Illustration Friday - wings

I almost never work in pastel, but I have been admiring the work of children's illustrator Lynne Chapman and enjoying some of the videos she has on her website, so I bought a couple of sheets of sanded paper and used this weeks IF prompt as a starting point. You can certainly get some lovely bright colors with pastels, but I'm not a fan of the dusty messiness.

Four treatments - trying different materials

My most frequent medium is watercolor, but I sometimes worry that it doesn't have enough impact. I just tried painting the same image in four different ways to see which I prefer and I'd love to get feedback. Here they are in the order that I did them. For the first one I used water soluble colored pencil on brown kraft paper. I printed out a scanned pencil image and then colored it. I didn't stretch the paper so it got a bit wrinkly when I added water. The lettering is collaged on top.

The next one is gouache with a little colored pencil and marker.

Next I tried the ink and gouache method I've used before (explained here).

Finally I used watercolor.

Early morning moon

When I came down early one morning, I saw the moon through the trees and everything in shades of blue and wanted to paint the scene. I didn't actually see the fox. He invited himself later when the painting was almost finished. Here's a close up of him.

Cat in Winter

She may not want to be outside as much in the cold and snow, but Jasper still needs to keep an eye on her territory.

Still Life

While we were away for a couple of days over the new year, I treated myself to a book by British watercolor artist Shirley Trevena, "Breaking the Rules of Watercolour" and was inspired to paint this. She's much looser in her treatment - something I aspire to - but I definitely learned a few things.
My New Year's resolution is to do some drawing every day, even if it's just a quick doodle, though I won't necessarily be posting all the results.