I've been improving my awesome watercolor skillz lately and I thought I'd show off. :P

Here are some of my best pieces: Death Qua Angel

I got some other cool stuff, but I'm too lazy to scan it. :/ Big pictures are a pain!

I do have this copic marker piece though: A Murder of Mobsters

Oh my goodness, these are so cool! I especially love the Angel one, it is expertely done. How big is the paper you use? I'm really bad at traditional coloring, so this blows my mind. :)

These were actually quite small! I did them on scraps of my nice Arches Hot Press paper left over from projects from school. They're like 6x8" I think.

Watercolors just take a lot of practice and fiddling around with. They're highly annoying at first, but once you get used to them they're cake. I always feel like I'm cheating when I use them for school projects now. XD

awesome stuff!!! :) i really like "Death"

Thanks! Death is my friend's character from a story we're doing together. ^_^ He was really fun to draw!

I love Qua, there all really awesome:D

Thanks very much!! :'D

Very nice!!

Some of it feels a bit over worked, and I also think you could add more depth.... what brand/s are you using? And are you using the tubed kind or the hard kind?

Which parts look overworked? I know the depth is kinda lame, but I think a lot of that is because I was too lazy to do real backgrounds :P!

I use tubed paint and arches hot press paper. I'm not exactly sure what brands I'm using. I just have a huge bin full of paints I've acquired over the years and my huge pallet with paints already in it.

XD I understand that completely!

The clothing on "Death" especially. The fact that you're working on hot press probably adds to that. Hot press is for minute, fine detail, where as cold press is more for heavy water/pigment. It also has much greater tooth. By looking at your style I think that switching to cold press would be advantageous. I know that I tend to be very pigment heavy, and cold press holds it much better. The best paper I've worked with was a 460lb cold press... that took the paint truly beautifully.... -trails off-

I really like how crisp some of the highlights/white spots are. I almost always fail at that.

I know coldpress is better for showing color, but it always makes me really angry because my washes don't spread as far and I can't erase as well. XD Then I just end up having a little mini tantrum and quitting. I do have some really nice 200 lb arches coldpress, so I might try it out again later.

For a lot of the highlights/white spots, I use masking fluid. It can be REALLY frustrating to apply with a brush, so I use a toothpick, of all things!! That's how I got Qua's markings to be so crisp, though I think I may have bungled them a bit when I added the orange glow to them. Dx

Have you tried prewetting the paper? That always seems to work for me. As for the erasing... well... no, wait, there IS this certain thing that you can coat the paper in to make your paint lift better.... I can't remember the name... and I've never worked with it... but it might be worth a try..?

And yeah, almost the exact same thing happened to me. I got the color totally wrong on this dragon I'm working on, ended up overworking it getting the right color (I'm really picky with the colors. It has to be just right!) and destroying it. Thankfully, it was not far in.

And a toothpick you say? Hmm... I'll have to try that next time I get my hands on some. My bottle is MIA =(

The toothpick works surprisingly well. You have to keep wetting it, of course, but that's not as big a problem as masking fluid drying in the bristles and making your stupid brush spread out. B|

Prewetting the paper works, but I still get all sorts of annoyed. XD I do get frustrated with hot press because it makes my pigment vanish when it dries. :/