As we continue to be under lockdown due to the Coronavirus crisis, we might not be able to visit any bookshops in person but the paperback edition of The Little Mermaid was published just last week, so I thought I’d share some behind the scenes sneak peeks of my illustration process.

The Little Mermaid is rewritten by the wonderful Geraldine McCaughrean, based on the original tale by Hans Christian Andersen and published by Orchard Books. With design by the fantastic Sarah Malley.

The Cover

Book cover and back cover for The Little Mermaid Picture Book. A Mermaid illustration swimming in amongst a coraf reef and an underwater palace with fish and a seahorse.

The very first thing I set about doing was deciding what our protagonist, the Little Mermaid would actually look like. I was excited to be able to draw lots of swirling hair and to create lots of fish scale details for her tail- one of my favourite things is adding lots and lots of detailing. I also started to create her underwater sea palace and coral reef setting.

I tend to sketch some things in pencil and then move on to drawing digitally in Adobe Illustrator using a Wacom tablet. I draw a very rough shape before working back in to this to add more detail. I’ll draw all of the elements; characters and background scenery and then start playing around with layering them, figuring out what works best.

Rough illustration of a mermaid and a palace under the sea

The Little Mermaid Picture Book rough sketches of an underwater palace or castle and coral plants

Once I was happy with her general look, I redrew her to fit the cover better, and started to try to frame the title with seaweed. I sketched out a basic seaweed shape, drew this digitally and then thickened the seaweed up, trying to make it look more organic. I then filled the rest of the cover with decorative coral, shells and bubbles.