panda love

Who doesn't love pandas? Nobody, that's who!
Made this little ditty for the lovely folks at Watercolour Wednesdays for the March banner for that blog.

Whacky November

It's wednesday! What better day than this one to post about Watercolor Wednesdays?

WaWe is a community blog dedicated to illustrations for kids, every month features a new banner rendered by one of it's members, this was the one I did for Nov 2012.

And recently I stepped in to do the March 2013, it'll be up all month so check it by clicking the button in the right side menu  --->

I'm sometimes asked what steps I take when illustrating, this particular one is a good one to use since it was done in my 'standard' method...

1&2) Once I've sketched out the idea (which I couldn't find to post here) I ink it, sometimes right over the original pencils, but mostly on a clean sheet of paper using a lightbox.

3) Then, on another clean sheet I watercolour the bits I consider 'positive space'.

4) After scanning and aligning the bits, an overall texture is added and any missing details are filled in.

5) The background is then filled in using more textures, sometimes adding some last minute details.

The last step is to add the lettering and some spin-n-shine finishing touches (top image)