Here I’ll show some in-between steps for two portraits of the series I’m currently working on.

Moa is a portrait with the full figure behind a desk. Getting the perspective of the table right was important to me, therefore I first drew all ink lines before dipping into the watercolors.

For Marjon, it was a bit more of a mixed process. Once I had the image at home, I felt it needed some adjustments. So here is an animation switching between the before and after state.

Especially the body was floating too much in space. So I added some weight and shape with a darker blue. And I overlaid the background with a slight green, to separate the figure and contrast the hair. Plus I gave the facial details – like the lips and eyes- some more shape.

There is quite a bit of yellowing going on – apart of the different type of scans, it’s also from the picture varnish I added as a final step. Something I’ll go into in a different post.