Hades (Disney’s “Hercules” (1997)) 🔥⚡

Finally, moving on to today’s new fun topic coming up here at The Autistic Animator’s Desk! It’s finally here, and I am very pleased and exciting to share you all a very new Disney watercolor fan art, but most of all, my very first fan art drawing on one of my favorite characters, as well as one of my top favorite Disney Villains. Today, you’ll get to see my very first artwork of the God of the Underworld himself, Hades, from the Disney animated film, Hercules (1997).

All drawn and painted in watercolor on the ninth page from the 9 in. x 12 in. mixed media drawing pad.

The last time I shared you all any of my Disney watercolor fan art pieces was a full artwork of Tinker Bell posing herself on the mirror, which that was taken from one of her iconic scenes from Walt Disney’s animated classic, Peter Pan (1953). So, if you have not seen the fan art and its topic from March, you can find it in the link down below at the end of this post.

To go back to the Watercolor of the Month 53 post I published back in late-July, towards the end of it, I have shared you all an image of the uncolorized Hades drawing, taken from during in-making process, and I announced that I will be sharing it as an upcoming blog topic in August. That imaged was also shared on both Instagram and Facebook, too. This happens to be my very first time doing a drawing of the Disney character Hades from Hercules, and from what I can tell you, it was a fun experience.

I absolutely love Hercules! Hercules is one of my top favorite Disney animated movies, first released in year 1997, directed by the amazing Ron Clements and John Musker, the teammates behind The Great Mouse Detective (1986), The Little Mermaid (1989), Aladdin (1992), Treasure Planet (2002), The Princess and the Frog (2009), and Moana (2016). This was the first Disney animated movie that’s based on the story of the demi-god hero, Hercules, from the Greek mythology.

Oddly enough, I never watched Hercules growing up. I don’t think we ever owned the VHS copy of it. However, when I was a kid, I grew up watching the Disney Sing-Along-Songs on VHS, and each one will play a song number from one of the sequences from the movie. I remember the songs from Hercules that were played from any of the Disney Sing-Along-Songs were “Zero to Hero”, “One Last Hope”, and “I Won’t Say I’m in Love”. Of course, you’ve got the incredible Alan Meiken to write the music and composing the music score, and David Zippel to write the lyrics, who would also work on the music and songs for Disney’s Mulan (1998) a year later. My favorite song from Hercules is definitely “Zero to Hero”. The gospel music just works, and the Muses stole the show, and I really love the animation of it, so fantastic! I think I started watching Hercules as a teenager, and I got me appreciated it, as well as an adult.

Hades is one of my favorite characters from the movie, and he’s definitely up in my list of the top favorite Disney Villains. I would rank him up to number four. My favorite Disney Villian is Jafar from Aladdin. Number two is Yzma from The Emperor’s New Groove (2000), and number three is Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty (1959).

Hades is the main antagonist in Disney’s Hercules. He is the God of the Underworld, the brother of Zeus, and Hercules’ uncle. He has two sidekicks name Pain and Panic. Hades’ goal was to plot revenge against Zeus, but in order to do that, after learning the future prediction told by the Fates, he has to get rid of his baby nephew Hercules. He sends Pain and Panic to kidnap him, turning him into a mortal, and kill him. However, baby Hercules didn’t finish the last drop of Hades’ potion and was able to keep his God-like strength as a mortal. After Hercules grows up and becomes a famous hero, Hades uses Megara to come up a scheme to find out about Hercules’ weaknesses. Later on, Meg falls in love with Hercules, so Hades makes a deal with Hercules by having him giving up his strength for twenty-four hours, so he would save Meg, which lead to the betrayal, and then, leading off to free the Titans to rule Mount Olympus and Greece.

Hades is voiced by James Woods and the supervising animator was Nik Ranieri, who animated other famous Disney characters, such as Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast (1991), Meeko from Pocahontas (1995), Emperor Kuzco from The Emperor’s New Groove (2000), Lewis from Meet the Robinsons (2007), and Charlotte from The Princess and the Frog (2009). The concept design for Hades was done by Gerald Scarfe, who worked as the production designer in the film.

The character of Hades was portrayed as like a car salesman, which was improvised by James Woods, in order to do the voice and making the character come to life on screen. Hades has a lot of best and funniest quotes. My favorite quote from Hades is when he is making a deal with Hercules about giving up his strength for twenty-four hours, in order to save Meg, which I drew the artwork directly from the movie. The quote is “We dance, we kiss, we schmooze, we carry on, we go home happy. What do you say? Come on.” I’ve got many other favorites, but this quote is my favorite.

Funny enough, even though this is my very first Hades artwork I ever did, this also happens to be my second Disney Villains watercolor fan art, after I did my very first one on Yzma and Yzma as a cat. If you have not seen the watercolor drawings of both Yzma and Yzma Cat, I have left a link down below, as well. I hope you’ll have fun reading and learning more on my time working on this project.

