Turtle Illustration

I'm working on a digital painting of a sketch I did the other day:

Clearly, my skills at drawing animals without a reference are pretty terrible. Thankfully, it's easy enough to find photo references, and upon finding a nice photo of a turtle I set about recreating it digitally.

The original image

My digital version! As with the sunset from last Friday, I completely painted over the original photograph.

I do quite like the idea of a girl riding the turtle, but I'm afraid I'm still working on it! Here's a work-in-progress image, and I have to say that I'm quite pleased with the idea to copy part of the turtle's shell pattern to create a lace top for the girl's dress. So sweet! Lots of work still to be done, though.

So that's my current art project! Takes a while to paint all that. (I fear it'll take me a long time to get the girl's face right, too!) As always, click on the images to see them bigger!