Sketch Diary: Inktober day 1 - Poisonous - mermaid lounging on a jellyfish

I kinda love how this came out. I'm excited to eventually color it in and play with the transparencies of the jelly.

Watch me ink her on youtube:
8x speed

1x speed

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inktober prep - day 1 Poisonous - mermaid lounging on a jellyfish

This was my first sketch specifically for Inktober 2018. I went a little overboard with the details but hey, it was fun. 

Watch me draw on youtube:

8x speed

1x speed

with love - M

Sketch Diary: The wine mermaid ink

I forget if there was a real reason as to why she's sitting in a goblet/glass thing. I think I just liked the idea of a mermaid in a bath or something but then I wanted it to be see through and as I sketched it out, it started to look like a wine glass... so here we are. My made up lore is as follows: don't leave your wine glass sitting out or else the wine mermaid will take a bath in your glass! Presumably, the lore is to encourage people to not waste wine. Or maybe to keep children from getting a hold of wine and making a mess? I don't know man, I just work here.

Watch me draw this mermaid here:
6x speed

1x speed

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Who me? Mermaid ink

D'aw ain't she cute. The scales are always murder but I love doing them anyway.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Snake tail mermaid character

This is what happens when you just go for that gesture/pose... but don't pay attention to positioning on the page or ratio between head and hands, etc. Still like her. She a lil' sassy.

Yo - watch me draw this madness...

5x speed

1x speed

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Welcome to the mermaid conference

Thanks for taking time out of your busy life to join us at the mermaid conference! Hehe but for real, this was a fun break from practicing gestures and trying to work on more challenging drawings. When in doubt, I always go back to the mermaids.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Mermay - Cup o' mermaid

Look in the upper right hand corner - you'll see my tiny quick sketch to figure out placement. I knew what I wanted but not exactly how to fit it on the page. I highly recommend doing those little mock sketches whenever you have a complicated or different kind of drawing that maybe you're not super comfortable with placement/values/colors. Should've gone a little smaller with the actual drawing. Still cute.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Mermay - who me? mermaid

That curled up tail look is one of my fav ways to draw mermaids.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Mermay project with ribbon eel tail

So I'm doing a Mermay project with some peeps and these are some rough ideas for it. Mermay is a challenge for May where you're supposed to draw something mermaid related everyday in May. I don't have the time for that at the moment but I still wanted to do my own challenge. I decided to do a ribbon eel tail on my mermaid. And they can change male to female if needed so I wanted the mermaid to be androgynous looking. I'm interested to see how it turns out.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inktober Day 11 - mermaid backbend

Scales are pain in the butt but... but they look so pretty.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Mermaid back bend

A quick 5-10 minute sketch in my mini sketch book. I'm liking this one. I think my versions of mermaids are usually more like serpents than fish. Or at least eels. Fish don't really bend the way I like to have my mermaids look.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Fan tail mermaid plus fish

Just my weekly dose of mermaid drawing. Tried a spray paint brush in Krita. I have a trouble remembering to switch to a bigger size brush. I think I forget that I'm drawing with an amazing tool that defies my perception rather than a IRL pencil haha.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Fin-tastic mermaid in color

Wooooo now we're talking. This was sketched on slightly better paper and it was a definite difference. I was worried at the time that my color choices were too safe, too boring. But I'm feeling it. It's a little weird but it feels right for what I was going for when I originally sketched her. A 'go with yer gut' thing that turned out well.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inked fin-tastic mermaid

I liked her so I inked her. She's on nicer paper so I'm looking forward to coloring her. What is with this mermaid kick... gotta get it out of my system! Could take years... haha or eternity.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Fin-tastic mermaid

Man I was so pleased with myself when I sketched this hah. I still like it! But of course, given time, now I'm seeing all the things that didn't quite work. It was a fun sketch though, from the ends of her hairs to the tip of her tail.

Heh I wish I had a torso that long.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Colored mermaid with fiasco necklace

I should probably come up with character names... or at least something better than 'mermaid with fiasco necklace' hah. Well here she is! All colored up but floating in oblivion. It was late when I finished this a few nights ago and didn't add a background at the time. After pondering a bit, I decided to leave the background alone for now.

I'm just glad she turned out as well as she did. Things were looking shakey with those scales. But I'm okay with how it turned out. A good lesson in taking a chance on something and making it work.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: WIP - Copic coloring of mermaid with fiasco necklace

Oh heeey. Like that skin tone you got going on.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inking of mermaid with fiasco necklace

Found my waterproof inking pens! Let's get to work! Feel free to color this in if you like it - just please credit me (don't claim it as your own drawing, dude) and send me a link! I wanna see!

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Mermaid hair in a frame

Taking me back! I still get good feels from looking at this piece and remembering how cool I felt while painting it. They sketch alone, I thought, was pretty awesome for my skills at the time and then the actual execution of the colors was quite exhilarating. I think this was 2010 or there abouts. Maybe a good one to hold onto for an OC. I'm so bad at creating original characters... correction, I make them all the time but I very quickly move on to the next one. I should commit to one, at least.

So this was one of my 'just starting out' watercolor pieces. I had (and still have...) no clue what I was doing. I was just putting brush to paper and seeing what happened. Man... it's really making me miss doing watercolors. Just one more reason to get my craft/art/sewing/book/misc room cleaned up so I can get pack into these things again. I certainly don't have to have my art table to paint but it sure makes things easier and more enticing. It's almost there! Just a couple more big projects to finish and it'll be ready for war.

With love - M

Sketch Diary: Figure practice

Being in a more corporate setting at work, I don't usually have time to sketch. I usually have, you know, work to do. But sometimes we have meetings or the work is slow in getting to my department (production and design) so we get moments of pause. These figures were done during one such meeting. Don't worry, the meeting didn't really hold useful information for me. The other folks there were very irritated that we were forced to be there at all and when it ran late, folks started leaving lol. I mean, I don't blame them, time is precious.

Anyway, this. I need to do more of this. Quick, rough ideas. Then when I find something I like, I can sit down and rebuild it, develop it further. Instead of getting hung up on an ok sketch and working it through for an hour and then getting frustrated because it's not going where I thought it was going because really, it wasn't a great sketch to begin with. And that's ok. When sketching more frequently, it's easier to hold onto only the ones that move me and just thank the others for the service they provided... and let them go.

With love - M