Ocean Princess
When creating my Ocean Princess, I wanted to create the feel of a princess in an underwater world, but I did not want to create a princess out of the generic idea of a mermaid. So I began to look for ideas else where. The princess’s design originated from when I found a large reddish shell. I really liked the shape of the shell and when I looked at it, I realized that it had a dress like shape and from there, I began to form my characters. I began to sketch shells of different shapes and sizes, seaweed, and coral to form a beautiful gown. I also created the oceanic dragon since I wanted the princess to have some sort of guardian.
When making this, I used large sketching paper, wood-less color pencils(gives smooth color), mechanical pencil for sketching my drawing, a piece of plain white paper(stops the smearing of colors as I apply color to the drawing), and shading stumps(objects that are pointed to allow detailed blending of colors). First off, I sketched numerous ideas of what I wanted both the princess and the dragon to look like, along with researching numerous underwater life to gain an idea of how I wanted the drawing to come out. After I got my basic idea, I began to arrange my characters on the paper I was using. Since I wanted the princess to be the focal point, I tried to center her. Also to do this, I placed the dragon behind her but wrapped it protectively around her. Then I began to place ocean plant life in a methodical way that allowed a fluid feel and also moved your eye throughout the artwork.
The specific color that I chose, also had a great deal of importance in my drawing. I began to think out what colors would work and I knew from the start that I wanted blues. So I then decided to find colors such as greens and purples that would work perfectly with the blues that I planed to use. Some oranges were also used for details in the coral to bring some contrasts. The very first thing that I worked on, was the princess. I wanted to make sure that the colors on the princess popped out from the rest of the drawing. To do this, I began to color her first, giving her a light blue skin tone. Then I worked on her dress and hair piece, which I used different shades of purple and blended the different values together with a medium-sized shading stump. The smaller details were blended with a tiny shading stump. I also blended her hair piece into her hair-line by blending a dark blue into both the shell and her skin. The seaweed corset, bows, coral bouquet, and fin were the last to be colored. The fin was just light shades of blue and black. The corset and bow were drone with different greens, including a lime green, of which I did a scribble effect to make it appear as veins. The coral was different pinks and oranges mixed with just a touch of black. With the dragon, I started on his face, starting with putting an emphasis on the details. Here I blended blues with the shading stumps and added darker tones where I felt I wanted shadows to fall. The fins were dark and light greens blended together. Some parts of the dragon, where the colors are applied in a more solid manner, was due to a hard pressure I applied on the color pencil. And the veins were formed by using a blue pencil that had just a touch of black in it. With it, I just changed pressure and angles in a pleasing manner to create vein like shapes.
The back ground was basically a repeat of what I did to color the princess and the dragon. The seaweed and coral used the same techniques and colors, just getting darker the further back in the image. To create the ground texture, I took a black pencil and applied it in a circular manner allowing changing in pressure. The water was done with just a light blue blended with different values of black.
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