If you follow me on social media, you probably already know Liana. Liana is a water girl with incredibly long, magical hair and an important mission: to protect the Silent Pool. She’s also the protagonist of a series written by Anna Manso, illustrated by me, and published by SM.
Watching Liana grow from the first sketch I submitted to the publisher was incredibly exciting. I always keep drawings from the entire process because I love looking back, and I thought today would be a good day to tell you about it.
At the beginning of the project, the publisher sent me all the information I might need: the concept behind the series, a description of the main characters, and several visual references.
With all the information in mind, I made several quick sketches of Liana, Miel, and Manuel. My initial idea for Liana was to make her a very wild, somewhat cave-dwelling girl with a mischievous personality and missing a tooth.
Since I had arrived at a design I liked, I decided to do several more examples in color. This would help both me and the publisher to better evaluate the character…
In addition to some color drawings, I also submitted black and white sketches, with lots of notes and ideas. Finding the right design for Miel was a bit difficult because I wasn’t sure how to work with the proportions… In fact, there was a point where I drew him super tall! I was going crazy thinking about how Liana would ride him.
In this color drawing, you can clearly see the initial design of all the characters. Manuel stayed more or less the same, and Miel was later adapted to his super cute little version… But what about Liana?
The publisher told me they would like her to be more agile and light. Not that she should be physically thin, but that she should convey more lightness. Her hair also looked too compact: the more ethereal, fun, and magical, the better. And what if her clothes were more adventurous?
I got to work and prepared new sketches. Now Liana wore much more practical clothes: a simple blue dress (blue because she’s a water girl…), a belt, leather boots, and a small bag to carry her things. I thought about what kind of clothes a guardian of the forest would wear, and I remember going through the Men at Arms books about Celts, Vikings, Saxons… several times looking for ideas.
And just like before: now that I had several sketches heading in a good direction, I decided to clean up some of them, and color others, to present them to the publisher. Although I’m only going to show you a couple of them here, so as not to go on too long, I have a lot more pages with drawings of Miel, the Old Oak…
We finally had Liana’s final design! Of course, after these tests we still refined a few things: we took Liana’s gloves off, tweaked her boots, made Miel smaller and cuter… But, really, we were ready to start working on the book itself.
Looking back, I realize many missteps that now seem super obvious… And I thought I was being super observant and accurate! But of course, as corny as it sounds, that’s how learning is! And I’m very happy with Liana’s final design, and I think we’ve managed to convey her adventurous and tireless spirit.
I wonder how I’ll look back on all these drawings in the future, and how much I’ll have learned when I’ve drawn our Liana hundreds of times more 💪 I feel like I’m growing so much as an illustrator alongside her, alongside Anna, and alongside the SM team.
Thanks for reading!