🎨 The making of spaceships with watercolour

The finished artwork with its complete, commented progress report and a bunch of detail shots.

The illustration was commissioned by a Techno-Club in Berlin for special events called "X:Ploration".

If you've missed the first part, here it is: Part I

So, let's continue from where we were, just after having peeled the masking fluid off...

... I started with the dock, as it is the closest shape, then the bit of the spaceship that appear on the right side. I fill various shapes with various colours, trying to stay in rather warm tones. I also decided to work more or less with the complementaries of the green and blue from the background, so I stayed with brownishes, red, ochre etc... but still sometimes with tiny parts in blueish, greenish, greyish (I use a lot of that disgusting water full of the other mixes of paint) ...

I added a thin layer over it and started the two main ships. Again, filling these parts with the tones I wanted to stick with. And always lighter colors the farther the shapes are.

More colours, more layers, the shadows inside the reactors.

From that on, I went back to outlining with thinliners, touch up with white gouache and acrylic, some blacks. Basically more and more details. I don't have many photos of that part because that's a bit when the peak of the creativity hits. That's when I do a myriad of details, therefore being quite focused and at that point, there are not so many drying times anymore so taking pictures is the last thing I think about. Also, the planet gave me quite a hard time because of course, I went off the circle while painting so I was forced to enlarge it.

After, I added the first shadows, the sides of the ships that aren't in front of the light and the cast shadows from the people gathering.