This is the first illustration of my daughter Lily Blu. I always wanted to include her into one of my paintings but she isn’t necessarily a patient model 🙂  It’s not that she needs to pose very long but only for a photo. I usually work with images/ photos as reference material. When I took this picture I instantly came up with the idea of placing her into a river surrounded by fish. Usually I take a picture for reference based on a rough sketch/ idea.  So this illustration was created the other way around means I worked my idea around an existing picture. I ended up using barracudas as the fish surrounding her because I think that our world can be a dangerous place to live in especially for a little girl.
The following picture shows the digital sketch I based the final painting on:
The following picture was taken while the painting was in progress:
