Giraffes

Here are some more watercolors. One was a Christmas present for my cute niece. Good thing we've been to the zoo recently, I have lots of fun animal pictures to work from.

Painting Demonstration

Here is how I create a painting:

1. plan the picture, small sketches to create the composition

2. nice sketch on arches hot press watercolor paper and sometimes I pick the colors I'm going to focus on

3. get the paper wet in the sink and flatten it out on a board. Get paper tape wet and seal the edges of the paper (this creates a flat painting in the end)

4. paint the background first. Here I painted the whole area with just water, and then added a color I had mixed a lot of:
I did the top background, then added another layer to the bottom for the floor area:
You can see on the sides where I test the colors I mixed before I paint them:


After it's painted I ink the outlines with a nib pen and acrylic ink:
finished:
scanned & cropped: