Kara Watercolor Process Post 1

Lately I've been doing a lot of watercolor- first with Chapter 1, and now watercolor 'doodles' to strengthen my abilities and to better master my materials.  It's been a long time since I did a really comprehensive process post, so I really went in depth this time.  I took photos at every.  single. stage. of the process, so feel free to jump ahead if you wish.  I'm only going to narrate when I feel it's necessary.  It's a long post, so most of the pictures'll be beneath the cut.

Here's the finish piece, to let you know what you're in for:

And here's the pencilled, taped off blue lines, right before the first wash.

I usually like to apply an overall wash of light color when watercoloring (and occasionally, doing marker work) as insurance towards better color harmony.  The wash for this piece was a very light greenish yellow, but even so, I had trouble bringing the colors together.

Reconstituting a premixed, dried fleshtone.

My current three favorite brushes:  A Sceptre Gold Round size 0, a Escoda Reserva Round Size 1, and an Escoda Reserva Round in size 4.

I introduce a shadow by mixing indigo and paynes grey together, and working it into the green.

I brought some of the pink of the rose into the cast shadow.  This worked doubly well, as the pink was a near compliment to the green I used, neutralizing the green a little.  

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