Making of Guide
After doing my research for this project, I sketched out various poses that I thought would bring out the features of the mermaid most.
I decided that diving poses which I had originally looked at wouldn't work because the mermaids arms would obscure her face as well as an entire side of her body. The pose that I finally settled on was a sitting pose that would also allow me to show off her tail.
I then took a picture of my final sketch and loaded it into photoshop to begin painting.
I began to draw an outline of a ribcage, spine and pelvis using a small hard brush at it's full opacity and altered it's size and width so it would fit nicely inside the exaggerated shape of the mermaids torso.
Once sketched out, I filled in the skeleton with a dark beige colour then used a soft round brush with low opacity to begin colouring up the bones and add depth to them.
I used lighter and lighter shades of beige until I reached white to create highlights on the ribs and I was satisfied with how they looked.
I struggled with painting the body because I wanted it to look as if the mermaid had adapted to her environment so that ruled out vibrant colours like pink, orange and red.
I decided to brush strokes of colour over the tail and body using varying shades of blue, green, purple and silver and by doing this I could create a foundation for the skin and use a more textured brush on a different layer to add detail. From there I could lower the layers opacity so that the colours would be seen underneath with the texture still visible.
For the skins texture I used a very small hard marker with 80% opacity to create little dots all over. The idea behind this was to build up the appearance of scales and once the dodge tool was swept across, it looked like they were shimmering so I was pleased with the effect.
As shown here I created each little dot individually and while it was time consuming, I feel it paid off and I was happy with the basic look of the tail. Looking back It might have been easier to use some kind of dry brush or bristle brush to create multiple dots but I had a lot more control over the intensity of the dots with the method I used due to the pressure sensor on my tablet.
Once the tail basics were complete, I placed a layer beneath the scales and began to work with her human skin. I realised early on in my project that a normal human skin tone wouldn't look right as my initial intention was to make her look more like a fish than a woman; So I used the eyedropper tool to pick up some of the colours from her tail and began to use them to paint her body, paying attention to light sources, shading and anatomy.
For the background, I used varying shades of blue and swept the brush over the canvas using varying pressure to add depth.
The coral reef in the background was created by creating patches of colour with my brush and I used a fish shaped brush to add in the shoals in the distance. I was planning on including a shark silhouette too but this would have distracted from the focus of the picture which is the mermaid.
I then added the rock she it sitting on by using the same brushes in greens, greys and browns.
I find it quite easy to draw and paint hair, but here I wanted to go for a semi-realistic look and so in previous pictures you will notice that I used a light green colour to block in the shape of the hair whilst using a darker green to show a little more detail about the way it would lie. Using a very small hard round brush with full opacity, I began to draw in lots of different strands of hair individually in order to build up as much detail as possible. Once the hairs were in place in a certain section, I would then use a soft round brush with low opacity and brush it over the top of the strands. This was not necessarily to blend them together but to lessen the appearance of some of the hairs and bring out the highlights in some of the lighter colour strands which I think gives a much more realistic effect.
I continued to use this method to colour the rest of the hair. In these two pictures I have yet to use the soft round brush on the strands but since I added a greater diversity of coloured hair I hoped the highlights would be brought out even more than on the top part of the hair.
For the fins I used a separate layer and drew 5 guidelines to follow so I could keep the flow of the fin consistent.
Then, I used a hard marker with the opacity at 40% and coloured the entire fin grey to form the base. I then used the eyedropper tool to take colours from the tail like purple and blue to create the same flowing lines until I ended up with what is shown in the picture.
Since I wanted the fins to be transparent, I took the eraser tool with it's opacity adjusted to 30% and gradually brushed it over the area in between the rays of the fin.
I then used the rectangular marquee tool to draw a box around the fin and pressed cmd+T to select free transform. This way I could drag the fin onto the area I wanted to place it whilst adjusting it's size accordingly.
For the other fin, I decided it would be easier than making another fin to copy the first one I created then use the free transform tool once again to flip it in the opposite direction and place it on the other side of the tail.
The shape of the fin wasn't pleasing to look at, so I selected the area, went to the menu and used the filter option to select the distort tool. Here I could use the shear technique to alter the shape of the fin.
Now the final result looks as if the fin is spilling over the rock the mermaid is sitting on.
For the face, I drew a basic eye shape and used a soft round pressure brush alongside a hard round brush to create and thicken the eyelashes. On the layer beneath the eyelashes, I used the same soft brush to shade her eyelids as well as create the irises and sclera which I decided to colour black instead of white to give an inhuman, creepy fish-eye effect.
I then drew a basic outline of a nose and mouth. Originally I had used a typical manga style nose but thought this didn't look right or fit with the semi-realism approach I was wanting to peruse. As a result I drew the nose wider and this gave me the opportunity to shade and add highlights in a different way than I normally would. This simple adaptation may well have changed the way I draw noses digitally forever!
For the skin and lips, I used a combination of a soft round brush and a hard marker to make them look as 3D as possible, paying attention to shading and to where the light would hit the higher parts of the face such as her nose, lips, cheekbones and the tops of her eyelids.
I then used a hard round brush with 70% opacity to draw her eyebrows as well as draw small silver lines under her eyes and on her nose to add more depth and features to her.
I also took this opportunity to frame the sides of her face with hair and add highlights to it using the dodge tool.
I then added highlights to the rest of the hair.
As a final addition to the tail, I drew an outline of the main fin using the same method as I did for the previous fins and I then used the free transform tool to move it into position and adjust it's size.
At this point, It was time to add the views of the mermaids anatomy. I used the lasso tool to draw around a section of the tail and used the free transform tool to move it out slightly which left a gap. I used salmon flesh as a reference for the mermaid muscle and painted the section a selection of reds and oranges with white highlights to show the muscle pattern.
The texture of the skin was nice but it looked rather stark in appearance compared to the rest of the body which was covered in shimmering scales. In order to fix this I used the lasso tool to select a section of scales and pasted them onto the layer above the skin to make it look like the god rays of light were reflecting off her face.
I also took this opportunity to add a bit more shading under the hair to add depth and create a realistic shadow that the light would produce.
I then used the selection too once again to copy the god ray and pasted it on top to intensify it and make it look like it was in front of the mermaid to add a foreground, mid ground and background to my illustration.
After completing that, I added the finishing touches to the tail and used the same process as I did when creating the ribs- painting from dark to light in shades of beige.
In the same way her face looked too bare, the arm stood out and looked too smooth so I added some scales to the hands and shaded the rock layer underneath to make it look as if she was resting her hand upon it. Note that I only gave her three fingers too which contributes to her more creature than human appearance.
In my research I noticed there were a lot of fish which had translucent bodies so I used this idea on her chest and arm. I used a low opacity eraser to rub away the skin layer and this revealed the bone underneath, giving a fish-like see through appearance.
