Happy Hippo

With no delay I went on and completed the next beast of the wild, the Hippopotamus or Hippo for short. I decided to take this pachyderm where his name suggested, "horse of the river", and although hippos look nothing like horses, they do love water. The hippo takes a dive into the fresh waters to cool himself down and there he sees wonderful shapes and colours, ribbons of fish and weed, all moving in slow motion. A school of fish is startled by the impact of the dive, while some other fish remain unimpressed. Something I wanted to portray in this illustration was the hippopotamus's main characteristics, his unique and enormous mouth  - wide open - and the bulk of his body. I didn't want to just show his head sticking out of the water, but to show the whole animal, so I thought I'd take him underwater. Also having this very heavy animal floating in the middle of the illustration, defying gravity, creates a very interesting visual.