All the colours in skin

A lot of of new faces here! Welcome to Philip, E., friep and Holly! =D

I'm utterly in love with how this one is coming along. Layering colours on paper is just the absolute best. 

I had this really sad book as a teenager, about a girl whose sister dies of leukemia... and it had a cover that really inspired me. The girls were rendered in coloured pencil (something I'd associated with kindergarten), and the colours were all over the place, but soft and totally believable. There was blue in the blond girl's hair. BLUE. It was my first moment of, "there's more to colour than you think". (The book was also by Lois Lowry, who I'd never heard of and whose Giver I only read when I was already a teacher.)

It took me a loooong time to actually introduce this revelation into my art, but I do it in watercolour and it's so rewarding to do in coloured pencil! 

I did go for some more blending, but only done with coloured pencil at this point (of beige, light blue, and white), none with paper blenders or anything more aggressive. This means I can still layer over blended areas, which is a huge plus. 

I also found out that I imagine Will to look part Indian rather than part African, and am waiting for the day when it turns out he was blonde, or bald. Fun fact: We know nothing about Will's looks. Fanon has established that his mother has dark skin, but this is completely unofficial (and well established in fan art). Ah, the fun life of a fan artist whose franchise is still ongoing: Your visions are always prone to go down in flames. But I still had that with Tolkien, too, when I was younger. I was one of those who thought all Indis' descendants were blonde, and my Fingolfin and Fingon had to undergo serious revamps in the mid-nineties when the corresponding History of Middle-earth books came out.