I was asked many times about how I make watercolours. And I decided to take some pictures of the process. My last pole shows that there are people, who may find it usefull. Please, note that I'm not a professional - so there are various mistakes on this picture.

Here is the original picture:


Here is the description and comments:

1) I use both hot pressed and cold pressed paper - here I took a hot-pressed sheet with "textile" texture. I always wet the paper thoroughly - then fix it to the flat surface. I may make pencil sketch either before or after that - it depends on the number of details on picture.

2) When the paper is dry, I put the masking fluid to the places which should be free from paint. The masking fluid is glossy a bit - so it reflected the flash, and is shining here. In real life it's just grey.
I also tap the borders of the picture with plain paper tap - it's not actually nesessory, I just like to do it

3) First I put the ochre for the base.

4) Then I made skies and water. Note that I made the paper so wet, that it was pretty much deformed in the process - it's OK, it comes back to normal whet it will be dry again.

5) Then I made the shore - with Payne's grey mostly, and added a few salt to the bottom - to imitate the sand texture. Not satisfied with the result, though. Here you may also see the direction in which my brush went - from the sourse of light to the outer space. Dry sand islands I touched with sepia.

6) Finally, time for Jiraiya! I painted him and his reflection - and thet realised that his figure is too light: since he's sitting between the source of light and the watcher, he must be much darker. So -

7) I made the figure darker.

8) I took away the tape and the masking fluid. To make the light spots more natural, I washed their borders with brush - they became softer. The picture is ready!

I was also asked if I scan the pictures or use camera. I always scan them if I can - and here you may see why: the bottom picture is a photo, while the topmost is a scan. I usually screw up with the balance of white (which causes major colour problems) while shooting, and fixing it digitally is a hard job if I want to keep the picture close to it's original.

After I scan a picture, I use "levels" tool to make a picture look as close to the original, as it is possible. Usually I don't do anything except this with graphic programms. (Oh, no, I also use the "sharpen" tool - at need).

That's all. I hope, it will be interesting for some of you - this is my 100th deviation on this account, and I wanted it to be something useful for my watchers

Questions and comments are welcome!

P.S. for Russian watchers - вы себе не представляете, каково пользоваться краской под названием \"ПЕЙНСКАЯ серая" для такой картинки %)))))))