100 Watercolors #18 - Rainbow

I had a much lamer idea for this theme, but as soon as I started sketching it out, the above idea jumped into my head, which was A LOT more fun!

If you can believe it, this is my 45th post this year.  That's only noteworthy because it makes this my most bloggingest year so far!  If you check the sidebar of this site, you'll see that in 2008 when I started this blog, I tried to post once every week, but I only made it to 44 posts.  This time hopefully I'll make it through the rest of this year and beyond!

I did some very tight-deadline illustration work for the Harry Potter Alliance last week which I'll share with you all in November, and it looks like Ramen Music will be using another one of my album covers in December, so I'll also have that to share.  In the meantime, I'll continue posting more of these 100 Watercolors images.  Onwards!

100 Watercolors #17 - Blood

This week's theme is well-timed for the month of October.  I think this is about as close as I will get to posting a halloween image, even though it's another dozen days until the official holiday.   Claire is making me some wizard robes for my costume this year.  I'm going to be Dumbledore, since this will be my last halloween with an insanely long beard.

Next week's theme: Rainbow!

Paul and Alison Wedding Photo Watercolor

Okay, I thought this week I would take a break from the 100 Watercolors challenge to show you guys a commission I painted for some friends of mine this summer.  Those of you who are familiar with my Phase 7 comics will no doubt remember my friend Paul who loaned me his copy of Understanding Comics, thus changing my life forever.  Well, Paul wrote me this summer to see if I could repaint one of his wedding photos as a watercolor, for his wife as an anniversary present.

Here is the original photo of Paul, his wife Alison and their dog James:

And here is the watercolor that I made, based on the photo.

Obviously, I pumped up the colors a lot for this, but I also played with reality a bit and turned James's head and got rid of his harness, to make things a bit more picturesque.  This was a lot of fun to work on because Paul and Alison are great friends!

Next week's theme (for real this time): Blood!

100 watercolors #16 - Questioning

The first thing that came to mind for this theme was one of those classic "good cop, bad cop" questioning scenes from any number of police movies or TV shows.  But then I thought it might be funny to do good and bad CAT, instead!  As I have already shown in this series, I am more of a dog person than a cat person, so I tried to make these cats seem pretty mean.  Sorry cat lovers... maybe I'll be able to redeem myself in future watercolors.

I had a really good time mixing the colors for this one.  I'm starting to see the wisdom in some of those old art school tips like 1) never use a color straight from the tube - ALWAYS mix it with at least one other color! and 2) don't just use black, MIX black (in this case with a dark brown and deep blue).

I've been chipping away at many of the future themes.  I've got the next seven all penciled out and dozens more of the concepts figured out.  It's hard to believe I'm still only 16% done with this.  Oh well, I'm having fun and learning a lot, so I guess it's all going well.  Hopefully these are enjoyable for you as well.

Next week's theme: Blood