Added 1 new A* page:Okay so after doorways, I seem to be obsessed with drawing nattily dressed little old dudes.
There were two things I did with the watercolor on this page that I haven't done much of before—one kind of accidentally to start with, and the other on purpose. The accidental one was washing off watercolor I'd already put down: the dark blue shadow I put on the side of his face was too dark initially, at the top, then too light as I added water to drag it downward toward where it merged into his shoulder, so before it had dried I started scrubbing the darkest part off the top and washing it down into the lower shadowed areas with a wet brush. And because it's easier to scrub in the middle rather than at the edges, and the scrubbing washes more off the high parts of the paper than the pits, it creates this kind of neat faded look.
The more on-purpose one was painting dry with a dark color over a lighter gradient. I knew I wanted a blue gradient coming down from the top part of the background, around what would be legs in dark pants and shoes, and in watercolor you can always go darker over what you've already painted, so rather than try to paint the gradient around the legs, I just washed and scrubbed some dark blue down the entire background, right through the pencil outlines of the legs, and once that was dry I went back and painted the legs over the blue gradient—this made for a nice clean, seamless division with no dark overlap at the edges, and it also gave a nice subtle cool to warm gradient from the top to the bottom of the legs. So that worked pretty well! I got the idea from Thomas W Schaller's Instagram—in most of his watercolor paintings, he gets a very smooth/sharp effect by painting a dark foreground object over a gradated background.
Also I delineated most of the heaviest shadow along the side of his face at the pencil stage, rather than just winging it all in watercolor like I usually do. I don't do that often, and hm come to think of it, the times I've done it have been mostly more successful when I've been drawing men, like the desert guy in episode 22; I suppose because any extra lines you put down on a woman's face are really risky if you want her to look "pretty"—whereas with an old dude, the more lines, the better! : D Hm I suppose that's part of why I like drawing them, sort of like some artists like drawing giant apes and Godzilla and stuff.
Oh yeah! And another watercolor thing I tried here (old dude / non-Selenis pages are good for experimenting, 'cause who'll miss 'em if it doesn't work out? : o :"D) was using a main shadow color lighter than a main illuminated color: the shadow along the dark side of his head and jacket is lighter than the non-shadowed side of his jacket. I'm not sure quite why, but this type of light/dark inversion can be very effective in creating the right impression. Maybe it's something to do with how our eye adjusts when looking at darker or lighter things around us?
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