Mermaid 'Alagaesia'

Sometimes you feel inspired...and other times you feel dispassionate and are just existing, rather than living...

Sooooo the other week I was feeling more of the latter. Just pacing through the predictable motions of my day. Then, I started looking through images of artists whom I love and for some reason, unbeknown to me, this illustration by Sara Butcher was so beautiful and struck a creative chord that I stopped browsing then and there and got to work on the idea which revealed itself in my mind!

The result was Alagaesia, (a name I only devised for her this very morning, as I've been reading the 'Inheritance Cycle' by Christopher Paolini. If you enjoy fantasy novels, you should try these as the stories are as intricate and real as the world created by Tolkien).

Original dodgy sketch of the idea.

Final design in golden brown pencil.

Further polish final design with blue pencil.

The majority of the piece I finished that day, but the final touches and tweaks took me a few more days to complete as I never know when enough is enough! I hope that you like her, as I am really pleased with how it is different from my norm, with the use of blue pencil, the colour palette and filled background. But not so different as to remove the presence of my style :) What also makes me stoked is that I took a risk (of wasting watercolour paper) and drew the final design straight on the paper, as opposed to polishing it and then transferring it onto the good paper! Yay, progress!

What inspires you, and what does it inspire you to do?

Happy Fairy Dusting your life!