Don't look behind you, it's . . . PIN-UP FRIDAY

Danger-Prone Daphne, from Scooby-Doo.

This was a test for a new watercolor paper. I usually work on cold press, that's the kind of rough textured paper I think most people are familiar with. Unfortunately the roughness of the paper is, as you can imagine, difficult to ink on. Hot press paper is made the same way as regular watercolor paper, but pressed, giving it a smooth, vellum-like surface, great for inking, however the absorption and bleed is a whole different ballgame when it comes to painting. I'll be honest, I hate hot press, I don't like how watercolor looks on it and the process of painting is more technically rigorous.(check out the pink in her tights for where it can go wrong)

But, as I said, I've been really bummed out by my results inking on rough, so I thought I'd do a test. I may have said here before, between pencilling, inking and painting, inking is by far my weakest game (some things to watch out for, there's not a lot of width variance in my linework and I always feel like I'm losing something essential in the pencils that isn't getting captured in the inks, and I can be a little wooden). this one came out OK though, the black & white of it looked pretty solid.

painting on it wasnt a nightmare, i think you can see that keeping the wall behind her consistent proved problematic and unfortuantely mauves and purples just don't react well with the paper. But overall, it wasn't as bad as I remembered. I liken it to playing the piano and playing the harpsichord, where rough is piano and hot pressed is the harpsichord. The same instrument basically (piano wires are struck, the harpsichord plucked) with a slightly different sound and wildly different technique.

If you click the link in the gallery page there's a nice sketch I liked from when I was working out the trench.

Anyway, Happy Halloween and if any cosplayers out there want to make that trenchcoat, I have a friend  who'd be interested ;)