Curious about the techniques used here? You can learn more next month if you’ve signed up for email updates!

ANSWER TO MYSTERY TECHNIQUE #108:

Clear contact paper is great for masking! Be sure to press it down well to keep paint from running underneath, and use a pencil if you’re drawing shapes on the plastic side — marker lines tend to smear and stain the watercolor paper. Both the caterpillar and the leaf started with a very diluted layer of yellow acrylic ink; you can still see it in the eyespots. After that layer dried, I covered the shape of the caterpillar with clear contact paper to protect the yellow while painting the leaf. When the leaf was finished, I removed the contact paper and added 4 new pieces to preserve the yellow in the eyespots. To capture the intensity of the blue spots on top of the orange, I mixed the blue with white gouache. The last step was to add details with a black Micron pen.