Finished Pieces
Water Color Pencil Sea Serpents
For the following pieces, I created sea serpents based on actual fish species that are still roaming our seas today. I decided to recreate them as sea serpents to illustrate how our world is changing drastically and how its animals are having to evolve at a faster rate than ever before, for example, catfish are now growing to sizes previously thought to be impossible due to mutations caused by polution. These fish previously were of moderate size now they have been found to be dozens of feet long. So I imagined that if our world continues on like this what’s not to say that even species as small as the ones I based my serpents off of could grow and evolve back into the goliath like creatures that used to roam our seas back before humans evolved in the time of the dinosaurs.
Art Reflections
Lion Fish Sea Serpent
For this piece, I drew inspiration from the Lionfish and sought technical inspiration from my master artist Leonardo De Vinci. I studied De Vinci's exceptional work in proportion and found that Da Vinci tended to always make the hands and head relatively the same size. I incorporated this rule into my piece, making the hands and feet a similar size to the head in order for it to look proportionally correct. I also drew technical inspiration from Phil Falco and Alina Nemeth to achieve as realistic an appearance as I could.
Alina Nemeth I noticed was able to create smooth shading even with a watercolor medium. Although I am working with a watercolor pencil in this piece, studying the fluidity of the watercolor shading Alina created gave me a good idea of what kind of look I should be going for while shading. Along with studying how the shading should look I also made note of the colors she used to shade, how it wasn't just a different shade of the main color but also a mixture of blues, greens, and purples. For this piece, I used a mixture of blues and dark browns to shade which I feel I executed nicely.
I drew inspiration from Phil Falco in terms of how to place and arrange my serpent's body. I drew inspiration for the positioning of the serpent from the Sea Wing dragon that is on the cover of the 2nd book in the book series "Wings of Fire". I liked the way it slithered across the page and took up a lot of space but in an interesting way. It drew your eye in and made you want to explore the whole dragon's body. So I incorporated that slithering aspect by winding the tail a lot as well as arching the neck too. I feel that I executed the positioning of this piece wonderfully.
However, if I were to go back and recreate this piece, I would have gone in with possibly a charcoal pencil or a darker blue watercolor pencil to enhance the darker shadows in my piece. I would also want to incorporate a white gel pen to emphasize the areas of the serpent that the light is hitting most, it would help give a more wet appearance to the skin.
Lion Fish Sea Serpent
Alina Nemeth’s artworks are fluid and mystical, she has a great knowledge of colors and achieves beautiful shading with cool colors such as blues and purples along with gradients of whatever colors she uses in her pieces. I studied her fluid gradients and incorporated them into my pieces, emphasizing them mainly on the broader fins that lined the spine of my serpents as well as the tail fin. I used not only yellows but different shades of yellow and red to help emphasize darker shadows within the fins. I also noticed that Aline never really used black, she tended to stay away from it and mainly focused on using other colors instead. So I decided to use dark blues and greens for my darker shadows instead of black like I had done in the past. Although I did use some of my own innovations to achieve the highlighted effects in certain areas of the yellow that’s on the main body of my serpent. When I was originally making the piece I realized I didn’t have any bright fluorescent colors in my watercolor pencils that could still be vibrant after I added shading to it; therefore I found a neon-colored pencil instead and found that the watercolor pencil could be removed from wherever it was placed over the areas I put the neon pencil on. That’s when I found that I could place on a lot of shading and color but still have that bright color I wanted, and that’s how I achieved those brighter highlights within all the darker blues and greens that take up most of the main body. I personally feel that it was a good innovation that paid off.
I took inspiration from Phil Falco’s water wing dragon, it was what prompted me to add in some accenting elliptical spots of contrary color to the piece, that didn’t originate from the fish I was taking most of the inspiration for the pin shaping and coloration from. Although Phil Falco’s pieces I found always had his dragons in intriguing positions, not just standing or sitting but curved and offset from the center. This is what inspired me not to place my pieces directly in the center but to offset them and place their parts at different angles and perspectives on the paper. And to add interest I even decided to not try to fit the whole dragon onto the page but to let it come off the page. I personally feel I executed the placement of this piece quite well.
However, if I were to go back and improve upon the piece, I would have used pencils with thinner tips so that I could draw the individual grooves on the tail and spinal fins to add more realistic detail. I would have also loved to add a white gel pen to the piece to emphasize the areas where the light more intensely hits the serpent, and not only would it help emphasize the lighted areas but it would help make the serpent’s skin look wet.
Mandarine Fish Sea Serpent
For this piece, I gained inspiration from a mandarine fish but I also drew on technical inspiration from my master artist Leonardo De Vinci an artist that specializes in proportions which is what I mainly studied from his work. I incorporated his techniques of proportion including the rule of thumb to make the hands as well as the feat of my serpent the same size similar to what he did while drawing human figures. I also came up with a rule of thumb that I found worked best to portray accurate proportions within my serpent drawings and that was to make the tails twice the length of the neck. I personally feel that in terms of proportion I executed it quite well. I was also inspired by the techniques of two current artists as well as Leonardo De Vinci, those individuals being Phil Falco and Alina Nemeth.
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Mandarine Fish Sea Serpent
Blue Spotted Robin Fish Sea Serpent
For this piece, I drew inspiration from the Blue Spotted Sea Robin fish as well as my master artist Leonardo De Vinci. I studied De Vinci’s work in proportion, studying it so I could use the basic principles to help me find the right proportions needed to accurately portray my serpents. Some of the basic consistencies If found were that the hands and head were relatively the same sizes and that the upper arm and for arms are similar in size to each other, although I chose to exaggerate the shoulder blade of the serpent after looking at some of the original reptiles of our planet the dinosaurs. I noticed that many of the large-boned dinosaurs had large prominent shoulders, whose bones would protrude through the skin; and looking back on my story behind why I created these serpents and how I was inspired by the idea of the animals in our oceans now evolving back into creatures similar to those in the past is the reason I drew physiological inspiration from them. I also drew technical inspiration from Phil Falco and Alina Nemeth to achieve the effects I was trying to imitate from the photo I was working off of.
Alina Nemeth had a beautiful shading technique with the more fluid watercolor medium which I hadn’t really had much practice with. But by studying her I realized that she used a lot of monochromatic like shading (where she shaded from Dark to light using the same color). She also would introduce darker greens, blues, and purples to emphasize the darker areas even more although I decided to strike with the more monochromatic shading technique because my fish was mainly one color. Also instead of using the blue to act as a shading color, I used it to imitate the blue hugh that the water casts whenever your underwater on the chest plates of this serpent. I personally feel that the shading I achieved on the face and body as well as the blue hugh I added were executed nicely.
I drew placement inspiration from Phil Falco who always placed his dragons in very movement invoking positions, that made your eye and follow the dragon winding body from the head to its tail. I drew inspiration from the Hivewing that was on the cover of the Wings of Fire series 12th book. I liked the arching shape the body made and how the hands were placed in a way that displayed them nicely. I followed the same arching structure and put the hands in a position that displayed them more than the Hivewings position. I also decided to exchange the rear legs for fins to include one of the neatly patterned fins of the Sea Robin Fish I really wanted to incorperate. I feel that I executed the positioning of this piece nicely.
However, if I were to go back and improve upon this piece, I would like to actually include more blue in the more shadowed parts of the piece to incorporate that blue hugh I have on the chest plates to be on the rest of the piece. I would also have liked to include white gel pen to accent the shine of the skin of the serpent to make it look wet.
Spotted Sea Robin Sea Serpent
