ArtOrder Inspiration Challenge - Process

When I heard about ArtOrder's Inspiration Challenge, I jumped aboard. This was a VERY open and fun challenge.  You basically illustrate anything that inspires you.  I ended up illustrating something that inspires a lot of my art, which is aquatic scenes and creatures.  I've always loved the water;  From pretending I was a mermaid when I was a kid to scuba diving which is now one of my main hobbies besides art making, so it's pretty fitting.

Figuring out which inspiration to focus on was tricky though!  So many things popped into my head: fairy tales (Peter Pan in particular), art nouveau, trees/nature, Artists like Arthur Rackham, Dulac, Klimpt, John Bauer, Kay Nicholson, Waterhouse, and a billion more, water, flying, fantasy creatures, flowy hair, Greek myths, and on and on... I really didn't know what to do, there were too many ideas floating around.  Here are a few idea scribbles:

 

After 2 false starts (I actually finished a whole painting but decided not to use it for the challenge), I finally decided on the underwater/mermaid theme.  I also threw in an old gnarly tree (love drawing those). I did some rough thumbnails to help decide on a composition/pose. Here are a few of them:

 

I then collected some reference and drew a sketch on some watercolor paper:

 

I inked it with a brush and some pens:

Next came the watercolor. One book that I ended up flipping through to give me some ideas for the this stage was "Dreamscapes: Creating Magical Angel, Faery & Mermaid Worlds in Watercolor" by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. It has some great little watercolor tutorials in there.

Here's how the watercolor turned out: 

 

I took a last step of finishing it off digitally. It's the best of both worlds. I love traditional but I also love digital.  Since I'm not where I want to be yet with my watercolors, it's nice to have the option to finish it digitally. It's also faster (no drying time) and I was running short on time.  I took some inspiration from a Muddy Colors blog post that Justin Gerard did where he uses a similar process.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it.  If it gets picked to be a part of the ArtOrder book that would be awesome!  But if not, that's ok too.  I learned a lot during the making of this painting and continuing to learn and grow as an Artist is the most important thing.

"Another Like Me" Process

Yay, something fun to post!  This painting has evolved soooo much.  I definitely took my time, got a lot of feedback, made many changes, and learned a ton along the way.  I started this while I was in my Painting Drama class (still need to do a review of that class because it was so awesome!).  This painting started with an idea I had of a girl holding a bottle with a strange creature inside.  I didn't have any story behind it (bad idea).  So I quickly sketched some rough ideas and then took some ref photos - I love seeing people's embarrassing ref photos, so here's one of mine, lol.

Once I started to paint I came up with the idea that she is albino (and an outcast) and she finds another creature that is albino like herself.  (I went through a phase when I was a kid in which I really wished I was albino, that's probably where I got that from 0.0).  Anyways, after painting it for a while I kinda liked it but I knew something was off about it.  Her expression was weird and I didn't really have a story as to why the creature was in the bottle.  I didn't really know what my next step was. Then I went for coffee with Iain McCaig.

He was nice enough to have a look at a couple pieces I was working on and gave me some great feedback.  The first question was "What's the story?".  It really sunk home just how important having a story behind an illustration is.  If you don't have a story behind it, how are you going to know what you want the viewer to feel or what mood to set?  So much more goes into a great illustration other than just a cool pose or fancy lighting. Also, acting.  Acting is huge. That is something I need to work on. The blank stare is not a good look.

I decided to just redo it all, taking Iain's advice and all the great info I had continued to learn through the Painting Drama class. On to the next version:

 I finally finished it with the helpful crits of my "PD circle of trust crew" ( you guys rock!).  I'm pretty happy with it.  I learned a lot during this and I'm excited to create more pieces with all the great info I learned throughout the year.