Mermay #09 - Spotted Boxfish MerSo For This One Since My First Attempt Came Out More Fishtale-esque Fish

Mermay #09 - Spotted Boxfish Mer So for this one since my first attempt came out more Fishtale-esque fish anthro I decided to do a second one beside it that was more mer-like. The plus side to that is I got to use the anthro version as a test run for my colors and didn’t screw up the colors as badly on the mer. XD Though, I would have liked to have gotten that beautiful indigo as the main body color instead of the shirt color for this here mer, but that proved to be a bit complicated without the excessive use of white acrylic like I used for the shirt, which I’ve found is probably the best medium to blend marker on top of. It blends super well with my markers... though they end up getting a bit of white on their nibs as a result XD; Doesn’t really seem to harm them though if I use them a few times afterwards. But anyways... so yeah. Fixed it up a bit in PS and here we are! Some nice spotted boxfish mer and anthro. XD And with that, I’m all caught up with Mermay! Yaay~ (Though technically it’s the 10th, I’ll have all of tomorrow to work on today’s so that works. XD; )

Mermay #14 - Blue Ribbon Eel Mer Sooo I really went all out with this one. I think I shopped it too much even... XD But uh. Yeah. And I decided too to upload a bunch of other junk with it. Like a process gif (seen those here on tumblr and thought it was a great idea XD), a line, color and final version of it kinda show the progression better. Was thinking about how portfolio people like to see your process and I thought maybe tumblr people might like to see my process too so... why not? XD So yeah I usually don’t edit this much in Photoshop when I’m working traditional but I got carried away and really rendered this one out XD; It’s still got heavy traces of the traditional like that tail bit I forgot to fill in... looked nice on paper but horrible in digital. XD But what was I going to say... Right blue ribbon eels are fun. Did the generator again and after a couple dozen tries it gave me ribbon eel and though I’d sworn off eels after it gave me three in a row, the blue ribbon eel mer was way too cool to pass up. I had to change up the tail from the very early WIP (yeah, the blurry photo that’ll take you almost a minute to see for 5 seconds in the process gif if you missed it) because the way it was configured had it backwards, but I managed to get it so I could keep the pose and not have the tail be as weird... Frankly it still looks kinda wonky if I compare it to the first WIP picture and I do like the silhouette just a little bit better from that one. Was clearer and more fluid and a little less squashed-looking at the bottom. But what was I gonna say... Oh yeah and I apologize if some of the process shots in the gif are kinda blinding... I really pumped up the colors way too much at first and kept trying to downplay it. Even now it looks tolerable but before yeah it was kinda blinding XD; Anyways uh yeah. Sooo that’s the deal. I think I was going to say something else but I don’t remember and it’s late. I think I’m just gonna submit this and call it good... I think I was going to try to explain my process more instead of just babbling on... Don’t know if I accomplished that, but I guess it’s pretty straightforward. Sketch, line with pencil, sometimes I render it a bit with pencil too, then I color it which can be more finished and polished from traditional or less so like in this one where it’s nearly a flat color. Then I use photoshop to adjust colors, fix mistakes, erase smudges or color bleeds from previous pages, maybe fix spacing issues with the eyes, etc etc and to heighten the contrast between my light and shadow areas. Usually it’s minor if I’ve already rendered it out well traditionally, but this time I was pretty heavy-handed with PS because I don’t trust my blue markers that much to give me the right color... My baby blue copic is sometimes the only one that works reliably, so I worked exclusively with my baby blue copic and a cheap crayola yellow marker to produce the traditional color draft. I started out small working in photoshop, just darkening my shadows and lightening my highlights, but then I got carried away because it didn’t look like the proper shade of blue... And that’s when chaos ensued. XD It took me practically the whole day to do this pic and hours in photoshop to get the final product. I would have worked longer on it probably too if it wasn’t super late. But anyways. Sooo that’s the deal. I could probably go into more detail about the use of color balance, adjustments, brush settings and yada yada yada but it’s really late and I keep rambling. So before I type anything else that probably won’t even be read by the casual tumblr scroller I’m just gonna submit this already, put in my tags and get it over with. Or well tags first, then the submitting... You get the point. XP

A late night of derping two nights ago. First was drawing Rob from this lovely meme that utterly made me fall in love with this thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qASEKi-RMD4 (person who made this meme and video, you are wonderful.) Then some random Gumball and Darwin doodles, and of course Peepercorn based off THIS lovely video inspired from this video... Yeah, I was tired. XD

Well... my random fish generator keeps giving me eels O.o Go figure. Day 1 it just gave me eel so I went with green moray, but this time it gave me European Eel. XD So here it is. But one of the things that haunted me when I gave this one fish lips was the eerie resemblance to Pepe the frog... but screenshotting the WIP and showing it to my friends I decided by their reactions maybe the resemblence wasn’t that much of an issue. XD So I kept drawing and here it is. Technically I reffed a scientific drawing of one instead of a photo, but the drawing version inspired me more so I went with it. XD So. Here’s this monstrosity XDD

So I saw this adorable little nudibranch on pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/pin/519391769495181600/ And decided to make it a mer! XD

Mermay #13 - Mahi-mahi Mer Another day, another mer! Here’s a mahi-mahi mer who looks quite grumpy XD Not that mahi-mahi have fangs like that, but I thought it fit the persona. XD