Tutorials
Go to part one
We proceed with the arch above them. According to the color test, we will paint it green, right?
In this case we will use Tobacco Brown, Olive Green and Antelope Brown to get the green we want. It's
very important that all the colors match with one another, so that the final piece will look good as a whole.
Mixing colors
Now this part is tricky. Mixing concentrated WC is no science, but as the color is concentrated, is hard to figure out how many drops it would take to preepare a decent mix of paint. If you prepare a lot don't worry, you can let it dry in the porcelain container (that is, assuming you have a proper palette or a bunch of porcelain dishes to spare). Even so it's a waste! The first years I used this type of watercolors I often ended up with lots of painting in a container, because I honestly didn't know how many drops to add, to get what I wanted, which became an issue once I started to mix several colors!
So after many years of having a pile of porcelain containers with tags on them (like "this container has that blueish tone you used with aphrodite in that watercolor"), I came up with a system that might be useful for you -one can only hope-. Now, all the colors are mixed the same way, o.k?
1.- With a crystal eyedropper add a couple of water drops to your container (like 3 will do). In case you are wondering, the crystal eye
dropper is a necessary tool to mix concentrated watercolors. Should you want to pick up mixed watercolor with a plastic eyedropper, the
plastic tube will absorb the pigment and will dirty future mixs. So it's best to use a crystal one.
2.- To the water add a SINGLE drop of color (no, seriously). Well, it all depends on the area you are painting. In this case, the arch is not a huge area, so one single drop will do. -and even in larger areas sometimes one drop is enough, trust me. Now this is where it gets tricky. When you mix several colors you need to choose a base color. In this case we are looking for a green that's not too vivid. Tobacco Brown is a bit green-ish but it still tilts to a brown shade -that we of course don't want-. Even so it will be easier to make this tobacco brown more green, rather than to dim the Olive green. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's best -for the purpose of saving materials- to enhance one color, rather than to dim another. It will take lots of color to dim another color, while enhance it will only take a few drops of WC. So in this case Tobacco Brown will be our base.
3.- Mix the water with the WC. the added water will not dilute the color, it will only expand the mix. Remember always to prepare suficient paint. it's a disaster when you ran out of mix in the middle of a wash.
4.- With our base done, we add the green. Just one drop. Remember we just want to strenghten the green .
This is how it looks once the green has been applied. Notice how the green has still a little bit of brown in it. Ah yes, of course the pigment in the mix will get thicker and thicker (so to speak) every time you add drops of concentrated WC.
5.- If you think the green is too green or is to vivid, you can add less than a drop of Antelope brown (or if you don't have that color, you could use the one for the base). When you are satisfied do a test on a sheet. If you feel the color is too strong dilute it with water. Remember to use the eyedropper to do this. Adding a bunch of water carelessly will only botch the mix and will force you to add more drops of watercolor. At the end you will find yourself with TONS of of painting! So be careful. once you are satisfied you can start applying the color. See how in my test (picture to the left) I can see how the watercolor will look like once applied. Then I proceed to apply it on my illustration.
Here's our arch finished. There are some places that the color looks a bit stronger , but this is just because a) I took the photograph when the canvas wasn't dr and b) because I was an idiot and didn't applied the color in order. This clogged the pigment a bit. So be careful.
Now the only thing we will need to do is to apply a second coat of watercolor on the bottom part of the arch, to streghten volume.
And there you go. The bg of the arch is ready.
Now let's proceed with the Aries signs (yes, those are Aries sings, not mushroom halfs). To color this we will need is Amber yellow and a bit of Pumpkin. Yiou have to do the mix, the same way we did the other one. In this case I used Amber yellow as a base. With the first layer, we need to start shading the circles.
To do this we will use our same mix and add to it less than a drop of coffee brown. When your mix is ready you just have to apply it on the edges of the circles to add volume. Apply it from the edge to the center. Of course try to leave some of your first layer of color untouched.
Notice how I streghthened the color in the circles that are behind the characters, just to create more depth in our illustration. the thing here is to achieve a 3-D effect here and get rid of the flatness . It
s time to paint th Aries symbols, but to do this we need to cover the rest of the illustration to avoid smudging the areas that have been already colored.
We add more coffee brown (less than a drop) to our mix to color the symbols.
The symbols are ready. Now we just need to shade them, so they would look sort like engraved.
To do that you need to let the illustration dry COMPLETELY. Once is dry you will paint a little outline with the same mix with which you painted the first layer. You'll see once you've applied it, the shade of brown-yelowish, becomes more vivid.
Here's our arch finished. Notice that it doesn't look flat anymore :) Let's move on , o.k?
The corners will be tackled in the same way as the starry bg. First we need to shade it with violet. Shading should be heavier towards the center of the illustration (as shown in the picture below).
With the shading done we will add a second layer of color. This time we'll use Juniper Green.
Again, just a single drop will do. Of course you need to apply it in the same way we did the sky: from the shaded part edges to the non shaded parts of the drawing. Once I was done with that, I waited till the drawing was dry.
While the rest is drying, I started shading the ornaments in the corners. Then when the blueish part was perfectly dry I added a second coat of the juniper green, just to intensify the color.
It should look like this when it's done :)
The rest of the bg : the stars and the bars on the side are done the same way and now our bg is finished!
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Credits: Saint Seiya and all it's awesomeness, belongs to Masami Kurmada and Toei Animation. Art
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