This painting is finally finished!!! I had to finish up the Scholastic book interiors (I never updated about it because the cover still hasn’t been released… anyway it is a biography of George Lucas that comes out in August!!) so it was on the backburner, but finished it this past weekend. I decided to make a blog post that includes progress shots of the piece.
First – see the initial progress at this previous blog post that included an early sketch and the color comp: http://www.albaillustration.com/blog/?p=518
Here is the finished painting, my largest since 2010! The progress images will be below.
watercolor, colored pencil, matte medium, acryla gouache, 10.75×15.25
Now for the progress shots! There are a lot of them…Click the images to see larger versions. The color is off on all of them… a pain to get accurate photos! The final scanned painting is different from the final painting too… have you ever tried scanning watercolor? It just refuses to capture the nuances… sigh.
I transferred the sketch to the watercolor paper and taped it to a board.
Started painting in a blue base layer!
Started painting in some greens.
Here is a detail of the progress of the face. I started outlining with colored pencil.
Here is how it looked after working with the watercolor and some colored pencil. After this point, I then sealed the painting with matte medium so that I could continue working with acryla gouache.
Another shot of the progress of the face. Adding the highlights and building the color with layers of acryla gouache.
My last progress shot before I finished it up, varnished it, and scanned it… just kept building and building the color with the acryla gouache.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your process shots. I have to fight my students to slow down and complete the preliminary work before they get to their finished art. Brava, beautiful cover.
Beautiful work. Thanks for sharing
One question? How do you get the matte medium over the watercolour without lifting it? Do you use a blower thingy ? 
Thanks in advance.
Hi Andrew, Thanks! I use Dr. Martin’s Hydrus Watercolor inks – I didn’t like them at first because they don’t lift once dry, but it’s perfect for this technique. Once that color is down, it’s down!
Your work is breathtaking!
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