A watercolor work-in-progress

I'm beginning a commision piece about 20x22" of these cute little boys, Ben & Lucas. I selected this photo as a reference out of a couple dozen I took while they played on our swing.

Here is the preliminary pencil drawing..(the lines are darkened by the contrast button on Picasa, they're really not this dark)

I've lightly penciled in all the major light and shadow areas to guide me.

First an all over wash of skin tone made of new gamboge and cadmium red.

It starts to look scary at this point with the underlying colors going in. Putting in some greens to kill that white background will help.