tutorial-ish..thing...a-jabber?

So, this is going to be my half-brained attempt at trying to chronicle what I did for my Himegami picture, like I promised!
List of stuff I used:

• lineart prepared on cardstock (NOT recommended. i'll explain why in a second)
• hairdryer or heat tool
• watercolor brushes (I use cheap ones from hobby stores, usually in white or golden taklon.) - an assorted size of sables, flats, and a 1" flat for washes.
• liquid watercolor / illustrators ink
• colerase (for shadows)
• wax-based colored pencils (for highlights)
• gouache
• paper towels + q-tips for spot cleaning

Step One: Prepare the lineart
I did myself a service/disservice to start by putting my lineart in my moleskine. It'll always be there forever, but I tend to use both sides of the paper in the journal, and certain wet medias (inks + alchohol markers specifically) tend to bleed through the pages for some reason. So, what I ended up doing was scanning the lineart and printing it onto a piece of regular copier-grade cardstock. This was dumb. The reason it was dumb is because I found out while painting that regular cardstock is not super receptive to wet media, even after the paper is primed. It would have been much better if I had chose bristol board and fed it into my printer like cardstock instead. I think this would have helped ease down some of the noodley directions the ink decided to go and would have meant for less damage control in the end part of the image.
If you printed your image from a copier or on a laser printer, you can ignore this next bit.
If, however, you are like me and only have an inkjet printer at home, you're going to have to be a little creative with your printoff once its dry. If you just go and try to paint on it after you print it, I guarentee that the ink will lift off and make if muddy. I went to water-size a tester in both water + glear gesso, and it looked like this: yuck-sauce. So, one trick i knew from my printmaking days is that if you heat-treat ink it tends to 'melt' and reharden a bit more, making it slightly more brittle but less likely to run. I used a heat tool (a hairdryer will do the same thing if you put it on high) and just worked over my printoff for about 3~4 minutes, then let it sit for another 30 minutes just to be sure. The heat-treated image reacted dramatically better to the water.
Step Two: Prep that paper!
Find something to anchor your lineart to, assuming its in loose-leaf form and not part of a watercolor or illustration tablet. (or on illustration board for that matter.) I like to tape down the inches about 3/4" into the gutter of the paper so i know for sure its not going to wiggle about. You'll want to do a wash over the image to make the paper more receptive to your wet media, so take your big brush and, after taping the papers edges down, cover the whole thing in a light layer of water. You can add color to the water to give yourself a better background to work with (i added in a bit of blue to mine, though its hard to tell. i dont like starting with a stark-white background when painting. its sort of an unsaid painters no-no). Let that dry completely -- or, if you're like me, you can cheat a little and use the heat-tool for the last leg of the drying process to speed it up.
Now you're ready to paint!
Step Three: Color blocking
I liked to work background-->foreground. Since i knew i wanted to use big color blocks for the budokai area I ended up masking out hime with liquid friskit.

I put in the general colors for the background. Once I removed the mask, it looks like this:

After that, I painted in Himegami's colors so I would have an idea what it was going to look like. This is where you get the first real idea of how your image is developing.

At this point I wandered off and let it dry overnight. I messed up a little bit on her hand (look near her wrist at the blotch of discoloration), and I didnt want to futz with it too much.

Step Four: Detailing

This is my favorite part, because the picture starts to look 'finished'. I put on the 'main' blocks of shadows with watecolor since I needed it to cover a little bit more than pencils, and it had a certain amount of color cohesion. I let it dry again, cheating near the end again with the heat tool. I am impatient as hell.

I like to work shadows first and then highlights, just because I dont end up putting enough contrast in otherwise. So, I went over them shadows on Hime and beefed them up a bit with colerase pencils, along with a few other spots on the image. After that, I started adding in the highlights with wax pencils.

The reason I use two different kinds of pencils is that they react differently on paper. non-wax pencils (like colerase and prisma verithins) blend much, much better and are better at subtle color gradations. They have a very precise, architectural handle to them which I like when working on specific details. I tend to sing the praises of colerase because of thier inexpensiveness and thier blending capabilities. Wax pencils, however, have a much better color coverage and are good for layering. They arent as precise because they are softer, but they have a more painterly feel and are better at thick color covers like drawing light-on-dark.

At this point, your image is going to look pretty-much done.

Step Five: Damage Control

You're going to fuck-up here and there with natural media. even the pros do it. The last part of the image is leaving it alone for a few hours or more; you're going to need to walk away from it for a bit and clear your short-term memory of what it looks like. Then, come back to it and things you missed will jump out at you a lot easier -- that highlight on her earring could be better, I could push the shadows on her hands a bit more, those squares of color in the bleachers dont read like people and need more detail, etc. This is also where you can go back and fix sloopy shading or go back over the lineart if you need, assuming its lost a bit of lustre with your hand rubbing over it for a few hours.

And now you're finished! Here's your prize:

I hope that helped a little for people who were curious. If you have any questions just leave a comment and I'll try to answer them :3