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