This was a cartoon that I drew for a ‘Word-of-the-Day’ challenge that I do as part of a cartooning group I’m in. The word concerned was ‘electric’, and for some reason an electric eel popped into my head and refused to budge.
I couldn’t quite come up with a suitable gag, although I was determined that I was going to include the eel in some way. When I was back teaching at school, I noticed a couple fo the students plugging their phones in to recharge, and that made me think about how could you recharge your phone if you were stuck in the middle of nowhere?
1. Here is the completed cartoon, now I’ll go through some of the steps in creating it.
2. Outline of the characters. I had an idea for the layout of the picture, but thought I’d draw the characters first and then reposition them later. I haven’t added her eye pupils yet, as I sometimes leave them until last in case I want to reposition the characters and change the direction her eyes are looking in.
3. Adding the background outline.
4. Colouring the characters. I used digital oil paint in Procreate for nearly all of the colouring.
5. Colouring the background. As I’m working in layers, I’ll probably copy and paste this layer again so as to increase the intensity of the tones.
6. Adding the water. I’ve been using the digital oil paint in Procreate a lot recently to create water effects.
7. Adding shadow, increasing the depth of the picture.
8. The completed cartoon again. I doubled some of the colour layers so that the tones increased in intensity. I also tidied up the picture a bit, and finally got around to adding her eyes.