🔥 Hades Drawing 1 (Sketching & Cleaning Up) ⚡

I begin the project on a Sunday afternoon, on July 9th, in my bedroom, sitting on top of my bed. I had my art kit and gears ready to go, and even brought my laptop over to my bed, so I can go onto Google, and look at images of Hades for references, in order for me to learn how to draw him for the first time. Along with it, I used the screenshot image of Hades from the film, the one he makes a deal with Hercules, to draw the pose, except making his facial expression a little bit different.

This is the image I shared from the Watercolor of the Month 53 post, as well as sharing it on social media. I took a picture of it, right after I was just finished cleaning the lines up before erasing the pencil outlines.

After having to find the right images, I can get started at drawing Hades by lightly sketching him with the pencil. At first, I accidentally drew him a bit too big, so I had to restart it again in the next page, and it turned out much better. Once the sketching was done, I can clean up the linework, using the ink sharpie pens. The dark blue was used for tracing Hades’ skin outlines, light blue for the blue fire hair blazing on top of his head, red for the eyes, and black for the pupils, teeth, and costume.

Here’s the link of the image of the screenshot I used as a guide to draw this similar pose for the watercolor drawing: https://animationscreencaps.com/hercules-1997/page/46#box-1/52/hercules-br-disneyscreencaps.com-8152.jpg?ssl=1

🔥 Hades Drawing 2 (Coloring Hades & Blue-Fire Background) ⚡

Now that Hades is drawn and cleaned up, I was ready to get him colored, thanks to the work of the watercolor pencil sets. On that same day as getting started on this project, I only colored half of him, such as his blue fire hair, skin, eyes, teeth, and the gray toga shirt.

Then, I went back to it on a Saturday afternoon to work on the blue-fire background. So, I add strips of tape to create a border behind Hades, and whenever that’s out of the way, I can go ahead and color the backgrounds, using gray and blue to create a spooky, underworld tone. Usually, I would do backgrounds after painting a character in watercolor, but now, it became much easier by just color both characters and background, so I can paint them at the same time.

🔥 Hades Drawing 3 (Painting Hades & Blue Fire Background) ⚡

This was just right after I had finished coloring the blue-fire background, when I got started on painting the drawing in full watercolor medium. The only part of it I didn’t paint was Hades’ black toga, and that is because I was planning on painting it with the black acrylic paint, since the black watercolor pencil was sharpened very short (sometimes I use it for small coloring process).

It looked great, but then, I noticed that the colors were painted in a lighter tone (I don’t know if I used a bit too much water, even though I tried not to dip too much watercolor in any of the paintbrushes). Plus, I’ll noticed some of bits of the watercolor pencil scribbles were still there and not painted it. One week later after coloring and painting this drawing for the first time, I went back to it and colored the background and Hades again, just to smooth and darken the colors up a bit.

Hades’ gray toga shirt was darkened up by using bit of purple, and grayer.

🔥 Hades Drawing 4 (Painting Black Cloak & Finished) ⚡

And we move on with the final part of the process by painting Hades’ black toga, as well as adding the shadows on him, using the black acrylic paint and transform it into a watercolor medium paint. Of course, I also darken up the tone on Hades’ skin by using the gray pencil.

Before painting the cloak, I thought I would start off with darkening Hades’ skin, as mentioned from the first paragraph, I used the gray pencil to darken the skin and adding shadows, and when that’s done, I can paint it. Once that was finished, I can work on painting Hades’ toga. I took a paper plate to dab the black acrylic paint, dipping the paintbrush with water and wetting the paint, and then paint the toga, until the black is darkened enough.

If you take the look of the image above, look directly at the shadows on Hades, the black acrylic paint was also used to paint the shadows to create the dark tone. The painting job was complete, but the one very last thing to do was writing Hades’ name down. When I was done painting the drawing, I quickly blow dry the paint to dry it off, and later on, I went on my computer to look at the Greek-style English font on Google, in order to write Hades’ name down in that font, using the light blue sharpie pen.

It’s very much like how I did it with the Yzma fan art, and I have written her name down on the drawing, and it’s even painted with the purple background to represent Yzma’s color theme. With Hades, because he’s the God of the Underworld, it’s just simple to add the spooky dark grayish-blue background with blue-fire in the back to represent Hades’ character and his color theme, which is blue.

The project was finished on Sunday, July 23rd, 2023; took me one week to work on it.

And there you go! That is how I worked on the very first Disney watercolor fan art of one of my favorite Disney Villains from Hercules, Hades, and I hope you had a fun time reading this topic, as well as enjoying this drawing. The 54th Watercolor of the Month post will be coming soon at The Autistic Animator’s Desk on Sunday, August 27th, so if you don’t wanna miss it, you can subscribe to this blog to get notified for any new blog topics. You can follow me on both Instagram and Facebook.

Now, I will leave you all these questions here: Who is your favorite character in Disney’s Hercules? What are your favorite moments in the movie? And what is your favorite quote? Please share each one in the comment box! Hercules is available to watch on Disney+.

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