A nine-headed hydra

The left half of the picture

The right half.

This is my first attempt at one of the double-spread drawings in my Mythomorphia coloring book by Kerby Rosanes. I did it over several days, but still felt the strain of the size of the work. That's a lot of sea, a lot of lizard and a lot of sky to cover, and I must say I lost my focus several times over the course of it.

Online renditions of this drawing often put the hydra in green, and so did I. It just seemed appropriate. Some online versions of this drawing have the hydra in a raw, blinding green not found in nature. One could argue that this is a mythical beast after all, and it could technically be in any color, really,  but, oh well... At least, I know that if the hydra really existed, this would be the color of its skin.

Using my  Prismacolor 150 set, I picked Kelly Green as the base color for the hydra, then used a dark green for the parts in shadow and lightened the green with yellow and pale sage for the parts hit by the light.

The underside of the hydra were rendered in putty beige and a deep brown for the parts in shadow.

The sea: The challenge here was to make the water look transparent. I don't think I succeeded, with my palette of sky blue light, ultramarine, artichoke and pale sage. The crest of the waves catch the light, so these parts were in yellow/artichoke/pale sage. The sea foam was in sky blue light and the lower parts of the wave, the darker ultramarine.

The sky: I wanted the palette to be in the pale blue, lavender, pink and peach commonly seen at dusk. The left side has a pinker/peachier hue because that's where I put the sun at, so the clouds picked up this warm shade as well. The skies and clouds to the right were bluer.

The other minor elements in the picture - the birds, the two ships and the world tarot card were quickly done. My reserves in focus were pretty low by this point.

[The tarot card: As an aside, Johanna Basford also does this - "hide" some symbols or small objects in the picture, so that one finds them as one colors in the picture, and they are supposed to be put together by the time the pages of the book are all done to "solve" some mystery. I don't really see the point in this. They distract from the picture, I say. This is why I've usually rendered these objects in non-obtrusive colors.]

My gel ink pen in white came in useful again for the bright whites of the sea foam of the waves, and the highlighted parts of the hydra's skin, where the scales catch the light.

The two halves viewed together. 

A siren

This is my second piece from my Kerby Rosanes Mythomorphia coloring book.

Sirens are undersea monsters who lure sailors towards rocks with their beautiful music and lovely singing voices, and who eat sailors for supper after their ships get wrecked on the rocks... hence the two skulls at the foot of this picture.

I went with purple, my favorite color, for the siren, and a complementary sage green for her fins. I lightened the purple shade to lilac and pinks on the parts facing the (imagined) light source. I colored in several layers of color with a light touch this time, after having pressed much harder with the harpy (see previous post here).

The treasure chest was layered in several shades of brown, and my Prismacolor set didn't disappoint with its sheer blendability. I picked several shades of warm grey for the anchor, from the 10% (lightest) to the 90%, to recreate the sharp contrasts one would expect in metal. The other objects in the picture were fairly quickly done - the fish, seaweed, skulls, sand and items in the treasure chest.

The siren's hair: I was undecided on the color. I had thought to make her blond, but ended up going with pastel rainbow hues. It makes her almost girly, which is hard to reconcile with her grisly dining habits.

I was going to leave the background white again, like I did with the harpy, but decided on the spur of the moment to color it in to see whether I could recreate rays of sunlight piercing the water, shining on the creature's face and upper body. I can't say I'm entirely satisfied, but I don't regret trying.

This page gives a good idea of what it should look like.  This one too. I thought of adding those wavy strips of paler color over the siren's face and upper arms, but was afraid it wouldn't turn out right, so I left it as you see it.

Looking at the completed picture, I wonder now if I should have rendered the siren in a stronger color so that she would pop from the background, which is in the same family of colors. I have seen several other artists' renditions of this same picture; I do believe, however, that colors can be too raw and too strong. Some artists like to go with raw greens, blues and reds. The result seems too garish for me.

My Sec 4 art teacher (RIP, Mrs Woon) used to berate us for using paints straight out of the tube. If you are painting something for nature, the green that comes in the standard set of 12 tubes of pastel paints will almost always never do. Add yellow, she would advise.