I am in love with the new Disney movie, Moana. I recently took my daughter to see it in the cinemas and we have been singing the songs ever since. Our favourite is “Your Welcome”, sung by Dwayne Johnson. Octavia favourite word at the moment is ‘welcome’, which isn’t to be polite but rather demand we play it again and again and again.
What I love most about this movie is that there is no love interest for Moana and that she reflects a realistic body type. Don’t get me wrong, I love the classic princesses and I don’t begrudge the role of the prince and the slim figures of the princess. However, it is refreshing to see a change in the way woman are portrayed. I also love the amazingly, beautiful imagery. So much care was given to each scene to depict a realistic image of the Polynesian culture and gorgeous island landscape.
So many artists have paid homage to Moana in their own style. Here are a few of my favourites:
Kalisami (@karsallam), Yuduki (Yudukichi), Promise Tamang (@promisetamang), Ma xx S t e p h e n °o° (@maxxstephen), Activistic Artist (@activistic.artist), Julianna Maston (@juliannamaston), Elisa G.B. (@asilee_art), Daniel Kordek (@danielkordek), Linnéa (@pastel.ette), David Dias (@daviddias_arts)
I really wanted to also pay homage my new favourite Disney princess. I haven’t drawn anything other than doodles for years. When I was younger I was always drawing and painting. In my youth, I wanted to be an artist. although I was good in comparison to the other student I never felt I was really good enough. But since the adult colouring craze, I feel inspired to be creative again without any pressure.
I usually sketch by sight and never use any technique when I draw. So sometimes my drawings are a bit unsymmetrical. So I decided to get some help from a professional artist to sketch out Moana. There are so many videos tutorials to choose from on how to draw Moana on YouTube. I choose a video by Ellie Holt on her YouTube channel, Spilled the paint.
I really enjoyed this tutorial. Ellie gave clear step-by-step instructions and her techniques can be easily replicated again for Moana or another princess. For the drawing she uses a brown pencil to sketch it out, then went over in it with a black pencil and then again with a thick black marker. Lastly, she roughly coloured her with some coloured pencils and markers.
For my drawing I used pencil to sketch her out, then a black fine tip to go over the outline. After that I coloured her in Prismacolor pencils. For the background and texture of the hair I used this movie still (below). The paper I used was watercolour paper, that’s why it is a bit grainy as well. It took alot more layering to get the colour smooth on the paper.
So here you are. It’s not an exact replica but I’m happy with it. I feel more confident since doing this drawing and perhaps Moana will pop up again in one of my colouring books or I in a watercolour painting. I think next time I won’t do such harsh black lines as she looks more comic rather than realisitc. It’s was also hard to cover up or alter those lines once they were drawn in.
If you love art but don’t feel like you can draw, I recommend you try out an online tutorial. You may be surprised what you can produce when you use some artist techniques.
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