Shoot for the Star

Shooting for the star! 

My largest colour drawing to date. I think the limited colours in this project helped to keep the warm feeling. When I started this image I just wanted to draw something a bit less subtle.

I really enjoyed seeing the various layers of this image being built up during the process and how they worked together when laid down. All using water colour pencils.

As usual I started with the easy grid method but put the lines in with  dark purple water colour pencil.

As I have found with these watercolour pencils generally, the base tone layer was laid down pretty quickly.

Then the tones for the background and arm on the far right were added. I took a detailed scan of the image at this stage as I liked the monochrome look.

Starting with the male figure first I added a light brown town layer working with the purple base tones.

Then over the top of the light brown tones I added  a dark brown and then some black for the really dark tones. At this stage I also used black to tone areas of the skin that had little colour and looked slightly grey in minimal light.

To bridge the tones between the two figures I next worked on the female hand, which also provided contrast for the top visible part of the male torso. 

The light and dark brown tone layers were then added to the female figure while leaving the light skin tones in place. The dark tones were then augmented with a little black and blended in.

Then I started with the orange background. The background was added as a consistent thick layer.

The background was faded out at the edges but a consistent coverage was maintained. This was mainly due to the orange pencil being quite soft.

Finally shape was added to the background cloth with a mix of a light brown and the knead-able eraser.