Lost Ocean Cave

This cave from Johanna Basford's Lost Ocean is among my more recent works. It was featured in Faber-Castell Philippines' Instagram and Facebook pages, also since I used Polychromos in coloring the entire spread. I'm the type who sticks to only one brand of pencil as much as possible when coloring a project.

With this project I wanted to try a different water image, something that shows a different perspective, from the bottom of the ocean looking up. For this I first picked three shades of blue (light, medium, and dark but not too dark), and white for the base of the water's surface.

On top of the white base I drew small waves with the lightest pressure I could apply. I didn't blend anything with a blender. I just left the lines raw. If you can see the white base on this first picture you should be able to distinguish faint lines that should appear as waves.

The second shade of blue I applied on the middle part, as usual using very light strokes.

For the lower part I used the darkest (but not too dark) blue, but also drew the ripples using some shades of phthalo greens this time. From beneath the ocean the ripples should appear to have shadows from under hence the darker shades. The outlines of the ripples were supposed to reflect the bright light so I erased those parts using Koh-I-Noor pencil eraser, really handy to have.

For the inside of the cave I had determined that the light source I wanted was the tiny Atlantis dome. I also wanted its light effect to fill the entire cave with an orange-y hue so I really didn't hold back on that color if you noticed.

Faber-Castell Philippines featured the work in their Instagram account, and I was just thrilled

Thought I'd show a close up of a part of cave from the left side

To date this has earned 490 Likes in the international page of 'coloring books for adults'.
I'm one happy puppy.