my first watercolor in a long while

Hiiii! I wanna share the painting process for this piece; I used the Kuretake Gansai Travel Set that Kuretake sent to me to review! 

I also used a flat Trekell brush for blocking in the first washes, the thinnest Kuretake water brush in the pack of three, the Zig clean color brushes, the Zig Clean Color Dots with the fineliner side, some Prismacolor pencils, and a GellyRoll gel pen at the end!

I started off on the Etchr Labs A4 cotton paper sketchbook; I've been testing this paper out with my other Western watercolor palettes, and I've been enjoying it a lot.

I used the Trekell brush to set down a base wash, and then waited for that to dry.

You can see how much the paints lightened after they dried, so this next layer was setting down more base tones, working off my reference photo and using the water brush that came with the travel set. I'm not gonna lie, I was a little disappointed with how muddy the colors were at this point. I know that Gansai paints shouldn't be mixed with too many other colors, or else they get muddy, but since shifting to more single pigment paints, I realized I wasn't being strategic with mixing.

I wanted to add more highlights to the painting, so I used the creamy white in the set. It looked so good with how the pigment moved on the paper and how opaque it was!! (Until it dried.....)

I kept added washes of brown, black and green mixed for the hair, trying to deepen the colors and texture!

As you can see, the white kinda diffused into nothing?! I added more details with the watercolor and the thinnest water brush, and then used the Zig Clean Color Brushes to add some details around the sides of the face, the nose, mouth, and eyes! These pens are DREAMY! The best part is that they can be activated with water, so if I went overboard with them, I could easily brush over them to diffuse them.

More mixing the fineliners and brushes, and then adding highlights with colored pencil! Added tons of freckles, details to the hair, and mixing different pens together! This is where everything starting coming together.

I added more details, and then the white gel pen for highlights. After finishing touches, the painting is finished!

This isn't my favorite, but I learned a lot by working with Gansai paints again, and I'm really happy to have salvaged the piece with the pencils and pens.