Curious about how I created these textures? You can find out the special techniques I used next month if you’ve signed up for email updates; I’ll explain more about it in September!
ANSWER TO MYSTERY TECHNIQUE #83:
This caterpillar started as an ink drawing, which I traced with a graphite pencil onto clear contact paper. I found out the hard way not to use a marker for this — even if the contact paper tracing has been dry for days, the marker around the edges tends to leave dark smudges on the watercolor paper when you press it down. After I finished painting the leaves, I removed the contact paper caterpillar and put down contact paper eyes as temporary masks while I painted the oranges in the body with diluted acrylic ink. When that layer was dry, I removed the contact paper eyes and started adding detail with a .005 black Micron pen. The last step was to add the blue spots with a mix of white gouache and acrylic ink.
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