Watercolor process

Well, in case anyone was wondering, I'm not dead. It's just been an extremely busy six months. My son was born in November. In January we decided we couldn't afford to stay in Savannah any longer, so we moved to Omaha the first week of April. I went on some job interviews later that month. Then I gave a lecture on worship arts in Wisconsin. And now we're still trying to get settled and I'm still looking for a second job, but trying to get back into the swing of things.

This is what I was working on before the move. These are some process photos of the watercolor illustrations for "The Stick and the Stone." The paper is stretched wet and stapled onto a 1/2" plywood board. I transfer the drawing onto the paper with graphite transfer paper. With this backlit piece, I applied masking fluid to the sun and did the sky first, working from background to foreground. I usually do some minor tweaking with values and color in Photoshop for the final.