Le Petit Prince
Since I finished reading the book back in college I knew I’d eventually make a fan art based on The Little Prince. It took several years, but finally, here it is! It’s a simple composition that have had quite a few revisions through the years because I’ve been re-sketching how I would want it to look like.
Like most fan illustrations about the book, I knew I wanted mine to feature him on his small planet together with his rose and the fox that he tamed back on Earth. I drew the background first, followed by the characters on a separate sheet.
Once I started rendering the prince, I got uncomfortable with how he looked because I couldn’t feel a connection with how I designed the character. There was something about it that I didn’t like so I decided to come up with a totally different version.
In my recent drawings, I realized that I enjoyed designing characters that had a bit of asian influence. Being asian myself, I figured that creating illustrations inspired from oriental culture made more sense because I could somehow relate to it. So regardless of the theme, I wanted to represent more of Eastern culture in my work.
After thinking about the right country to draw inspiration from, I finally settled on Bhutan because of how they isolated themselves from modernity and being a country that measures success in terms of GNH or Gross National Happiness, thus having the label of World’s Happiest Country.
Once I was happy with the rendered characters, I exported the shapes in Photoshop so I could work on the background and add textures there. With some color adjustments, the artwork ended up looking like they are watching the sunset.
