Welcome to the fantasy art website of Anne-Marie Broughton.  Anne-Marie is a freelance illustrator based in Adelaide, South Australia.  She specialises in fantasy art commissions featuring mermaids, elves, fairies and other mythological creatures.  Anne-Marie uses a range of traditional media, including colour pencils, graphite, acrylic paint and watercolour pencils to create her traditional fantasy art, and Adobe Photoshop to create her digital art.  Anne-Marie is available for fantasy book cover commissions, portraits and character commissions.  Her artwork has been featured in several group fantasy art exhibitions and she has sold her prints and originals at local community markets and at the Gumeracha Medieval Fair.

Please click on the Portfolio button above to view her art gallery.  Selected fantasy art prints, including her Nautilus Shell Mermaid, are available to purchase through Etsy (click on the Shop button to view prints for sale).

If you click on the Commissions button above you can view information about Fantasy Art Commissions and Prices.  To contact the artist, please email:

info@annemariebroughton.com

I have recently completed several character commissions for author Carol Blackhurst to be included on her website for her newly published book, Defenders of Rades, which is now available to purchase online through Amazon books as an e-book and also as a hard copy book. 

Click on the book cover image below to visit the Amazon book page.

Looking to publish your own book?  Amazon's site CreateSpace is an independent publishing site for self-publishing authors and offers a range of publishing services including manuscript formatting and layout of book covers including titles and ISBN's, printing of hard copy books and publishing of kindle e-books.

For more information visit www.createspace.com

I recently completed this personal artwork entitled "The Mermaid Mirror" using tea-stained watercolour paper, acrylics, Derwent Artists Colour pencils and Derwent Watercolour pencils.

The Mermaid Mirror

Beneath the waves
Beneath the sea
A mermaid sings so merrily

And by her mermaid mirror she sways
Through her mermaid mirror she gazes

Oh what does she see?
Beneath the waves,
Beneath the sea
The mermaid singing so eerily?

© Anne-Marie Broughton 2011

Paua Shell Mermaid Sketchbook
Initial designs and sketches

This week I have begun the initial sketches for a new mermaid artwork, this one based on a New Zealand Paua Shell.

As with all my sketches I start off with a mechanical pencil and my trusty eraser.

Stage 1 - Inspiration

This Paua Shell was a recent purchase from the Australian Seashells online store and has a gorgeous blue and green swirling iridescent sheen.

Initially my thoughts were to draw a mermaid curled around the outside of the Paua Shell.

Stage 2 - Initial Sketches

After finding further inspiration from IStockPhoto online (a great place to purchase stock images at reasonable prices:  www.istockphoto.com ), a pose was decided upon - the mermaid is sitting atop the Paua Shell looking upwards.  

Her tail is curled in a flowing circular fashion, giving the mermaid a more unique appearance than traditional mermaids.  The long flowing tail is based on a fancy goldfish tail and also adds more movement to the piece.

Close up showing mermaid in detail 

At the moment it's reminding me of a Japanese Koi Fish tattoo...

Because this is just a rough graphite sketch, without any colour, there are many options ahead for this artwork, with a possible embossed aluminium metal version with a real mounted shell on the drawing board!

Jade Turbo Shell Mermaid Sketchbook
The process of design through to finished drawing

I have put together some photographs and scans of my latest artwork in progress "Jade Turbo Shell Mermaid" so you can see the process of development from idea through to (almost) finished colour pencil drawing.  

Colour pencil drawing is a time consuming process with as many as half a dozen different coloured pencils required for each part of the drawing.  Each drawing starts with a graphite pencil sketch phase to develop the outlines for the final full colour picture.  I also often combine metallic pens and metallic acrylics with my colour pencil drawings.

Stage 1 - Inspiration

The process for creating my artworks starts with inspiration from a real seashell, this Jade Turbo Shell has quite an aqua/turquoise colour with strong chocolate brown stripes and lighter, almost golden flecks.  Each shell is unique and has its own colour, shape and texture.  This particular shell has been polished so it has a lovely smooth sheen and it's approximately 7cm in diameter.

Stage 2 - Initial Sketches

I experiment with drawing the shell first from a few different angles until I am happy with the angle chosen.  This time I decided upon a frontal view of the shell spirals with the opening of the shell facing the top of the page, allowing the shell mermaid to uncurl from above, to create a contrast to my Nautilus Shell Mermaid, where the shell is facing the opposite direction and the mermaid is uncurling from below.  

In the sketching phase I played around with different curves of her back, hair and arm positions until I was happy with the flow of the overall piece.  The idea was to have the curve of her spine follow the outer curve of the shell, giving the two elements a circular flow.  This flow is then carried on into her long slightly wavy hair, which adds extra movement and softness to the piece.  

At this point I scanned in the rough sketch and traced the basic outlines onto a fresh piece of paper to begin the final colour pencil drawing.  

Stage 3 - Starting the Final Drawing

Using a selection of different colour pencils I lightly sketched in the colour outlines for the shell and the mermaid, focussing more on the skin tones for the mermaid and completing her face and hair before moving onto the more detailed design of the shell itself.  I outlined the spiral in the centre of the shell using a metallic gold pen which will give the final picture an added golden sheen.  

Stage 4 - Working towards Completion

Using darker browns, greys and blues to add some shadow around the mermaid and the shell gives the picture more depth.

Close up showing different colours used 

To blend some of the turquoise and green colours together and blend out some of the natural "rough" colour pencil texture you get from working on cartridge paper, I use a white Derwent colour pencil, which has a more "waxy" texture and smoothes out the colours and blends better.

Close up of the mermaid

There are half a dozen different colours used to create the skin tone, including pinks, purples, browns and oranges. 

Looking to Buy Shells?
Anne-Marie uses Australian Seashells for all her decoshells supplies.
Visit www.australianseashells.com to order online.

All artwork on this site is ©Copyright Anne-Marie Broughton.  
Do not copy, paste, alter, link to, use, edit or in any way reproduce any artwork on this site without prior permission from the artist.
info@annemariebroughton.com