I’ve had several people ask how I paint lately, so I figured I should put together a little tutorial.

I. I sketch until I end up with something I like. Sometimes this comes easily, sometimes it doesn’t.

II. I do the linework first, using a #2 brush. This is technically the “wrong” way of doing it; with watercolour painting, you’re supposed to do all the fills and shading and stuff first, then do the linework (if there is any.) Thing is, I don’t feel comfortable with doing things in that order. Linework is one of the most important things to me and if I don’t like the lines then I tend not to like the drawing.

When I’m working with colour, I use Noodler’s #41 brown ink for most of the lines (it’s a really nice brown/sepia colour and it’s waterproof, which is rare for brown ink,) but for particular colours/surfaces (such as skin) I use a darker/more saturated shade of the colour that material should be. For this, I use either Higgins coloured ink or just very dark watercolour.

If you want to try painting in this order, it’s imperative that you find waterproof inks. Otherwise you’ll end up with a terrible, ugly, bleedy mess.

III. Next, I do flat fills and the first layer of skin shading. The reason my watercolour work looks unusually smooth is because I use two brushes—one for painting and one for blending. The painting brush is a #6 and the blending brush is a #5. I keep one of the brushes between my lips and switch quickly between them.

I fill a small area with a colour and before it dries, I switch to the blending brush (which has been dipped in water) and turn it into a nice gradient. It also pays to keep a tissue handy in case you make a mistake.

IV. Once the fills are dry, I erase the sketch lines, paint in the shadows and do various other touch-ups. I like to use blues and purples for shadows, though it changes depending on the situation. I go over any lines I am not happy with and darken/fix other things. It’s hard to write a tutorial for this stage because it’s basically me just fixing bits I don’t like.

That’s it! I hope you enjoyed this little insight into how I work.