Bee and Puppycat Fanart Watercolor

I don't normally do large fanart pieces unless I know the creator, but I made an exception when painting this Bee and Puppycat tribute piece.  Although there hasn't been much released (so far, just one episode and 3 issues of the comic), I'm a supporter of this project.  I've been a fan of Natasha Allegri's from afar for awhile, and Bee and Puppycat is a refreshingly feminine cartoon short that pays homage to her shoujo inspirations.  Its been exciting to watch the project grow in popularity, and I hope this means good things for artists who share an affinity for all things doe eyed and girly.

The Process

I changed up my process while working on this piece to give my Surface Pro 3 a test drive in knocking out roughs.  I worked from a very rough black color pencil sketch that I turned into bluelines in PhotoShop, and sketched on top of it.

Since I wanted the piece to be in a circular 'frame', I cheated a bit and used the circle selection to make a guide that I could roughly trace.  Once finished, I dropped the color, leaving just the black outline, used the Duotone option to make it into bluelines, and printed it on Canson's Moulin du Roy watercolor paper.

After my stretched paper dried, I applied a yellow wash to tint the page.  Once that dried, I knocked in some light blue shadows to provide a bit of a guide when laying in color.

I really enjoy painting on Canson's nicer watercolor papers (like Arches and Moulin du Roy), but they're a bit too expensive to use for painting comic pages.  It's definitely a treat to work on Moulin du Roy after painting on Montval for the past few weeks.  Expensive papers aren't the end all be all to watercolor papers, once you're familiar with a paper's properties, it can be a pleasure to work on almost any decent paper.  I utilize the full gamut of Canson's watercolor papers, from Biggie (Gizmo Granny) to Montval (7" Kara) to Arches and Moulin du Roy (stand alone illustrations and many commissions) because each type offers something the others don't.

Finished except for complimentary shadows, blue toned shadows, white gouache, and yellow highlights added to the tree.