I thought I’d do a little post on the process of how I illustrated Reina. The museum’s education department needed a family friendly mascot for in-gallery kids materials. It was meant to be a way to engage children and families through educational materials.

Since then, Reina has taken a life of it’s own and has extended it’s original purpose to internal staff usage as well. Below is a documentation of the process of how Reina was created.

Initial sketches of Reina.

I remember digging through images of Munny vinyl figurines and plush, stuffed animals. The museum store all ready had a plush doll and I wanted to render a few drafts with the same look. Ultimately, they felt a bit forced and cheesy and too cartoonish (Iike the one below).

Here is a dramatic GIF with Baby Bop frill added for effect.

The more that I pushed for a stylistic feel versus a straight-on rendering, the better Reina started looking. I looked at a few illustrators for inspiration, mainly Lydia Nichols who is a master at color, shapes and texture.

After I selected the best sketches, I started to vectorize each and played with colors. As the real bronze rhino masterpiece has a jade patina and coloration, I wanted to experiment to see how I could get that effect. Green/turquoise and teal shades are incredibly hard to get down. It’s never the same in any one person’s eyes.

The narrowed down vector illustrations were chosen. Feedback from staff and colleagues, including an important detail (adding three toenails!) was incorporated after this round.

More color and texture experiments.

Final Reina illustration. Another last important detail added: the second horn!

Illustrating Reina was a highlight and being able to utilize her in so many different ways is always exciting. I hope that for kids and children visiting the museum they can connect through art through her.