty freakin’ big.” So maybe that can be the title for now.

Here’s the initial sketch: this is how I start working though I know you’re supposed to start out with thumbnails and yadda yadda. Usually I just doodle in my sketchbook or a piece of crap paper and when a nifty character comes out I work it into a concept later. My goal was to make the wolf look at demented as possible, and to keep Red very skeptical. I always try to include small details in my paintings because it keeps me interested, and it seems to keep people looking at them longer (I hope.) Here you can see granny struggling out of the wolf’s throat, some panties, a diaper, a cucumber and fish as a little gift, an earwig, and some weird doodle I don’t remember doing on the bedsheets.

I inked the sketch by using a window as a lightbox to trace my drawing onto good paper, then taped off where I want the border to be. This is actually my favorite part because I looooove inking. The wolf’s ears and some of the knitting needles are going to extend past the border, so they’re cropped off right now. For inking, I use Microns because my paper of choice (Arches Coldpress) has a lot of tooth and my nib pens always get stuck in them. I use a waterproof black and brown Micron, and leave areas where I want colored ink in pencil. My colored pens are not waterproof, so I have to use them at the very end. (Segregation!)

I wasn’t about to scan my piece every 30 minutes so I’m just taking bad photos of the next progress shots. When I paint I generally stick with the primaries red, blue, yellow, and then Burnt Sienna and Payne’s Gray. Often I will put them directly on the paper and mix at the same time as painting, which gives an effect that can be seen well in Red’s hood. There’s really no rhyme or reason to what I paint first– I started with Red’s hood because I knew what color it would be, then moved on to the wolf. To make the wolf speckly I put salt over my damp paint, which absorbs the water leaving adorable little snowflakes. So far I’m basically just working on the base layer of paint without cast shadows.

Just another progress shot, I’ve moved into pinks to do the wolf’s mouth and shirt, and I decided I wanted Red’s whole outfit red, so I put that in here. I also added her skintone to get it over with, because I absolutely hate skintones!

This is a pretty big jump forward, with an actual nice scan since I was done for the day. I’ve finished all the base colors except for the bed (which is going to be a nasty little gingham pattern I didn’t want to tackle right then), and I’ve begun adding cast shadows such as the one across Red’s forehead and the shadow of the dentures. I decided on a sky blue for the background, and began a second layer of paint to add depth, as in the wolf’s mouth. Finally I added some outlines with my colored pens.

Ta-da! The gingham was horrible so I went with a striped pattern instead. The rest is just bits of gouache and details that you probably don’t notice. People keep thinking that Granny’s legs are coming out of her bum… I’m not sure how that would be possible given the position, but in retrospect perhaps the belly-crack was a bit confusing. In any case, it’s all done, hopefully there was some useful information in there somewhere.