My favorite Disney princess as a child was Princess Aurora from Sleeping Beauty; quite honestly, there are numerous factors as to why that may have been the case. I believe the main reason was the fact she wore a pink dress, albeit mainly in the merchandise rather than the film itself, since I loved that color and still do to this day. The music was beautiful along with the animation of the film, and Maleficent was a pretty awesome villain. Quite honestly, I also enjoyed Maleficent as well, and pleasantly surprised with how it twisted the fairytale into something unique but memorable.

Sleeping Beauty still is one of my favorite films, especially when “Once Upon a Dream” came out of it and remains an iconic romantic song. When I first got introduced to Twisted Wonderland in Fall 2020, I was immediately was drawn to a character looked eerily similar to Maleficent, named Malleus Draconia. Given how most of the characters are inspired by Disney villains, my observation held a lot of truth. As I slowly began to develop my art style as freshman at Marywood University, some pages of my skecthbook were filled with Malleus Draconia.

The two images seen above are some of my pieces made in 2020, which brings me a wave of nostalgia considering I am entering my senior year. The drawing on the left was one of my more serious pieces, since I brought out the ink markers and shading techniques I learned in Drawing I. The sketch on the right wasn’t as formal as the other, but nonetheless I wanted to improve on my drawing skills.

The pencil sketch I did ended up serving as the reference for redraw I did in 2021 of Malleus. I once again desired to improve on my art skills, and wanted to try out Procreate to its full potential. I took full advantage of the limitless color wheel I had, and the various brushes to make the drawing more lively.

A few weeks ago, a friend proposed an art week where all of the people in our friend group would follow specific prompts and post our works, whether it was photography or drawings. The prompt “nature” gave me the inspiration I needed to make a new drawing of Malleus, this time surrounded by a more intricate background. I used a handful of references of Malleus in order to get his facial structure and eyes right, along with his color pallet. I played around with the colors specifically for his hair and horns so it wouldn’t appear purely black and flat, especially since there’s sunlight hitting directly at his face.