Justin Gerard

September Watercolor Warrior!

Added 2024-09-06 13:00:10 +0000 UTC

I'm back from DragonCon! It was an amazing show and we had an awesome time there this year. We ate good food, saw crazy costumes, bought some amazing art, ...and brought back a bit of the classic con crud.

So I am still not exactly unpacked yet, nor have I done anything of the hundred or so other things I was supposed to do, and instead I found myself just sitting and painting monsters for awhile. And shows like Dragoncon are always really inspiring, and leave me excited to paint again. Anyway, I thought I'd share the results of this procrastination with you here today:

I didn't really have a specific idea in mind for this one, and ended up sketching a variation on the "Kakopire Bat Lord".

The painting is very tiny, at only 5"x7" inches. In Frame 1 in the image above you can see a light sketch in non-photo blue pencil and 2H graphite pencil. I stayed very light for this as I am working on cold press watercolor paper, which tends to pick up a lot of the pencil if you aren't careful. After the drawing I applied a layer of acrylic ink in a mixture of Raw Umber and Black. (Frame 2)

After the monochrome underpainting I started painting my way across the image in full-color, beginning with the head (frame 3) and working out from there. This is all pure watercolor using my little Winsor & Newton travel set, except for a few highlights on the armor (Frame 4). This acrylic white helps in areas where I couldn't lift the pigment out with pure water.