Day 21 Is A Friendly Little Vampire Squidmaid! Shes Appeared In A Portfolio Piece In The Past. Be Careful

Day 21 is a friendly little vampire squidmaid! She’s appeared in a portfolio piece in the past. Be careful as you approach, she may try to hug you without considering all her teeth. I was messing around with masking fluid again (I learned it’s not as good with ink because the mistakes are harder to fix) and I tore the paper, so I decided to go in with the rubbish novelty pencils again and see where their limits really are! I still think they hold up surprisingly well? Don’t let cheap materials hold you back kids.

Day 12′s mermaid was inspired by the blue whale skeleton at the Natural History Musuem.

It’s finally time for my favourite art challenge of the year! I did a little cover page yesterday to celebrate. I have a full-time job for the first time, so I’m going to have to do all my pieces in 90 minutes or less, because that’s all the time I can squeeze in before work. How is this going to turn out?

Day 1 - ink and water

Spider often ‘falls asleep’ in lessons, but he isn’t always sleeping.

This is water-soluble ink spread around with a waterbrush. I’ve never tried using it on only some parts of the picture before.

It’s not May any more but I’m still drawing these last three mermaids! No. 29 is a raymaid (not a specific ray, some sort of weird mashup of every ray I know how to draw). I have a terrible late-night version of this one from the 31st as well, since messing it up was what forced me to admit I wasn’t going to get them done in May. I plan to print these in a little book, so I’ll put the first attempt as an inset on the page with this one. Only two more to catch up on!

For day 16 I fancied doing a classic mermaid after all the weird animal ones. A lot of the students at work have been wearing their hair like this lately. I was still catching up, so I sketched this on day 16 but did most of the work the next day.

Day 2 - gel pens (and a brush pen)

More creatures than Louise and her foster parents call her house their home.

Remember when I said I only had 90 minutes a day to do these? I don’t know what made me think I could do this in an hour and half. It took that long to do just the lineart and the spot blacks, I’ve been crosshatching for hours! I’m really pleased with this though, so it was worth it.