The Beauty and her Beast

My entry for 's contest. I've been working on this peice for four days now, including the researching for the story and the clothes they wore. And in the end, I didn't even really follow the type of clothing they wore for the 19th century. xD

Anyways, I'm very proud of the outcome. Especially the goblets. XDD I'm not really sure I like how Beauty's hair came out. When I started the sketch, I knew that I wanted her to be kind of like Marina from Sinbad, with short hair, because all the versions I see of Beauty and the Beast have this really girly, blond/brunette/red-head princess and I wanted to change that. But her hair looks like it would be long anyways if it came down. -_- I think it makes her look too old though. :/

When I was sketching out some designs for the beast, they all came out looking exactly like the Disney version... which is strange because I've never drawn the beast in the disney version so its kind of irritating that he comes out in my sketches without me even trying. So I had to look for a different way to portray him in this new light. I looked at some images from books, and words from the story, which describe him and portray him as a boar or a goat. I looked here on dA as well for inspiration... but I wanted to try something different. I liked how they combined the Disney beast from different animals so I tried that. I came up with the head of a boar, and then I had this idea of doing markings on his body like the guy in Beastly, but that being too difficult, I tried scales instead. Then feathers, and the mouth of a lion and the eyes, and that blue thing that Baboons have. And there was my Beast. He was half inspired by Howl as well. Also, his clothes, since I couldn't find any 19th century men without having silly-looking suits on, is Ichabod Crane's suit in Disney's Sleepy Hollow.

So... I hope you enjoy this peice.