SPQR Blues et cetera

I'd forgotten I'd meant to put something like this in the printed book for Chapters I-IV. I was flipping through some printer's proof pages and remembered all the future emperors Felix stumbles across in Chapter II.

The fact that one person can meet, say, 7 emperors in a single lifetime doesn't say much for imperial longevity, does it...

After doodling a bee, I got it in my head I'd draw Wonder Woman in the leftover space, but somehow ended up turning her into Venus (the "on the battlefield with Felix" version), as you do. The greens and yellows are modern-style paints; the rest are from the ancient palette.

The sample paper--you can see its specs in the image--is Canson's Moulin du Roy. I have a sketch pad with their Montval watercolour paper, and don't like the way it handles water, and I think paints look dull on it. This is a higher-end paper, while Montval is meant to be student grade.

I like this Moulin du Roy paper a lot. It's less textured than some cold press papers (fine grain); it feels smooth and easy to work on. Buckling/warping, when not taped down, is minimal. It was happy to let me do a light pencil sketch, erase it, do another, erase it, about 10 times. The inked line was done with a 005 (very fine) Micron pen, which went down okay, considering this is textured paper and not the best surface for a pen like that.

There's something...I dunno...a little bit dirty about the surface, as if it had been left out to collect dust, but I'm not sure whether that's literally true, whether it picked up dirt in my bag, or whether there are grey fibers or other particles in the paper itself. I didn't notice it until I was peering at the art close up. I feel like the colours lose some of their vividness on this paper, but the fine-grain texture might be a fair trade off.

Update after holding it up to an east-facing window: Actually, colours look very vivid in the sort of direct bright sunlight one isn't supposed to expose one's paintings to.

Non-staining colours don't lift off this paper with the breezy ease of the previous papers I've tested this month. Paints seem to dry more quickly, which is good if you're impatient like me. My homemade earth-tone paints blend and layer easily on it. I have another sample sheet of the cold press, and I'd like to do more tests with it, and I'd like to try the heavier weight version. It makes me want to go out and do architectural paintings, of ruined temples and tumbled columns....

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(Also today, because I accidentally didn't post it: daily watercolour #3)

I let this dry a few days before going back to it so I could try layering paint. In the meantime I seem to have forgotten how I was doing the ponytail so that style could be continued for the rest of her hair. Lots of tweaking and changing is still in progress.

Still, every time I think I've pushed the paper too far with corrections and new layers, it puts up with me.

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I have at least 30 (possibly more) different types of watercolour sampler papers that I'd like to test, so I'm going to try to do a little piece of art each day--maybe during lunch breaks, so I can make sure I do them quickly, not worrying about the drawing details. Or worrying about, you know, anatomy and stuff.

Also of course I'm going to try to keep the comic chugging along.

Today's "spend no more than an hour on it this time" test of the paper samples stars St. Cuthbert's Mill Milford 140lb cotton cold press ("not") paper.

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Light pencil erases easily; paints lift well; the paper warps when wet but dries flat; and I discovered I need to learn PATIENCE before layering on this type of paper--it doesn't dry immediately, but stays workable for a while, so I found myself accidentally scrubbing off the underlayer of paint.

I was also being my usual timid self, and the colours looked a bit washed out. I think more (patient) layering would give a much more vivid result, judging by how bright the more pigment-dense paints along the side look when thumped on the paper in masstone (in "full strength," so to speak).

Warmup sketch with two reds--kermes (bugs) on the left, cinnabar hue (substitute for genuine mercury vermilion) on the right.

I'm always worried I'll overshoot the mark and ruin a painting by overworking it, but I'm planning to do a second layer (glaze) on the cinnabar red and on the skin tones when this is fully dry.

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