My Work: Kara Sitting in Flowers



Kara sitting with Spring Flowers.  Watercolor on Canson Arches Watercolor paper.

I've posted so many reviews lately, I haven't really had much of an opportunity to just share some of the things I've been working on between conventions.  I DO post in progress stuff to my Tumblr when I can, and it used to update pretty often, but I've been so busy with bigger projects that I haven't really had a chance to post much since Mechacon.

I like to paint multiple pieces at a time, and I needed a horizontal Kara hero image, so I painted this while working on a batch of Gizmo Grandma pages.  Since people have asked what I use for my real illustrations, I used a couple of self assembled dried watercolor palettes that contain a variety of Holbein Irodori , Winsor and Newton (both pans and tubes), Daniel Smith, and  SoHo Urban Watercolors.  I purchase empty pans and my palette is a metal palette similar to the ones at the bottom of this page.  A metal palette like this is a lifetime investment- you really only need to buy it once, as long as you take care of it, it'll last.  My palette allows for me to put my own pans in, and I make sure they stay in place when I travel with a little bit of double sided tape on the underside of the plastic pan.  I paint with a variety of watercolor brushes, both natural and synthetic, from a variety of places, although these days I like to catch brush sales at my local Jerry's Artarama, because I really like their Creative Mark Rhapsody brushes.

This was painted on Canson Arches watercolor paper, which is one of my favorite papers for illustration.