Mermay is upon us, and again I’m going to have to settle for enjoying everyone else’s daily mermaid posts and be sad that I don’t have enough free time to be able to participate in the challenge this year.
Even if I can’t commit to daily mermaid drawings I always have to get at least one in. I actually started working on this one a while ago but never got around to finishing it until now, so at least I had a head start!
The idea for this one came while watching a documentary about the making of Ponyo, one of my favorites from Studio Ghibli. I loved seeing Hayao Miyazaki’s early concept art of Ponyo in a swarm of jellyfish, and took inspiration from that as well as the character design for Ponyo’s mother.
Here’s the moodboard and sketch I started out with:
I wasn’t sure how I wanted to do the jellyfish so I just started off with some rough color blocking at first and getting the mermaid’s design pinned down.
I ended up simplifying the jellyfish swarm because I felt like there was just too much going on in the background.
Finally I added in some more details and glowing light from the jellyfish to wrap things up. Here’s how it turned out:
I had lots of fun experimenting with some new brushes I had bought recently by Max Ulichney–I especially love his Watercolor and Comics MaxPacks!