A Royal Embrace

All righty, cute princesses cuddling coming up. Ariel and Belle, don't ask me about when this would happen, but they can't live that far away from each other... Anyway, they're very cute, especially together.

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I wanted to do something different than I usually do, not as far as subjects to draw goes but for lighting. I wanted this to feel very warm and welcoming. I did the line art in Flash and colored everything in Photoshop. After doing the base layers of colors, I added a layer of light around the edges of the girls, where the light would hit, making them a bit blurry to look at.

Belle originally had less clothes on - a bra and panties - but it fit better with the mood of the picture to have her in a simple, pretty dress. The red was to complement Ariel's hair, the way her dress in a way is supposed to complement Belle's. Ariel is always so pretty and colorful, and I wanted her in black for once instead. Also, I added a bit more make up to both girls, because that's so much fun to draw.

Background - a certain someone suggested I do a bunch of photographers taking photos of the two, but I didn't know how to pull that off, so I went with a golden background. It was originally a white/blue sky, but it made the picture feel better as a whole in gold.

Reference for the position they're standing in: [link] by

The final thing I added were the sparkles, to make it feel really enchanted (no, I haven't seen the movie yet, but I want to ^^).

So, Flash and Photoshop, the movies as references, and lots and lots of hours. Gawd it took a long time to make this... (and on top of it all, in the middle of it, my computer froze and I'd forgotten to save. I was almost completely finished with Ariel and had to go back almost to start *sigh*)

Comments are incredibly welcome.

Edit: After reading about art theft, I made the size a bit smaller, and added a copyright and my signature. Too many have gotten their art stolen... I hope I don't have to add the dA watermark.

Ariel and Belle © Disney