Gossamer Memaid - Progress (Patreon)

Here is some rambling about this piece. I'll try to get my thoughts in order and write it all down, but I usually don't edit it afterwards so I hope it still makes sense in the end. It is just easier for me that way! Warning, it is a long post! here we go:

Every year when Mermay hits it feels like a surprise. Mermay is kind of a challenge where people (some brave souls) draw a mermaid every day. I tried to do that once and I think I made it to day 11? And usually I really want to do something for it because I love drawing mermaids but it's like it is suddenly May and nobody warned me. This year was no different, especially with the circumstances.
So I decided to do mermaids but on my own terms, and if it means that I'll only finish one mermaid that is fine as well. In addition, the mermaid topic is great to try something new because yes, there is the standard mermaid with a very normal human body and a fish tail, there are a million variations. I decided to try something very standard though slightly unsettling with the human upper body but sightless eyes and sharp claws, but played around with the colors.

The initial sketch started, like so many of my sketches nowadays, with a square format. I don't know why but weirdly enough it is a bit like a safe space. It's like I can work on the composition better and then just add some background to one side and have an interesting composition? This might be a compositional crutch but right now it still works. This also only works with one character, as soon as I add a second one most of the time the square does not have enough space anymore.

The sketch on this one was easy, I had a head tilt and body form in mind. I like the wrigglyness of mermaids. Because of the tails they usually have a wonderful set of curves and shapes to work with. What I did not plan was that profile view of the face. It is so weird because so many of my works nowadays are profile views. If I don't deliberately plan a sketch and just doodle what I like best it will always be a profile view. Which is so funny because it used to be a thing I hated to draw, getting the nose right was so hard. But when you have your way of drawing noses down it is easy to have a dramatic composition by showing them off. Having somebody stare off into the distance or giving the viewer the cold shoulder but still glancing at them from the corner of the eye... And then there are all those paintings of saints which obviously influence me because why else would I put decorative halos on everything.
This mermaid started out without the halo btw, it came at the last second because I liked the colors of the stars.

I looked up some different artists and wanted to paint the mermaid without outlines at first. There is something that upsets me about not being able to work without outlines. It is such a popular style right now and I should be able to pull it off? Just for training purposes? But then I do start outlining and, tbh, it is the process I enjoy the most. It makes since some of my favorite artists work in outlines a lot but it is the whole "grass is greener on the other side" thing that tells me coloring would be easier without outlines.
I managed to keep myself from actually outlining the scales of the mermaids tail this time around because I wanted this one to be a faster piece. I am actually trying hard to get better at shortening my processes, not on every piece but I have so many ideas for illustrations that i will never get done if I continue on at the slowest pace imaginable.

Coloring time! My personal nightmare. Choosing colors is hard because I tend to pick a color I think would fit but our eyes work in interesting ways. So how we perceive colors depends a lot on the colors that are around that certain spot. Working with neutral greys that pick up the surrounding color by their sheer existence is the trick here. I knew early on that I wanted the whole thing to have a swampy warmth, which is why I started with a slightly colored background and not the usual grey I sketch on. That gave the whole piece a first direction. Thebig petals for example do look green but they are just a combination of a very dirty greyed out yellow and some blue in the highlights. I also decided to limit my color palette and did this by putting a post-it note on the right half of the color cube in PS so I could not go into the super saturated part. Another crutch that I will have to learn to use naturally but the post-it really helped to notaccidentally slip.
The skin was kept in neutral greys but together with the waxy sheen and the bright blue highlights the skin has a translucent quality which I am very happy with. I chose to go with blue highlights in the shadows in contrast to the usual bright orange I use for highlights because the orange is actually there to imitate subsurface scattering (when the light hits the skin and breaks through the first layers and reflects the blood, which makes backlit skin orange like when you hold a hand up to the sun) and this creature was not supposed to look super natural. The blue gives it a pearly effect and makes it look more alien which I love. I can actually imagine doing that more, depending on the piece.
The tail colors were mostly chosen to have a contrast. I thought about making it a more cool green first but I feel like with the whole warmth of the piece that would've been a weird contrast.
As you can see, the whole piece looks completely different with dark outlines. Making them lighter was a struggle though, because I usually need the contrast of the darker outlines. But I feel like with this piece, even though it is a bit muddled when you look at it from afar, it works so well with the lack in contrast. It has a softness that i enjoy a lot.

Wow, what a wall of text. Congrats if you read it all.
There are things that get lost when you look at this piece from afar, like the stars in the sky, the halo is a bit muddled and the mermaid has some freckles (or stars) but I still like it, and I am kind of proud that I did not go back, outline the whole plants (because oh no how will people know it is a plant if I don't draw every single vein in the leaves) or crank up the contrasts. And I learned a lot from it for other pieces.

Ah yeah, part of the progress was also accidentally deleting the start layer and saving over the finished piece so I could draw the stars again, hahaha. My layers are always pure chaos.

I hope you are doing well, the weekend is already close again.
<3 Sarah