Homework and Funwork

Our most recent Illustration techniques assignment was a multistep, multimedia process that we used to design a cover for a story by Poe. You lay down a layer of acrylic to establish your midtones, then a layer of gouache to establish your darks (spray-fixing between each coat), then you pick out highlights from the [water-soluble] gouache (which is opaque watercolor) using a wet brush to expose the acrylic underneath. Then you add color with watercolors and put in your highlights and other details with a final layer of acrylic. There are pictures because it is confusing.

This is part way through picking out my midtones through the gouache. The acrylic layer, which is that yellow-green greasy color, is showing through the dark maroon-purple of the gouache. (This is an illustration for The Fall of the House of Usher btw...showing Madeline merging with the house as it sinks into the glowing waters of the tarn.

All the acrylic-midtones are established now. At this point the water seems much more stylized than the rest of the image, but this got sorted out in the final acrylic phase.

I've started to lay in colors and highlights with acrylic on the face and the undersides of the clouds.
Here's a picture of the final product. it is blurry and the color is a little off (mostly just in the lights of the chin and the waves) but I thought I would include it since the texture of the gesso made the scan pick up a little reflection on each imperfection of the surface...not so good.
And here's the final, with type treatment.

Something fun I am coloring in Photoshop. The water looks sort of the same.