Part of That World

I never, ever want to look at the ocean waves again……..ever. It was murder painting these waves and was possibly the most laborious element I’ve ever painted. Decided to get back into some illustration as it’d been some time since I last did something substantial. Had this idea a few years back to do ‘real life’ interpretations of animated films/TV series but never really went beyond rough concepts and sketches, but having recently started watching many of the Disney classics for the first time in nearly 20 years I thought it’d be worth giving the idea a second look at. My first one is a reinterpretation of The Little Mermaid, tried to keep the spirit of the animated design whilst giving a few realistic touches here and there, I also listened to Ariel’s rather haunting theme song a few times to try and capture the mood of that particular song within the image but I’m not sure if I got the result I wanted. Was thinking about adding her sea pals Flounder and Sebastian but couldn’t really work them into the image so I scrapped the idea. I really looked at Vallejo and Bell’s artwork heavily when making this, especially their mermaid paintings, their artwork proved to be a fantastic resource to reference. Done in Painter using Acrylics and Gouache, probably close to 20 hours work, about 6 of that on water. I’m thinking this will be the first of a series of illustrations. Stock image courtesy of Tasastock - [link]