Here is young Sami Redwing, in colour at last. She’s the hero of The Mermaid, on which I’ve been making good progress. I plan to launch the webcomic version (at last!) on Monday, February 2nd, with the first five pages. If all goes well, I’ll be posting at least a page a week, hopefully two (we’ll see how long it takes me to paint these pages — they’re detailed!), with plans to launch the first chapter (of what will ultimately be a graphic novel) as a comic book in the spring. In the meantime, meet our young protagonist!
She’s a farm girl, come to town to seek her brother, who has run away to sea a couple of years before. On these character sheets (see yesterday’s post for why I do these), I’ve given her earthy colours for her farm outfit, and sea colours for her sailing togs. A bit of visual symbolism! But just so that she doesn’t blend too much with the surrounding colours, I’ve given her red hair, which also happens to contrast nicely with her outfits.
This is Sami’s going-on-errands outfit; she wears it when transacting farm business and travelling (which she hasn’t done a lot of in her young life).
Sami is lucky that her Aunt Root’s old sailing clothes fit her so well!
The drawings were done in pencil, then inked (you can see the inked versions in yesterday’s post) and although I’m planning to do the book in watercolour, I coloured these in markers, as I hadn’t had my markers out in a while and they were sad.
Keep an eye on this blog this week — I’ll be posting some more advance goodies about the story!
Karen Gillmore Art 
Hey Karen â thanks for sharing these…. Itâs enjoyable to see the progress! At first I didnât realize they were the same person because to me it appeared the two sets of Sami have a slightly different shaped face (sailing clothes Sami is less rounded and a more distinctive nose I thought). Do you think so? I actually found the second Sami had more eye-catching character for some reason….. Or am I out to lunch? â it is pretty early in the am Look forward to seeing more, Caroline
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Hi Caroline, thanks! Part of the reason her face is not as consistent as it should be is that it’s really hard to draw faces that small and always make them look exactly alike! I’ll be doing some up-close studies (and probably a maquette) of her as I go; she’s already developed as a character in the comic, and I tried to keep her very simple, but there’s still room to refine her look. I did think it was interesting that just putting different clothes on the same body poses made her look so different; in her sailor clothes she looks more confident and ready for adventure, which parallels the story (although she has to grow into that attitude a bit).
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