Wormworld Saga Watercolor Painting Steps

For the last days of the kickstarter campaign I felt encouraged to create a special item for a $1000 pledge tier. It had to be something really rare and unusual and I decided to create a watercolor painting. For the first time in 10 years (I'm not kidding you!) I took out my box of watercolors, cleaned the dust out of my brushes and filled two pickle glasses with water. I sat for hours to create an actual original artwork. Apart from my original pencil sketches this is my first original artwork in years. And I really had fun doing it! Here's the result:

I also want to tell you some details about my process. Since I wanted to have creative freedom with the drawing I created it in Photoshop. There I was able to balance the black areas with the white areas more effectively compared to pencil on paper. Here's the digital drawing:

I then printed a dark gray version of the drawing out on regular printing paper. I used a ballpoint pen and carbon copy paper to transfer the drawing onto the watercolor stock which I mounted with tape onto a small drawing board. In this picture I'm half way through the transfer process:

And here is the final result of the transfer:

After the transfer I took a lot of the carbon off the paper with a kneeted eraser in order to lighten up the transfered drawing. Then I started to paint with the watercolors. This is the result of the watercolor stage:

Now this was really lacking contrast and I was very anxious if the end result would look good but of course I knew that the final step of filling in the blacks would most likely do the trick. I used black pigment ink markers to ink the black areas. In this picture I was already half through the inking process:

At this moment I knew that the artwork would look very nice. The solid black areas build a nice contrast to the subtle coloring. I really like the result and it definitely is something very special. And it already found a new owner on kickstarter! 

I will create a painting like this (with a unique motive) for everyone who pledges $1000 on kickstarter and you have 3 days left to get hold of one of these (and a whole bunch of other prints that also come with a $1000 pledge by the way). And let me point out once again that everyone who pledges $25 or more will receive special edition prints as a reward. 3 days to go! All to be found at:

The Wormworld Saga App kickstarter campaign