ASIA's Art Making Process: Step-by-Step

I have drawn this particular pic with one solid purpose in mind: to explore the possibility of watercolor pencils. As I have shown in my Profile page, my primary art supplies are watercolor pencils and soft pastels. But I was always feeling that I was not using watercolor pencils to their full potential. So I wanted to try something more subtle to really challenge myself to see how much these little powerless-looking pencils can do. And I joyfully discovered they can do a LOT more than I have ever imagined!! (^_^)

Well it was going be mecha type of art but I need to like the characters part first in order to get into doing detailed background.

Heero's halfway done here. No he won't be naked *LOL* but haven't decided on the outfit yet at this point (poor planning).

Here I am trying to decide Duo's pose...I don't want him to be on the same height, so sitting down or something (you see where I marked Duo's head? ^o^;)

OK Duo showed up. Still need to fix Heero's hand.

Really don't know what to do wit the outfit. I am just not very creative, OK? (-o-)

Ummm come to think of it if I am going for canon outfit (because I am thinking of Gundam in background) they do wear turtleneck under rather than tanktop. Maybe I can make it thin long sleeve black turtleneck instead? Or would that look too gay? XD But I like tanktop too...gotta think. If I wan't going for Gundam background I can be more flexible...but but but.

Sorry for the strange color tone here. Camera flash didn't go.

I tend to draw really clear and thick think outlines (more anime style), and while there is nothing wrong with doing it I wanted to try something little more subtle, to let the color speak out more.

So what I did here is to use the thinnest line markers I have (0.1mm) to draw outlines over my pencil draft. Also I mainly used brown marker instead of black, which gives even more subtle lining. Here is right after linking. After I erase pencil lines, things will look really sucky for a moment....

And here it is after erasing pencil marks.

So now I only have very minimal outlinining (except for Duo's chest...I just messed up that one *LOL*). But once I start coloring it, the color will be talking out more.

Oh and by the way just for the heck of it I decided on sleeveless turtle neck for both of them with regular gloves.

I started coloring skins using watercolor pencils. I normally use orange to color skin.

Err you see Myu's paws on it...I think my cats likes this larger sketchbook I use for showcase arts to lay on better than my smaller skethbooks.

Here is the close-up (grrr ignore the fur....)

You see how the coloring is little rough and you can still see color pencil line to it? That's how I normally leave my sketches, and I do enjoy that effect on more casual arts. But I usually apply water to the more serious arts.

So I apply water using small paint brush.

Now do you see how the color melted and turned into more watercolor look? Now key here is to apply small amount of color in the beginning and add more later (here is my new experiment).

This is the part that takes the longest for using-water-art, since I apply water, wait until it dries, and apply more pencil, apply water, and repeat the process until I am happy with the color depth.

I also have to color different color parts separately to avoid color smudging into each other.

So here is the same process with their hair.

And here is after water is applied to their hair.

So after I repeated the process like 3~4 times here is the result.

Sometimes I just can not get my cats off my sketchbook...or maybe I am really a cat and not telling you *LOL*

Repeat the same process more and characters part is almost done.

I normally color them darker but Ifor the purpose of experiment I need to stop here and work on the background, and come back to balance everything later. Decipline, decipline...

So what do I do with the background?

Hmmm..I really hadn't decided but hey I would just do Gundam heads again just for a good measure.

Out of 3 version each, I like TV version Wing Zero and Deathscythe the best. But if I do them in pairs I need to have the same version for both of them, so I am doing Wing Zero and Deathscythe Hell.

Now if I knew the structure of Gundams well enough then I would be able to do more creative angles on them. But sadly enough I am not *that* creative, so I just used couple of references and drew them accordingly.

Inking on top of pencil draft.

Pencil marks erased.

In some ways starting out with another pencil draft within partially-finished colored art is pretty inefficient, but most of the time I like to see the characters finished before I can really decide on the background. I rarely draw entire thing all at once.

Started coloring Gundams.

Err at this point I noticed my mistake on Deathscythe Hell's head but just keep quiet, OK? (^_^;) I will just keep gooooing like nothing wrong happened here...la la la.

Applied water and repeated couple of times.

Repeated several more times.

I repeated penciling & watering processes MANY times (lost count...20~30?) and here is the result.

The photos are not shown (my camera battery died) but after this I smeared soft pastels over background, Gundams, and Heero & Duo, and the pic was done (^_^)

I hope you enjoyed this little tour! (^_^)/"