The ephemeral tale of The Little Mermaid

I like the silence of winter; how the snow takes in all the surrounding sounds, makes you feel like you're the only one left in this beautiful world.
That does not mean I like the coldness.

I was outside in the winter forest full of snow this Sunday afternoon, when it was below -10℉, with my camera and a tripod to take reference photos. Bad idea.
Hopefully it will get warmer soon; I'm so ready for spring. Although, I do love looking at the snow.

Inside my warm-ish room (since I feel like the air from outside occasionally comes in which, well, is not good), I'm currently working on a movie poster/book cover illustration for the story The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen.
If you've never read the original story, you should read it. I linked it on the title above. *wink wink
It is a sad, but a beautiful story of a mermaid who fell in love with a human prince, and one of my favorite stories as a child.

I am still in process of completing this illustration, but wanted to share some process drawings I've gone through. These scanned images are all on tissue (tracing) paper, so I apologize for the weird texture.

After taking reference photos, I kept on adjusting the face little by little, especially the eyes, until I got the expression I had in my mind.

Noticed the hand was not the pose and position I wanted, I took more references and drew them from scratch. I did this on a separate paper since I wanted to keep the face.

Then I combined all the tracing papers to draw out just the line of the entire image to transfer onto the surface I am going to paint on.

Knowing the pain and the risk for becoming a human, she still takes the chance to be with him. I wanted to illustrate her accepting this pain, represented by the fish hook. Moreover, I wanted the over flowing hair to also look like ocean currents towards the bottom.

Hopefully I'll be done with this piece by next week, so I can share it here as well!

Stay warm, and have a creative day,