Mousse :painted:

My testchar from ShadowMUD, Mousse. She's a Hobbit fighter (hence the category; I'm pretty sure Hobbits are imaginary). Watercolor, gouache, and watercolor pencil on cardstock.

I'm not hugely happy with how this painting turned out; I was trying out a new kind of paper (cardstock; I'd heard it was good for basic watercolor work). When I started laying the wash for the highlights for her skin, the paper started to pill! I realized right then that I wasn't going to get the color depth I wanted, and I probably wasn't going to get any more depth on at ALL on her skin. She's supposed to have Indian-colored skin, and she ended up a sickly yellow. I immediately switched to using thick applications of gouache (good color coverage, less water) but as a result I just didn't get the lumnosity I was looking for. And even with gouache, I was having horrible trouble with pilling. On the other hand, I think her hair turned out well; I was planning to use gouache for that from the start, so I didn't end up with toooo big a surprise there. And the patch on her dress turned out better than I was expecting; the color went on too thick and I had to blot it off, and I ended up with really great texture as a result. There is a tiny bit of watercolor pencil in this picture; I ended up using some to outline her feet (I just could NOT get the gouache to behave there) and make the stitching for her patch.

I want to re-do this on real watercolor paper later, and see if I can get the effect I was originally going for. Or maybe I'll re-do it with markers and colored pencil on the cardstock and see if that works better.