Much like the stories of Jules Verne, creating my illustration of the Nautilus was a remarkable adventure. The classic tale is one of my favorite novels, not just for its science fiction qualities but also its interesting commentary on the human condition using the person of Captain Nemo. Having seen plenty of illustrations featuring the giant squid locked in combat with the Nautilus, I chose to focus instead on Captain Nemo's status as an anti-hero who retaliates against mankind with his own brand of justice. After many weeks spent in designing then painting, I crafted the following piece.

Of course, to get to that final piece required crossing an ocean of ideas and choices, and it was seldom easy. Watch as I take you through the process - we'll take a look at the many steps that went into this single painting.

Though I had an idea of the themes I wanted to focus on, I doodled several sketches to put a few ideas on paper, including a couple featuring the famous squid. The sketch that resounded the most with my fellow artists depicted Captain Nemo at the helm of his craft, lurking underwater as ships floated above on the surface, and I moved forward with that idea.

 

Step One was to build a better Nautilus. I played around with a multitude of shapes and experimented with different proportions, but nothing caught my fancy. I was having trouble crafting the predatorial look I wanted. Breakthrough occured when I patterned the ship after the basic build of a whale shark, creatures that are sleek yet lack the cliche pointed nose of most sharks that I wanted to avoid in my design.

 

The proportions were just what I was looking for! Once the rough build of the Nautilus was established, I started exploring designs for the helm and the bow and settled on a couple of ideas that were enough to take me to the next phase of the design process.

Once a rough design for the Nautilus had been settled on, I drafted a few ships, both whole and ravaged, as well as some sinking elements. Adding everything into Photoshop on different layers allowed me to easily play with compositions and ideas, then redraw those ideas as refined sketches on a separate piece of paper. Having set up a few compositions, I moved onto experiments in color.

My rough paintings allowed me to examine variants between two of the compositions. Each scene was rendered in both night and day, and the composition that showed the whole Nautilus was done with the ship in two main colors. Originally I had envisioned in the vessel in bronze, largely due to the bronze appearance of Harper Goff's Nautilus in the Disney edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues, so I tried to break away from that palette and was immediately led to the dull green of army vehicles and paraphernalia.

I liked many of the things each comp had to offer, but ultimately chose the green Nautilus during the day. The night scene seemed a bit too enchanting with the pale white moon, while the murky blue of the ocean I painted into the day scene supported the theme a bit better. It was a tough choice between green Nautilus and Bronze Nautilus, but ultimately green won out. Painting in a green body would still allow me to do the trim in bronze and create a tonal contrast to help make the Nautilus the main focal point.

Not to mention painting the Nautilus green would take me a different direction from Disney's Nautilus!

The color compositions were quite well-received by my art peers, though they all agreed my Nautilus needed some work. While it was interesting, it didn't have the menace of the underwater predator of steel I needed to portray. The flat front made it look too passive, almost like a research vessel. I was eager to start painting the final and didn't like the idea of spending more time on the sub, but I agreed they were right and logged quite a few extra hours pushing my design.
 

I went back to basic and did some marker silhouettes to flush out some ideas with more dynamic shapes than my current design. Simultaneously I dug into the prow of the Nautilus and tried to add more menace without creating that cliche shark nose I was trying to avoid. Converting the front of the vessel into a blunt point helped bring out a bit of aggression, and a few experiments with points, teeth, and serrated edges took me in the direction I wanted to go.

Finally, I settled on the design I wanted. Adding exaggerated fins to the side and top of the Nautilus helped create a more interesting shape, and new lethal hardware mounted on the bow increased the ship's menace dramatically. A few other small details were added for interest, such as the salon window described in Verne's writings as well as some minor lights/portholes to give the viewer clues about the size of the vessel as it recedes in the picture plane.

After a long design process, I set about painting the final piece. Though rendering the painting took quite a bit of work, it was far less than the amount of work that went into the process beforehand. Designing and redesigning wasn't easy - in fact, it was hugely time-consuming! Of course, the effort was well worth it and helped me create a much stronger piece, including a Nautilus design I have received quite a bit of praise for.

The entire project was an adventure, you can be sure about that! Yet it was an absolute joy at the same time. Like Captain Nemo, however, I don't intend to stay in one place for very long. Now that this piece is complete, it's time to move onto the next adventure - and I can't wait for it!

 

Until next time....