Swamp- Illustration Friday

Hi Everyone,
According to Illustration friday, this weeks word is 'Swamp.'   Now, as soon as I heard this I immediately thought of the obvious .. you know the murky water, a place where you definitely don't want to be.
During several weekends ago, I got very sick, which in result cause me to watch a good amount of t.v as I couldn't move from the couch.  One of the shows I watched was swamp people.  It's about people from Louisiana that go out on their boats, kill alligators, tag them, get paid, etc.  I was really interested in this. As I like watching shows with animals,  not particularly fond of killing them, but in this case it's to keep the population down due to them being a threat to people nearby.
So, for my illustration friday, I knew I wanted to do something different then my theme of ' make-up ads.'  I wanted to explore some drawing with my tablet some more, so I whipped up a little 'poster.'

First I started out with the drawing of an alligator with it's mouth opened, the idea was that it would be swimming in the water, slightly splashing up, so I didn't draw too much more of it.

Next I coloured/ shaded the alligator, and added 'tall grass' in the background and murky, green water around it, splashing up.  Making it look like a generic 'swamp.'

I then started to add lighter shades to the water , i wanted it to stand out a bit more from the background and later would add effects to the water. 

I then added a texture to the alligator to give it a more 'scale-like' appearance to the skin, and added texture to the water to make it look rough and 'splashy.'

Last thing was to add text.  I wanted to keep it the same colour as the ground, but added a bevel and emboss to ensure that it would stand out enough.

This is my final.

Hope you all like it, and be back with the next Illustrationfriday.com word soon!

Take care

Cheers

Veronica K