Protect the River! ^.^ Illustration ^.^

I always love working on different projects, especially when they carry a special message.
The same goes for this one. Couple of years ago a friend of mine asked me to make an illustration for their campaign to clean the downstream of the Danube river.
The Danube or Donau is Europe's second longest river, after the Volga. It is located in Central and Eastern Europe.
Source.

I was so excited but also very inspired by this project. They told me that I have couple of months 'till the deadline, but I finished it in just two weeks. XD
So lets move on to the sketching process. ;)

The sketch needed three main things - a girl (as a representation of the river/nature), the river (or at least some water element in the composition) and the waterfront.

To make this semi-realistic water surface I used a great tutorial called:
Displacement Water

The text was given to me by the client. It says: "Protect the River! It's ours!"
Well... I didn't wrote that... XD

After my client was pleased with the sketch, I continued with adding colors.
The face went through several stages of development, you can see the steps here:

Here are some other works in progress:

And the final version:

I was so pleased to see they printed the image on t-shirts and hats. ^.^
They even won an award with their campaign.

Hope you like it!
^.^ Have a unique day, everyone! ^.^
Thanks for stopping by!