It is not only writers who redo their works, artist revise a lot too. Some projects just never become reality. I have a bunch of ink drawings from a a planned coloring book. The theme is late baroque or rococo fairytale world. The first pieces were born in the fever of Inktober, back in 2015. The pages got printed and pinned on my wall recently, and I have spent hours staring them.As they were drawn during about three years, they might have more differences than I would find ideal. I felt stuck. They are way too precious to throw them away, on the other hand, I feel they need a significant amount of work, to be published as a coloring book.
Then I had an idea… what if I color some of them? The “coloring” of course quickly turned into a reinterpretation of the original drawings.
I am blessed to be a member of some critique group, so below you can see the metamorphosis of the illustrations. I will share my thoughts and feedback from the critiques so you can have a better understanding of how I work. It might help you to experiment with your own art.
The original coloring page:The Little Mermaid's Dream
Referencing ancient Greek mythology the young mermaid has two fishtails. She is lying in a small circle garden, embellished with baroque style decorative vegetation, flowers and tendrils.
Mermaids, or sirens as the Italians call them, icons of ancient goddesses. You can often see them drawn as half birds or angels for the upper body and fishtail(s) for the lower part.
A siren is a carrier of the archetype of the feminine divine. It all makes her into an ideal guide for journey of the soul. It is very telling that many centuries later we are still fascinated by them.
Changes 1st round
First, I grabbed my crayons, but I did not like any of the versions as I tried to color the intricate pattern. I decided to reinterpret the piece. I quickly came up with the limited color palette. I got rid of the circle that originally “hold” the vegetation and added four guards at the corners. Still I felt it could be improved.
Above the three versions that I showed to my fellow illustrators.
Thoughts and critiques
First, very smart question was,” who is the target audience?” Where could I see this piece used. Some suggestions were middle-grade, YA covers or stationary. I agreed, my plan is to create some patterns based on this ilustration and show how it can be used on different products.
Animals, especially the octopus in the corner look like real animals enough so I should fix some of the awkwardness on them. They do not look “imaginary” enough to overlook these small issues. I concluded, it is time to look at some references.
When somebody had it before you...
They also noted the the little girl looks too much like the Starbucks logo. I defended my point of view, arguing that it was based on Melusina, a mythological character, and the first depictions were from the 7th century Italy or even earlier. However, I had to accept that for the general American public it would always resemble too much to the coffee empire so I’d better to change it.
As for the colors, the dark blue background was the winner or perhaps the orange could work too, but with some blue behind the pool-garden.
Nothing was mentioned about the scales, but eventually I thought they are not adding to the design at all, they made the illustration unnecessarily busy. I’ve already had intricate details in the floral pattern, there is no need to add more pattern or texture.
Final pieces after the changes
