BB-8 Watercolor

 As part of my May the 4th swap package that I sent to my partner, I painted a watercolor BB-8 as my "extra".  I thought you might be interested in seeing a little of the step by step.

First, I drew BB-8 out with a regular pencil.  I recently started playing around with a water-soluble pencil with my watercolors but have discovered that I really need the lines to NOT disappear when I'm painting.  Perhaps in the future, this will not be the case, but for BB-8, I definitely needed the lines to stay put.

Then I started with the lightest washes.  For the background, I only used Payne's Grey.  The first wash was very diluted, then I added a little extra pigment, and that concoction was used for the next few layers (each layer was a mountain, working from far to near) at the same consistency.  I didn't add any additional pigment until the last mountain (the one closest to us).  I also used this same color for the grey areas and shadows of BB-8), layering as needed to make some places darker.  For the sand I think I used a combination of Nickel Azo yellow and pyrrole scarlet.  I may have added a little burnt sienna as well.  I kept layering the washes for the background, and started to add the orange areas, using a transparent Pyrrole Orange.

When it came time to add some details, I used Payne's grey again to add the seam lines around BB-8's sections as well as the shadows around his round panels.  Admittedly, these shadows did not want to behave quite like I wanted.  I was not quick enough to soften some of the edges with a damp brush and the edges dried a little harder than I wanted.  I could have tried to lift these spots, but this particular paper doesn't play nicely with this technique, so I left it.  I also "flicked" some darker browns onto the sand using more Burnt Sienna.  I debated with myself for a long time on whether I wanted to leave the sun white or color it yellow.  In the end, I used some Cadmium yellow and more of the Pyrrole Orange to create the sun.  At the last minute, my hand wobbled a bit, and my sun is not perfectly round.  Oh well, I guess my partner will know for sure that a human created this!

And there he is!  I hope she liked him!

Jen