May '23

Hey everybody, I'm going to attempt the Mermay artjam this year. I'm in to weird fiction so I am planning to go in a more lovecraftian direction with my mermaid. Below are some initial explorations (the final design will be weirder):

(very) early sketches

I like this style better

More to come soon.

May '23

New Update. A partial view of her full body (actually only a small portion of it); the humanoid part of her body is supposed to have the general shape and proportions of a human woman, so critiques of my anatomy are welcome (I need more practice with drawing female anatomy). The thing on her back will make more sense in future updates; I have three variations here because I haven't decided which one I'll use yet.

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May '23

My mermaid has a magical staff; I created a 3D model of it to use as a reference. The model is unrefined because I just need it for help with drawing the staff in perspective.

I used Daz 3D's Hexagon 3d modeling program to create it.

8 days later

Jun '23

Unfortunately, due to some unforseen events, I've missed the deadline to submit my piece. I am still planning to complete my illustration (I've spent a lot of time on it), so when it's finished I will post it to the "Finished Works" forum.

1 month later

Jul '23

Well, I'm finally back on the mermaid. As part of this project, I've been studying different methods to paint water; ocean waves in particular. As I expected, water is kinda difficult to draw. In my case, the water doesn't have to be completely realistic, since my mermaid illustration has a sort of anime-ish/comic book-ish style; that being the case, I have focused mostly on anime for my references and this is what I've come up with so far; it's a single wave (the final illustration will have more than one):

It's still a bit rough and I think I may have added a little too much detail to the foam lines in the body of the wave, but I feel like it's getting there.

I would very much appreciate any feedback and critique you all might have. Thank you.

26 days later

Aug '23

Welp, I finally finished this project; here is a link to the topic in finished works: Mermay 2023

Post-Mortem:
First of all, I'm still having difficulty gauging how much time a drawing will take; I didn't start as soon as I should have, but I also keep forgetting that life still happens even when you have a deadline to complete a project.
As for the final drawing, the usual caveats about how it's still kind of rough and not entirely what I was envisioning apply, but overall I'm happy with how it turned out; I'm especially satisfied with the contrast between the light and dark colors. I do think I was a bit too ambitious; even with a full month for the project, I went too far outside of my comfort zone to get it done on time. Learning to draw ocean waves in particular was a lot more difficult than I was expecting and I wasn't even going for a realistic look. I do like how they turned out in the end, though they are still more rough than I would like them to be. Same goes for the lightning effects, but they were much easier than the water. I also decided that I needed a 3D model reference for the staff, so I stopped in the middle of drawing and learned a 3D modeling program (Daz 3D's Hexagon editor); probably not a great idea when on a deadline, but I'm glad I did it. Having the reference model definitely helped and I plan on creating more of my own reference models in the future.
All in all, I'm glad I participated in the challenge even though I wasn't able to actually submit my entry; the things I learned along the way will certainly help with my own personal projects.