ASIA's Art Materials
All of my fanarts are all analog, which means they are done on sketchbook with regular coloring material, such as watercolor pencils, pastels, and few color markers. If they are black and white, they are done by pencils or ink. I am old-fashioned. I will never move onto CG...there are already plenty of people doing digital, and analog art is too much fun! (^_^)/"
These are the watercolor sketchbooks I use for more "showcase" type of art. Nothing special, just sketchbooks with thick papers for watercolor techniques. I prefer this type of thik papers because I use water with my watercolor pencils. These sketchbooks are slightly bigger than 8x11. The only bad thing about these is the size is slighly bigger than my scanner area...
For more sketchy type of art and manga, I use slightly smaller "Field Watercolor" sketchbook. They basically have same type of paper with the sketchbooks above; the only difference is that these are smaller in size (I placed brown sketchbook on background for size comparison). I can use them more casually just because they are smaller, so I started using them more often. They are also easier to scan, too.
I basically start out any art with pencil and eraser. I prefer mechanical pencils over real pencils. As for erasers, I only use Japanese erasers. I just don't like any erasers here. Everytime I go home I stock up on erasers...
My coloring almost always starts out with watercolor pencils. This is the old set that was collecting dust at my parents house, but these pencils are pretty much all I need. I also have another set I recently purchased but this old set pretty much takes care of all of my needs.

For more sketchy arts, I just use them as pencils. For most of my "showcase" type of arts and mangas, I apply water with paintbrush (top left). Water melts these colors and gives it more watercolor feel to it.
For clear lining, I use small tip ink pens. My preferred choice now is the Sakura Micron pens. Sometimes I use brush-pen I buy in Japan for thicker lining. For vivid hair shine effect I use Copic Sketch Markers (on left) on top of watercolor pencil base. Needless to say I pretty much only buy brown Copic Sketch Markers.

For more printing-ready type of black & white arts (for Japanese DJ, etc.) I use dip type of pen with pen nibs (not shown), but these don't work well with rough surface of watercolor papers so I don't use them for color arts.
Prismacolor soft pastels (right and left bottom) were the best purchase I have ever made in my life (^_^) These colors are great... I normally just take a piece of paper towels rub it directly against pastels, and smear it on the paper. I use pastels mostly for background, and sometimes for clothes, etc. Pastels can give such warm colors and feel to it...

I have also purchased soft pastel pencils (left top). These are great for smaller areas (you can control it better) but the colors themselves do not come out as great as soft pastels.

ASIA's Art Making Process: Step-by-Step

I have drawn this particular pic with one solid purpose in mind: to explore the possibility of watercolor pencils. As I have shown in my Profile page, my primary art supplies are watercolor pencils and soft pastels. But I was always feeling that I was not using watercolor pencils to their full potential. So I wanted to try something more subtle to really challenge myself to see how much these little powerless-looking pencils can do. And I joyfully discovered they can do a LOT more than I have ever imagined!! (^_^)

Well it was going be mecha type of art but I need to like the characters part first in order to get into doing detailed background.

Heero's halfway done here. No he won't be naked *LOL* but haven't decided on the outfit yet at this point (poor planning).

Here I am trying to decide Duo's pose...I don't want him to be on the same height, so sitting down or something (you see where I marked Duo's head? ^o^;)

OK Duo showed up. Still need to fix Heero's hand.

Really don't know what to do wit the outfit. I am just not very creative, OK? (-o-)

Ummm come to think of it if I am going for canon outfit (because I am thinking of Gundam in background) they do wear turtleneck under rather than tanktop. Maybe I can make it thin long sleeve black turtleneck instead? Or would that look too gay? XD But I like tanktop too...gotta think. If I wan't going for Gundam background I can be more flexible...but but but.

Sorry for the strange color tone here. Camera flash didn't go.

I tend to draw really clear and thick think outlines (more anime style), and while there is nothing wrong with doing it I wanted to try something little more subtle, to let the color speak out more.

So what I did here is to use the thinnest line markers I have (0.1mm) to draw outlines over my pencil draft. Also I mainly used brown marker instead of black, which gives even more subtle lining. Here is right after linking. After I erase pencil lines, things will look really sucky for a moment....

And here it is after erasing pencil marks.

So now I only have very minimal outlinining (except for Duo's chest...I just messed up that one *LOL*). But once I start coloring it, the color will be talking out more.

Oh and by the way just for the heck of it I decided on sleeveless turtle neck for both of them with regular gloves.

I started coloring skins using watercolor pencils. I normally use orange to color skin.

Err you see Myu's paws on it...I think my cats likes this larger sketchbook I use for showcase arts to lay on better than my smaller skethbooks.
Here is the close-up (grrr ignore the fur....)

You see how the coloring is little rough and you can still see color pencil line to it? That's how I normally leave my sketches, and I do enjoy that effect on more casual arts. But I usually apply water to the more serious arts.
So I apply water using small paint brush.

Now do you see how the color melted and turned into more watercolor look? Now key here is to apply small amount of color in the beginning and add more later (here is my new experiment).

This is the part that takes the longest for using-water-art, since I apply water, wait until it dries, and apply more pencil, apply water, and repeat the process until I am happy with the color depth.

I also have to color different color parts separately to avoid color smudging into each other.
So here is the same process with their hair.
And here is after water is applied to their hair.
So after I repeated the process like 3~4 times here is the result.
Sometimes I just can not get my cats off my sketchbook...or maybe I am really a cat and not telling you *LOL*
Repeat the same process more and characters part is almost done.

I normally color them darker but Ifor the purpose of experiment I need to stop here and work on the background, and come back to balance everything later. Decipline, decipline...
So what do I do with the background?

Hmmm..I really hadn't decided but hey I would just do Gundam heads again just for a good measure.

Out of 3 version each, I like TV version Wing Zero and Deathscythe the best. But if I do them in pairs I need to have the same version for both of them, so I am doing Wing Zero and Deathscythe Hell.

Now if I knew the structure of Gundams well enough then I would be able to do more creative angles on them. But sadly enough I am not *that* creative, so I just used couple of references and drew them accordingly.

Inking on top of pencil draft.
Pencil marks erased.

In some ways starting out with another pencil draft within partially-finished colored art is pretty inefficient, but most of the time I like to see the characters finished before I can really decide on the background. I rarely draw entire thing all at once.
Started coloring Gundams.

Err at this point I noticed my mistake on Deathscythe Hell's head but just keep quiet, OK? (^_^;) I will just keep gooooing like nothing wrong happened here...la la la.
Applied water and repeated couple of times.
Repeated several more times.
I repeated penciling & watering processes MANY times (lost count...20~30?) and here is the result.

The photos are not shown (my camera battery died) but after this I smeared soft pastels over background, Gundams, and Heero & Duo, and the pic was done (^_^)

I hope you enjoyed this little tour! (^_^)/"