Now that the semester is over and I’m back at home, I still find it hard adjusting to that kind of life. Balancing work and home life in general, I’ve hardly found the time to really sit down and actually draw, usually using my free time to play video games or watch TV.
Although I’ve been a bit more productive the past few weeks when it came to sketching and drawing on Procreate; the drawback is my personal realization that I never finish what I start. My Procreate gallery is filled with a handful of unfinished sketches and pieces. What often causes me to start a sketch comes from random spurts of inspiration I get when watching a specific TV show or playing a game. On the other hand, I may get frustrated with said sketch or drawing and take a break, which then turns into never touching it for a while or focusing on another sketch.
In the weeks leading up to the release of the live action Little Mermaid movie, I was in the mood to begin drawing mermaids and sirens, anything related to the Disney film.
In the mobile game Twisted Wonderland, there are a pair of twins that are based off Flotsam and Jetsam from the Little Mermaid, named Floyd and Jade, who are mermen with eel tails. Normally, they have human forms, but on some occasions Floyd and Jade will transform into their alternate appearance. I wanted to draw them swimming in the deep water, looking mischievous and malicious like Ursula’s henchmen from the original film. As you could see, all I could manage in that specific bout of inspiration was a blurred layer of blue to give that underwater setting, and a light sketch of the twins’ faces. I think I originally gave up since their tail fins were difficult to figure out, so hopefully I find decent references of eel and mermaid tails.
Speaking of Ursula, there is also a character in Twisted Wonderland that is also based on the Sea Witch, named Azul Ashengrotto. I know some artists were drawing Halle Bailey as Ariel in specific scenes that were only in the animated film, I guess in a way to embrace her as THE Little Mermaid. As seen below, I tried to draw Azul doing a pose Ursula did in the Poor Unfortunate Souls number in the original film. The many layers of clothing that Azul wears on a daily basis in the game was wearing on my mind since drawing it was quite difficult, and ultimately what cause me to give up was the hand poses. Hopefully by mid-July, I would have made more progress on these pieces.
