Dr. Martins Concentrated Watercolors

As mentioned in previous posts one of my favorite mediums to work in is Dr Martin's Concentrated Watercolours. I was introduced to these in one of my illustration classes in college and have loved using them ever since.

Dr. Martins are sold in sets of various colors, but I always found it easier just to use primary colors and mix everything. Using Scarlet Red, Lemon Yellow, and True Blue, I can pretty much create any color I need and it has taught me tons about color theory along the way. Here's some more examples of pieces I've done in that medium. The thing I love about them is the fluidity of them and some of the weird effects you can do.....here's one of the first pieces I did with them.

Here's some more pieces from over the years of various styles but all in Dr. Martins (and Microns and Bombay black ink for lines in some cases)

and my most recent piece that I just did the other day......

For my highlights I either do one of three things. 1. If I can plan far enough ahead, use masking masking fluid to brush over where my highlights would be, paint over it and then peel up when I'm done leaving the white of the untouched surface. 2. Depending on the surface I'm painting on going in with bleach and a brush and "painting" in my highlights. This doesn't seem work on watercolor paper (probably because of the absorption ), but seems to work really well on different kinds of illustration board. 3. Just use titanium white paint and paint my highlights in. p.s. Be sure and get a UV fixative spray. One of the things about Dr. Martin's is they fade pretty quickly if left in direct light or sunlight unsprayed. But fixing them and if you get them framed putting them under UV glass helps protect them. As a precaution, If a piece is small enough, I make sure to scan them as soon as they are sprayed and if I think I might want to make prints down the road.

Joker sketch cover process

Even for something like a "sketch" cover unless I have the idea concrete in my mind's eye, I try to plan stuff out and that involves numerous steps. Here's some pics detailing the progression from thumbnail sketch to final painted piece. My original plan was to do the final piece in Prismacolor markers, but I thought I'd try painting one for once despite some fears about whether the paper covers could handle acrylics. I'm happy to say they did really well and it opens up a lot of possibilities for me on future sketch covers. But here's some of my initial marker sketches for you to check out....

For the next step I used a lightbox to roughly trace my last marker sketch. Then I mixed up some reddish purple and acrylic matte medium to lay down an underpainting. Since 1997 I've used Basics Acrylics for painting... I've used a lot of different brands but to me they are just the perfect consistency - I find a lot of other brands to be too watery for my tastes and I mix everything using primary colors and white. But I'll start by mixing up a dark purple and paint darks and lineart really quickly, then cut back over it to clean it up. Here's a couple pics of the painting in various stages.

Here's how the final piece ended up. I put it up for auction on Ebay if anybody's interested.....

Goad Batgirl/Joker sketch cover auction

Sketch covers up for bids!

I put a couple new sketch covers up for bids on Ebay - a new Star Wars one of my favorite character Boba Fett and a Batgirl one featuring my favorite comic villain The Joker. For people not in the know, you can do a search on Ebay for "blank comic sketch cover" and some issues are released with blank white covers (except for info) to draw on. When I first started doing these I treated like the sketch cards I do/did for Topps.....just on a larger scale. By that I mean inking and coloring with markers. But the other day it dawned on me to try painting one for a change. In the past I had thought about doing that but figured the surface might not hold up well to wet media i.e. it would buckle, warp, disintegrate, explode, etc. But I finally said what the hell, grabbed one of the less popular Batgirl blanks I had and just went for it...I'm really glad I did because it freed me up immensely. Usually when I do these comics in marker it would take me a couple days to do. The process would go : sketch out ideas in my sketchbook and keep revising till I had something pretty solid, make sure it was the right size in Photoshop, print out, lightbox to the cover, and then ink my main lines using Flair pens. Then I would go to Staples and make several copies of the cover and line art to practice some color schemes with my Prismacolors. The problem with using markers, and maybe this is just my limitations, but you can obviously only use the colors you have. I learned a little working on sketch cards for Topps about layering different marker colors on top of each other to create new ones / shades of other colors. But painting frees me up because I can pretty much just mix any color I need....and if something doesn't look right, I can paint over it, or tint it to push it more towards what I need. Plus it just looks less flat to me and has more energy. A few months back I went a little crazy buying blanks online so be on the look out for more to come including more Star Wars, Princess Leia, Batgirl, Batman '66, G.I. Joe, The Muppets, and more. P.S. If anybody wants a commission of any of these subjects and wants it on a sketch cover let me know. Anyway here's a link to my auctions..... Auctions