Lupine's Mess

Sketching... As usual, I posed in front a mirror to serve as a reference.

Final sketch, scanned. I do all my sketching with a Rotring criterium (can't tell you which model, I have no idea. I've had this criterium for 15 years or so and none of the models on the website seem to be it) with 0.5 mm HB pencil leads.

I transposed the lineart on a sheet of Montval 300 mg watercolour cold-pressed paper (I don't have a light table so I just use my computer screen... aha). I lined with watercolours using my Witch Hat Atelier dip pen! The trick is to dilute the pigments quite a lot, so the paint does go down the reservoir, and to apply layers. The watercolours also fix some of the pencil underneath! I erased the excess and then started with underpainting with raw sienna.

And then, I'm very sorry, I pulled a "draw the rest of the fucking owl". I just locked in and forgot to take process shots.

The fur was painted using raw sienna, raw umber and sepia, more or less mixed together or simply layered upon one another. I also added ivory black for the darkest parts, alongside a light wash to desaturate the fur to fit Do'vassha's colors. Then, it was a lot of painting individual strands of fur. It might seem boring to you, but it's actually one of my favorite parts! I love short-haired animals for that, aha.

All the blue is turquoise; the gold is raw sienna.

And then, I just finished the painting (shaded the tunic, reworked the lineart. I think some charm got a little lost on the arms; I could have re-added fur textures where they got erased from the layers, and I used too much ivory black in my mix for lineart fur on the arms. Oh well! Mistakes are bound to happen when you overwork your watercolours.