How would you color a Victorian Mermaiden?
When I first started working on this drawing in Adobe Illustrator Draw, I went with a very different color scheme – muted pinks and greens. But I’ve been using those colors a lot lately, so I decided to change things up for the second go around.
For inspiration, I looked at images of octopi. A lot of the images I saw had a lot of oranges, hot blues, maroons and purples, and occasionally some bright golden yellows. I played with that for a while and came up with a color scheme I think will work – dark reddish browns, primrose yellows, bright aquas, and dark oranges. I think it works, but I’m still working out how I’ll use those colors throughout the entire drawing.
One thing that will help is Concepts color wheel. Concepts uses Copic colors. When you select a color, it will also show a list of different shades or tints of that color. In the image above, you can see the all the shades and tints for the dark reddish brown I chose. I’m using the lightest shade of thatfor the ruffled trim on the dress, and I used two other shades of that for the top hat. I’m doing the same with the other colors as well, and it seems to be working out.
So I’ll keep working at the colors on this one. I’m still working on the other mermaid, the one with all the long flowing red hair. That hair is just killing me, but I’m determined to get it done. And I’ve got the Pirate Queen set up as an SVG file, so I think the last week of this month, I’m going to take that drawing and any others I’ve finished and clean them up then post them someplace where people can get prints. I’m thinking maybe Society 6 for these, although I could also set them up as shirts on Threadless or cards and other items on Zazzle. I don’t really know yet. I’ll figure it out, and let you know.
