Beginnings: First two stages watercolor portrait

I just started these two portraits today. I did the first two stages simultaneously as I wanted to get the colors the same. The first stage is just the pencil outline (which is hard to make out in the photos). The second stage is the scariest as it doesn't look very good and this is the "underpainting" this is like the undercoat watercolor layer which I use to tell me basically which color will go where. This is really useful with a very complex drawing. At this stage the portrait does not look very good and that's why I call it the scary stage and you just have to have confidence that it will turn out OK in the end (hopefully!) I've been working on the younger boy all day and it is progressing well,(it now looks very different from this photo that I took this morning). I wanted to put the four photos together in one and spent a while trying to do that, as my new computer doesn't have the same programs that my old one had and that I am used to using, so another learning curve! Sorry the photos of the drawings aren't very clear.

The drawing stage starts with me doing all my sketches on tracing paper until I'm happy with the sketch I will use for the watercolor and then I ink in the lines I want to use and then transfer it to the watercolor paper. That way I don't end up with loads of rubbings out on the watercolor paper and just have the line drawing that I want.