Hi, Mr Whale!

 

Final Painting

This painting started in mid March, when I brainstormed for ideas to develop into a Witch painting series. The seed idea was a witch speeding just above sea surface. I liked the thumbnail, so I marked it.

The seed idea

I started working on this image a few weeks later, so I needed to remind myself of the idea by drawing more thumbnails. I thought it would be fun if the witch was racing a mermaid or a dolphin (see #1 & #2). I toyed with the idea of the mermaid swimming or even leaping to the air (see #3), but I felt this deviated too much from the seed idea.

Second round of thumbnails

At this stage, the image felt empty with three separate characters. Moreover, their size are too similar—the seed image has 3 character with different sizes, creating some interest. I had to try very hard to break the similar size curse; I seemed to keep drawing similar size characters! My trick in this case was scribbling the silhouette of the witch, then consciously drawing a huge whale in the background. I was quite happy with the result (see #4). Thus, I arrived at the pencil drawing.

The pencil drawing

I wanted to introduce abstract shapes to help the composition; hence the school of fish and whatever it was at the bottom of the sea. Not quite coral, lol.

As an attempt at improving, I started imagining how the final painting would look while inking. I imagined the whale and fish should be blur because they were under water. I experimented with capturing this using duplicated broken lines. On hindsight, broken thin lines could have worked better.

The inked drawing

I will cover the painting process in the next post. Stay tuned!