Kaedyn Attempts to Draw; Merry...Christmas?

Hello again!

Kaedyn is back in business, but a month late. I have a project I worked on for a secret santa gift that I never posted, so I'll just... leave this... here.

My lovely, beautiful tablet broke (a.k.a the tool I use to draw on the computer) so I have to "re-learn" traditional art, which is not exactly ideal. However, I'm a firm believer of only giving up when you /really/ want to, and I didn't want to. So, I created a wonderful mess of watercolors and tears. Shoutout to Hailey- I hope you appreciate this.
Rest in peace, tablet.

In this piece, there wasn't anything in particular that I wanted to accomplish, so I ended up mostly focusing on the background. I was a bit lost on what to draw. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is throw your pencil on your paper and hope it creates something. That's sort of what I did here.

First off, I made the simplest sketch I could muster of characters I knew my giftee liked. Anybody watch Voltron? Throughout creating this monster piece, I used pencils, crayola watercolors, inking pens (the knock-offs from eBay), watercolor paper, and $1 brushes. I love cheap materials. I spent a total of $8 for the supplies that made this.

Helpful tip:
To watercolor SAFELY, also known as not destroying the sketch you put 10 minutes into, cover up the area you don't want painted with masking tape (low tack)! $2 right there. Okay, so now $10 total spent.

Bunyapen had a picture called "The Traveler", which had a similar color scheme to what I wanted my background to look like. She blended "Sky, Pale Blue and Frost Blue from the top down to the bottom on the background areas. Let the paint overlap" (Bunyapen 124).

Unfortunately, Copic markers are approximately $7 a pen and I do not own any of these colors. My crayola watercolors would have to do. Bunyapen also used a Colorless Blender to blend the shades of blue together, so I made my own adjustments by blending the watercolors with... water. Also, please don't do what I did. I didn't let the paint dry as I layered the colors, and on top of that I took the tape off before it was even CLOSE to being dry. 

This part was my favorite- I basically splattered paint on my paper and "squiggled" my brush (technical term) over the splotches of color. Please, please wait until after watercolors dry before taking masking tape off. You'll ruin everything you love. So far into this piece, I have made about five unfixable mistakes.

Then, I used an inking pen to trace over the characters I drew, The process of inking takes about five minutes, yet can either make or break your picture. To avoid entering the depths of hell while inking, try to cover up all of your mistakes with annoyingly bright Christmas colors. Nobody will know. Speaking of coloring, for accurate results, ALWAYS test your markers before you use them. It can ruin your picture if your markers are damaged or dried (Bunyapen 15). I used the cramped range of Copic markers I own to execute coloring as best as I could. In addition to Copic markers, the remnants of blue I had left in my watercolor set were useful as well.

At this point in time, I have made sixteen unfixable mistakes. One of those being that I didn't test my markers and my grey one split and spilled... I'm cursed, I swear. To finalize, I used a gel pen (generous donation by Phoenix, whom I stole it from. Thank you. I'll give it back soon) to add little stars in the sky. Unfortunately, my scanner washed out the picture a lot, so in reality it's a lot darker than it appears.

Here's the finished product! This was a lot of fun working on, even if I'm not exactly on time for Christmas. Whoops. Merry Christmas anyway!

I have a lot of difficulty finding time to sit down and draw, so my question for you is:

How much time do you usually spend drawing? When do you have time to draw?

(Please, I need management skills)

Bunyapen, Supittha. Shojo Wonder Manga Art School: Create Your Own Cool Characters and Costumes with Markers. Cincinnati, OH: Impact, 2011. Print.