I was commissioned to paint a couple more lil’ Devils for a fan of Sanrio… yes, that Sanrio! The first one was meant to be a play on the Kuromi character, who I wasn’t familiar with. According to the Hello Kitty Wiki:
Kuromi is My Melody’s rival is a tomboy who loves making mischief and causing trouble! Although she may look tough, she is actually very girly and is attracted to good-looking guys!
Kuromi
Mischief?! She certainly sounds like she could be besties with Happi Devil! So interpreting her as a lil’ Devil was pretty easy, though I had a bit of a challenge figuring out what to do about the lil’ Devil horns. Without visible horns, the image didn’t really seem “devilish.” So I had Kuromi’s hat sorta strapped to the horns, rather than hidden underneath.
“Do I have to wear this?”
Then for the second painting, I was charged with the grand mistress herself, Hello Kitty! Which was daunting in the sense of how iconic she is. Sure, she is interpreted a million different ways, so its sort of a no brainer that she would translate well. The challenge was to merge the two and not just imitate. With my first draft, done in Illustrator, I think I kind of nailed it [which is the only reason why I’m including an image of that…!].
Hell Kitty Draft
They liked the draft, but ultimately wanted her to look a little meaner. So I tweaked the horns a bit and gave her a little grimace showing her teeth, which ended up being the final.
Hell Kitty Final
Check out the lil’ Devils page to see the rest of the lil Devil family!
