Fairy Tale Promotional Illustration

I'm back with the finished illustration! I really had fun working on this piece! Below I'll quickly share my process:

As usual, I wanted to quickly establish the basic color scheme of the illustration. Because I hadn't settled on a color or look of the jellyfish at this point, I decided to ignore them for now and concentrate on the elements I had a better grasp on. I was hoping that once I had some sort of color down, it would give me a better idea for them later on.

Here I made my first big pass on my mermaid character. Once I had her in pretty good shape, I went back and continued to pull out the rocks in the background as well as the coral in the foreground.

Next I added the sack for the dolphin. After that, I made another pass to the coral and cleaned it up further. The purpose was not only to tighten up the area but I also wanted to create more illusion of depth.

At this stage, I finally felt comfortable enough to add the jellyfish...WELL ACTUALLY, I simply stalled as long I could and I simply ran out of other things to work on.

Here is the final piece again. With all the main elements worked out, all that was left was to tie everything together. I gave the illustration a blueish tint, since we are underwater afterall! Along with that, I focused my attention to the composition and added some final value adjustments. And with a couple touch ups as well as some finishing touches to amp up some of the fantasy and the drama, this one was a wrap!