I'm back! After pregnancy and newborn time I found a moment to bring out the paints again :) I sketched out a frog and thought of him singing a song to his love. As I sketched it, it began to remind me of Romeo and Juliet with my little frog gal sitting up on her balcony of a log.
Sketching on regular paper I can erase and draw all I want. Then I use a dark marker to outline only what I actually want to be in my picture. After that I trace it onto my watercolor paper with pencil. I always feel a little funny taping it up to my window to trace, but it works great when it's daytime.
I used this painting to try out masking fluid, which I had never tried before. Surprisingly easy to use, clean up, and peal off of my picture. I will be using it again! Something I read about after I was done with the picture was layering using masking fluid. Basically using it on painted areas to protect it while you paint around it. I think I will give that a try next time. On this picture I masked out the frogs, the plants, the moon and stars. I think I will try and find a better technique for putting the fluid on for the stars. I just splattered the masking fluid on. Next time I would want the stars a little bit more evenly spread and not so many that are really big.
After everything was dry and the masking fluid peeled off, I used a fine writing marker to do some outlining. I remembered seeing some illustrations that the illustrator only outlined the main characters in the pictures or the most important things. I think this is kind of a neat way to highlight or make your key pieces stand out. I took pictures along the way so I could compare. I'm undecided right now on which way I like more.
In the picture with partial outlining I do like how it makes the frogs stand out. But the picture where the log and plants are also outlined has more of a finished feel to it.
