Backer Exclusive- Joyfully Painting a Big Ol Bag of Chips Watercolor TImelapse (Patreon)

My friends who like spicy things, I am about to turn yall on to something good.  If yall DONT have Zapp's Cajun Crawtator potato chips in your grocery store, you need to request them!  Zapps used to be a Louisiana local brand, but got bought out by Utz a couple years ago, so there's a good chance your local grocery can get ahold of them.  These are my favorite chips- I grew up eating them, and they're addictive!  I WISH this were a Zapps sponsorship, because I'd be getting paid to eat and talk about Zapps, but instead, this is just me trying to turn you on to something I think you'll like.

Don't bother with the other flavors though.  It's Cajun Crawtator all the way.

Materials:

Bag of Zapps for Reference

Canson Moulin du Roy Coldpress Watercolor Paper

Daily driver watercolor palette

Various Silver Black Velvet rounds and natural quills

Various ceramic mixing palettes & sauce bowls

Winsor and Newton Removable Masking FLuid

White Gouache

Watercolor pencils

A Few Favorite Techniques

I'm using a real bag but also working from some reference photos I've taken of the exact position I'm painting.

Underpainting in Pthalo Blue

Bleu-aille is such a useful technique when you want to establish shadows early on.  It can really dull down skintones, so I save using it for people when I'm painting botanicals, but it worked really well for blocking in those shadows on the Zapps bag.

Painting in the Background:

Attempting Paint Pours:

I've seen techniques for pouring watercolor onto paper to get these really fun splatter effects, but unfortunately, I wasn't brave enough to get the distance or volume right- it came across more as just splatters.    If I want to do this right, I'm going to have to get brave about it, and not worry about pouring paint right into my desktop computer (that or uh, work on top of a butcher's tray).

Painting the Bag: 

I really wanted to make sure I paid attention to the crinkles in the bag- leaving those nice crispy highlights, and that I didn't overwork it.

I pulled out my old friend masking fluid to mask out the Cajun Tatos part of the black logo

Painting Skin

Once I was fairly satisfied with how the bag was progressing, I pulled out a small ceramic multiwelled palette and mixed up a skintone.  For Kara, I usually like to do yellow ochre with scarlet red- this time I mixed it a little warmer than usual to help offset some of that pthalo blue so she wouldn't have zombie skin.

Painting Skin Shadows

A couple layers into the skintone, I decided to mix up the skin shadow color- a warm red violet.  It's a little warmer than usual again to help offset all that blue.

Where clothing casts a shadow, I use a harsher delineated shadow.  Where the body moves away from the lightsource (like on the face), I used a softer shadow that was blended out with water.

Painting the Clothing:

So with all that blue and red, I decided to lean into using primary colors for a bold impact.  I grabbed a mid yellow for her shirt and her ribbon, but decided to go a bit warmer and mixed in some Indian yellow as well.

Me and color theory are not always friends, so it's helpful to KISS with the color palette- I'm going to limit it to the yellow accent color, indigo for her shorts, and red for her shoes.

If you enjoy doing more layered watercolor illustrations but find yourself struggling to paint on cheaper cellulose papers, I really can't recommend giving cottonrag a shot!  If you just want to try it out, rather than committing to a pad or a block, you can buy a large sheet and tear it down for a fraction of the cost.

At this point, all the basic colors have been blocked in, so it's mostly about building up shadows and refining forms.

Painting the Hair:

With Kara, since I know what color her hair is going to be, I usually save it for last, as it's painted thickly and can reactivate with layers of skin or clothing. Underpainted with Pthalo blue first to block in that shadow and create a little local color.

In the end though, the pthalo blue kinda matched the colors I use for her hair anyway!

A Few More Pours:

Because I don't seem to know when enough is enough.

Adding White Gouache:

Using a small synthetic brush, I add some white details using white gouache.And another watercolor illustration complete!