Salutations. I've been working on this piece for a bit. To be honest, I had the line art for this in my sketchbook for a little over a year, and I decided I should do something with it. Better late than never, right? I've decided I wanted to try a new approach with markers. If you noticed, there are no inked lines in this drawing. My goal was to try to achieve a painterly-like affect with this piece (or at least get defining edges on certain parts of it without the use of line art). I think I did a pretty good job, for the most part.
I'm still camera-less, but I did make sure to take a few pictures along the way on my phone. I've always like seeing progress shots of other peoples artworks. It's so interesting to see how things started out before it reached the finished look. I hope you guys have enjoyed seeing those of mine too throughout this blog.
This is the prep stage. The drafting tape is used to keep the border clean and crisp. I've traced the line work very lightly on nicer paper.
Once the tree is all colored in I started work on the grass. My goal throughout this piece is to try to give it and autumn(y) look. That's why you see a light orange color under the green(the color is YR01 Peach Puff to be precise). I've used that as a base color a lot through this piece, to try to keep colors uniform.
Grass is done. The grass by itself took a little over an hour to complete. Since this is the foreground, I wanted it to have more details.
The trees in the background are complete. I am kinda fond of that evergreen there. I started blocking in the shadow parts of the mermaid.
I started work on the mermaid. I didn't want her tail to be the same green as the rest of picture (it would have blended in too much), so I made it a soft teal. Once again I put a base coat of the YR01 under the teal, so that way she is not standing out obnoxiously.
The water was the last thing to add. I was procrastinating with the water. I wanted to see how everything looked with the background before creating the lake. I haven't done a lot of water pictures so I was a bit worried how it might turn out. Overall, I'm pretty happy.
I added the finishing details with colored pencils. Now the mermaid has eyes and doesn't look creepy! Yay!
Overall, am extremely happy how this turned out. I just wished the picture and scan came out better. It's more rich then what it shows on the screen.
Well, the next thing on my schedule (Schedule? What schedule?) should be a simple sphinx that I'm working on. It should be up within a few days. Till then, keep an eye out.
Title: Mermaid Lake
Paper: 9x12 Strathmore Smooth Bristol
Medium(s): Copic marker, Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils
