Behind the Design

Behind the Design: Mermay 2023

In 2020, I started three Mermay watercolor and ink pieces in my sketchbook, and I never got around to sharing them. So here they are now for Mermay 2023!

I’d love to say I have a whole, in depth backstory for each of these characters, but the truth is that I just wanted to see some fat, older, and disabled merpeople in pretty settings lol

I enjoyed using all the bright colors in the first two pieces and feel that they work really well with each other. I also wanted to play around with the idea of not-so-friendly merpeople with the third piece– a kind of answer to the combined questions of “What would a real merperson be doing?” and “What would frighten me if I were a small fish in the water?”

I experimented with rendering here and tried using a combination of watercolor and ink for the first two pieces and watercolor with colored pencil for the third one. The first two pieces were completed in 2020; although I don’t remember the exact dates, I know they were finished well after May ended 😂 The third piece was completed sometime in 2021, a long time after the first two, which is why it looks a bit different.

I personally really enjoy mermaid pieces that use real life animals as inspiration. I wanted to do that in my work, too, so I spent a few days looking around at the various fascinating creatures in our oceans and fresh waters around the world until I found a few that struck me as visually interesting and easy to work into a merperson figure.

Painting of a fat, disabled merperson using a mobility device around their body to counteract their nonfunctioning swim bladder. They have the striping and coloring of the coral beauty angelfish: blues, oranges, and pinks. They have one hand up to their chest and one toward a grove of pink coral that looks almost like a forest. It's surrounded by a vast array of vibrant coral all around in hues of yellow, pink, orange, green, blue, and purple.

Coral Beauty Angelfish

The first one I decided to work with was this Coral Beauty Angelfish merperson. The fish itself is just beautiful with so many colors to its scales. It was a challenge to work with them all in one merperson and to make them play well together, but I think I did a pretty good job of keeping them from muddying up.

I wanted to make a disabled merperson for this piece because A. that’s my jam, and B. I rarely ever see disabled merpeople in art! It really bugs me! I think a lot of that is not knowing that fish can also be disabled and in what ways they can be disabled, but also, a lot of that is due to ableism and rejecting the idea of disabled people in fantasy in general for one reason or another.

Fantasy art is so much more interesting, though, when it pushes against the limits of what is possible, and I wish more fantasy artists would explore disability in their work. This is something I definitely want to explore more of in my own work, too.

This merperson’s disability was based on a real disability that fish get from issues with their swim bladders which is the organ that helps them stay afloat and not sink to the bottom. Fish owners have created some clever disability aids (like the one in this piece) for their beloved underwater friends to help counteract the issue and enable them to continue swimming and floating. I love that for them 🥲

I think the ink work in this piece is a little thicker than I would like; I had a hard time controlling the ink flow on the brush. I’ve always preferred thinner lines in general when it comes to color– just enough to hint at the line art rather than hit you over the head with it. If I were to do something like this again, I’d likely use a thick watercolor or thin gouache and a glass ink pen to get better line art.

I think all the colors are fun, though, and I really love the way the long, thin pink coral branches interact with the other elements in the piece. I think they complement the merperson well, mimicking the stripes of the body while also serving as a contrast in color and shape.

Close up of the pink coral to the left of the coral beauty angelfish merperson. This coral is pink and grows tall and thin with branch like segments at the tops. To the left of this is a large yellow, heavily textured piece of coral in a similar shape to the pink, but thicker. All around these are more coral in various shapes and colors: green, blue, and yellow.
Close up of the coral beauty angelfish merperson. Their mobility device wraps around their body in two places: one near the midsection and one near the fin. They have long, straight hair that floats behind them like a wave. They have a thin top lip and a full bottom lip. There are purple fins where their ears should be, and their nose is a set of gils.
Close up of the seaweed and coral underneath the coral beauty angelfish merperson. The seaweed is light green and grouped together; next to it is some pink coral with yellow and orange anemone.
Close up of the coral under the pink "forest." There is a large, orange, bumpy textured coral in rod-like shapes next to a patch of purple tube-like coral. Behind these are a green piece of coral shaped almost like a brain and a blue coral with a textured center.
Another look at the coral beauty angelfish merperson piece overall.
Painting of a fat, older merperson searching for pearls in a cave like underwater scene filled with anemone and coral. The merperson has the shape and coloring of the three spot damselfish: black with one large white spot on either side of its midsection and one white spot on their forehead. The merperson is also wearing a pearl necklace and has white eyes. The coral around it is largely done in shades of blue, purple, and green with pops of orange, red, and yellow here and there in smaller coral.

Three Spot Damselfish

AKA the Domino Damselfish

Oh man, I love this fish, it’s so gorgeous! Inky black scales with these pops of white on them like eyes or pearls.

I imagined this merperson as an older treasure hunter. I can’t be sure if I’m remembering the timeline correctly since it’s been a while, but I think this merperson’s age was inspired by a documentary following these older Korean women divers called Haenyeo. Haenyeo dive without air tanks for seaweed, conches, sea urchins, and more. The oldest members of this group in Jeju are in their nineties and still going strong! These women are absolutely amazing!

This piece, like the previous one, could have benefitted from thinner ink lines. Also, imagine my frustration when I edited these photos and realized I forgot to include the remaining line art on the fins! lol I’ll go back and ink them another day when I remember. I think this will be even more striking once I include those later.

I absolutely loved painting this merperson. No matter what other kinds of rendering I explore, working with black ink and watercolor will always be one of my favorites. It’s such a striking color on the page, which is perfect for such a striking fish, and it really feels like the focal point in this whole piece. I also enjoy the way the coral in this piece interact more with the merperson than the first piece’s coral did. It gave it that cozy adventure feeling I was going for, which pleases me.

I also like drawing older merpeople, too. I’m only in my mid thirties, but it’s bugged me for years that we don’t see more positive representations of older people in fantasy art, similar to disabled and fat people. This is something I also try to remember to include more often, and I thoroughly enjoyed including that in this piece!

Close up of the three spot damselfish merperson. They have lots of wrinkles on their forehead and under their eyes, as well as some around their cheeks. They have fins where there ears should be, as well as gils in place of their nose. They have full lips and a tight curl hair texture that's cut close to their head. They're tilting their head slightly to peer into an oyster shell that they're opening to retrieve a pearl from.
Close up of some red violet coral attached to some rock in the top right corner of the piece, above the three spot damselfish merperson. It's very textured, looking almost like it has scales. Behind it is more light purple and blue anemone.
Close up of the oyster nestled into some rock and being opened by the three spot damselfish. There's a large white pearl inside that looks almost as large as their head. All around the oyster are tiny anemones shaped like tridents if they were made of noodles; they come in all kinds of colors: pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
Close up of the three spot damselfish merperson's tail nestled into some light purple anemone sprouting of some rock. Behind this is more anemone in blue, as well as some sea green coral.
An overview of the three spot damselfish showing off the shape of their body which is rounded, with a large dorsal fin up top, two bottom fins, one fin on their side just behind the white dot, and a large tail fin to propel them through the water. The human part of their body emerges just in front of the white spots on their sides.
Painting of a fat albino Senegal Bichir merperson watching its prey from inside a field of green, flowing seaweed. In the foreground, a small silver fish eats from a bag of bait resting inside a green, woven bag made of seaweed. The merperson looks ready to pounce as they watch.

Albino Senegal Bichir

I chose the Senegal Bichir for this last Mermay 2023 piece because of its long, muscular body shape. It reminded me of a lion somehow, and I thought it would work well for a piece showing a less portrayed aspect of merpeople’s lives: hunting.

I imagined that this albino Senegal bichir merperson would adapt to their needs by changing the way they hunt: instead of going after prey in the open where they may be seen more easily, they change to a bait and wait type system and use the seaweed to lend them some camouflage. I like the intensity of the look on this merperson’s face as they watch and wait. Makes me think of a lion observing its prey from the grass. If I were a small fish, I’d be keeping an eye over my fin!

The combination of watercolor with pencil works much better in this piece than the ink and watercolor; however, I do think this piece is a bit bland, and the colors need some work and some shadows. I tend to focus too much on making something look “real” instead of leaning into the stylized art that I prefer, so I’d like to work on that more. I also think all three pieces could benefit from a bit more atmosphere.

I do love the way the seaweed came out, though, with all its waviness. I liked playing with the idea of a merperson using bait and a trap to ambush its prey. The small fish turned out better than I expected, too lol

Close up of the silver fish eating from the woven, baited seaweed bag. The bag is nestled into the sand, and a small gray and blue anemone grows off of it. The fish opens its mouth to eat a piece of food floating.
Close up of the albino Senegal bichir merperson as they lie in wait. They have an intense look of concentration in their reddish pink eyes, and their hands are positioned on the ground as if about to push themself off to pounce. There are fins where their ears should be, and they have gils in place of a nose. The green seaweed strongly contrasts against their pale body.
Close up of the albino Senegal bichir's torso hidden amidst the green seaweed that flows over their back. There are multiple small, reddish dorsal fins all along the spine of the merperson that start at the top of their head.
Close up of the albino Senegal bichir's tail fin hidden amidst the seaweed. Their body tapers off into the broad fin, and there are multiple small, reddish dorsal fins leading along the back toward the tail.
Another overview look at the piece with the albino Senegal bichir merperson.

Ahh, going over these pieces for Mermay 2023 has made me miss painting even more. It’s such a satisfying feeling, pulling the paint across the paper with your brush. I look forward to when I can get back to doing some of that mixed with digital art in the future. I’m still getting the images for the blog, my portfolio, and Patreon set up and have a few other works in progress that need my attention first, but after that!

If you enjoyed this look at the thought that went into these pieces, you might like to subscribe to my newsletter Into the Bramble. You can also follow me on Patreon to get notified when the next one goes up! My Patreon includes additional exclusive behind the scenes looks that don’t get posted here on the blog. 

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Thanks for reading! Which merperson do you like best? Let me know in the comments!

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