Silas Zee: Sing with all the voices of the mountain

Sing with all the voices
of the mountain

2012.12.30

The Little Mermaid is my favorite Disney movie, but my heart belongs to Pocahontas. <3

I've been wanting to draw Pocahontas for a little bit and an epic Disney World vacation sealed the deal. It's been a few years since I've drawn her and at least twice that long since I've done a bull color piece, so this went through a few changes before I was completely happy with it. I've included my first draft in the pencils image. My initial try was okay and I worked with it as much as I could, but it just didn't seem right. The pose wasn't fluid enough for me and her anatomy was off in a lot of places. I decided to put it aside and sleep on it, hopefully it would look better in the morning, but it literally kept me awake. So I got out of bed, tore up the sketch and started from scratch. I don't usually draw so late at night but I think I should start making a habit of it because what you see is pretty much what I doodled out when pencil hit paper.

Because I wanted to keep the colors simple, inking wasn't very complicated. I used a Sharpie to ink her hair so the colored lines would pop out a bit more. Where my first idea was kinda complicated, this final piece ended up being elegantly simple. Once I hit my stride on this piece it was a lot of fun. And an excuse to listen to the soundtrack over and over while working on it. It might sound goofy, but Colors of the Wind is a perfect song to accompany a Photoshop project. ^_~