Gerry Giraffe watercolor step by step

Finally done with my animal illustrations. Everyone meet this happy go lucky giraffe, Gerry! :) I love painting on weekends because I don't have a time limit on my painting time. (I usually paint for an hour on weekdays before going to work, but since we have so much OT lately, I don't get to wake up early and paint. :( )

Anyway back to this commish project. :)

I used a yellow wash for the base color to have a warm tone to thepainting. Next I added the colors for the body, and the ground. At this stage the colors are very flat and light, since it's easier to go from light to dark  in watercolor.

Using my flat brush I added the leaves, the mane and some grass. I paint the leaves loosely and with lots of water to lighten the color a bit, I mixed yellow orange and a hint of brown for the mane.

And then I add the details (eyes, spots, tree trunk and grass lines etc.) and shadow. I used watercolor pencils for the lines on the grass. And just like that Gerry the cheery Giraffe is done yay! 

Leo the Lion step by step

Leo the lion commish. One more artwork and i'm done with my animal commish. I haven't used watercolor for 2 weeks, i missed it so much i got carried away with the details for this project, i'm currently doing a lot of digital paintings, which unfortunately I can't show to you yet. (my eyes are turning red staring at the monitor for days!!!) Anyway here is my step by step process for this piece. 

sketching

To start I looked at lion images in google, then i started sketching breaking down the image to basic shapes. I did  a few and sketches and decided to create this one. 

adding the base color

I did a very light line drawing and added the base color, using wash technique for the sky, I also added yellow for the face and body.

fill in the colors, adding lines

Next step is to add solid thick and thin lines, for the lion's mane and the grass. Using pointillism I added depth and shadow on the lion to make it pop out.

add texture, details

final artwork

And after a few days Leo the lion is done! :)

Back to school illustrations

Tomorrow starts the first day of school here in the Philippines. Which reminds me I need to wake up early to go to work or get stuck in traffic. So anyway back to my post, I did this school illustrations for a children's learning center website. Instead of creating the characters in photoshop I decided to draw and paint them traditionally, using my good ol set of watercolor. I enjoyed this project since the client gave me a lot of freedom to do what I want. :)

Some elements i did

happy student watercolor on paper

more pictures :)

Did this illustrations using my sketchpad (not watercolor paper) they warped a bit but fortunately it didn't show much in the picture. I adjusted the colors and did the layout in Photoshop.  

You can check out the website here.