Painting of an Axe in the Forest

Watercolor, gouache, and colored pencil on cold-pressed watercolor paper. I will post a “making of” animation soon, but it’s too late tonight! I finally figured out how to get those bright whites and bright hues you can get in digital.

“Making of” update:

The first image in the sequence shows the watercolor and gouache underpainting. The watercolor is the sky portion of the image, then the rest is gouache. The trees in the distance that I add were done with watercolor, with some gouache additions as well. Later on in the piece I started adding some details in colored pencils.

 
The first image here shows the smaller thumbnails I drew to figure out how I wanted to arrange everything. Strangely I was pretty happy with the first one. I still forced myself to play with it a bit to see if I could come up with something better.

The second image shows my sketch paper I have taped to the back of my pad. I draw that first over my pad. Then I use graphite transfer paper to transfer the image to my pad. I can then freely paint over the page, and then accurately re-add the details. I’m still playing around with this process but it seems to be working fairly well so far.