Fan Art Friday! Leia and the Death Star

Hey all – Kiri here!  This post was scheduled before I added a new member to our family.

Mei-Mei and I are trying to do a once a month matching page from the Star Wars coloring book we have.  Last time, we both did this interesting, intricate design that highlighted the light side of the Force and the Rebellion.  See Mei-Mei’s here and mine here.

I love seeing the differences between what she creates and what I create.  Though we both start off with the same black and white picture, our interpretations are different and show the uniqueness of both our views.  Mei-Mei is also way better at this than I am as she seems to have practiced more, whereas this is my first venture into coloring books since I was probably 10.

Mei-Mei suggested the picture this time of Princess Leia sitting on some kind of balcony and viewing the Death Star in the sky above.  Here is what I ended up with:

This is what I was attempting:

• I thought it would be cool to take Leia out of her standard white dress that we all associate her with.  Then I thought it would be even cooler to make it reminiscent of Padmé’s handmaiden dress in Episode I.  This did not go as I had planned.  The blues didn’t really fade in and out as I was hoping and instead it just ends up looking like I had done half of her dress darker and the other half lighter.  I tried to convince myself that it looked like I had done it on purpose, but nope.  Fail.
• The only thing I do like about the blue is that I stayed true to my original thought that her outfit was going to be the only blue in the entire picture.
• I liked the idea of having this take place at night.  I thought that would be an interesting twist.  Meh.  Still not sure if it was the right decision.
• It took me forever to find the right skin color for her.  When I finally found it, her skin ended up a weird color because I had been experimenting with so many different ones on her face that it just looked…not entirely right.  I should have experimented with her little hand peeping out, not her face.  Fail again.
• Then I tried to add these shadows and grey to her face because she was looking out at this eerie Death Star at night.  Bad choice again.  Now she has weird grey lines over her face.
• For the flowers, I randomly picked out colors and went with it.  Those were probably the most boring to do and I wish I had more peach and yellows than pink and purples.

Overall, I’m probably being harder on myself than I should be but I was coming off of the last interpretive picture with lots of confidence.  Coloring a well known character had me frustrated and annoyed because nothing came out how I envisioned it.  That said, it was still a lot of fun and was relaxing as well (I’m consistently surprised that this coloring book IS actually a stress reliever).  But I’m sure Mei-Mei’s is better.

Now, for next month!  Mei-Mei here’s your challenge.  It’s actually pretty easy…I wish I could say that I picked it with a lot of deliberation, but I didn’t.  I did my standard open-the-book-to-a-random-page-and-see-what-I-land-on.  Lol.