Well, here's Gaara in color now, I used watercolors on regular paper. (I reccommend using tooth for watercolors; but I didn't use tooth and it still came out fine).

As for the reason why he's my favorite character, the reasons really haven't changed; I don't read/watch Naruto anymore, but Gaara has still remained to be my favorite character. What drew me to his character was Kishimoto's curious design of him; black rings around his eyes, blood red hair, the ai kanji on his forehead, his antagonistic personality; to me he is an original character unlike a lot of the DBZ rip-offs I see in design. Not only was his story a heart-wrenching one, but he is also one of the few characters that grew and changed moreso than some of the static characters in Naruto. He is certainly an interesting specimen that garners the attention of many fangirls across the otaku board and deserves at least a spot as a very influential character of anime, in my opinion. Plus, I mean, come on, he's so badass, he can manipulate sand at his will and can kill you! With sand, of all things, and normally you use sand to build sand castles and to lay out on the beach and crap like that, not killing people, I mean, who would've thought! That's a pretty damn cool power to have. He don't play around :P he is quite unique out of the array of characters in the Naruto scene and he still doesn't fail to be one of my most favorite character of all time ♥

btw, thank you for those of you that commented on the WIP sketch, the comp's been screwy and it won't allow me to reply back.