I use St. Petersburg pan watercolors by Yarka, which I've loved since I was a child. I use both the professional and the extended color sets, which gives me a wide variety of colors.

For this stage I mixed a thin wash of brilliant blue and burnt sienna and applied it all over, just to set the basic tone down since I like the whiteness of the paper to be somewhat offset. No need to worry about the lightest areas at this point - regardless of what they say about leaving the lightest parts untouched, I hardly if ever stick to that rule. I'll get to the highlighting part later on.