Today's post should be a short one (though I've said that before and that doesn't happen, so who knows). This post will, however, be dedicated to one of my creative outlets: drawing. I'm not an amazing artist when it comes to drawing. I can make something that looks good, but I never took the time to study and make myself great. It takes a lot of time, lots of erasing, and often does not match what I wanted it to look like in my head. This does not mean it looks bad, but there are things I notice like shading, or how the body is posed, or the hands/feet of a person, that just look off. That being said, when I draw something it doesn't look horrible, and I realize this. But I've seen other people draw much better pictures than me, so when I say I'm not a "good" artist, it's because I don't think I could make a living off of my art as it stands right now. With that explanation out of the way...One of the authors I follow on Facebook (shout-out to Aidy Award and all her lovely romance novels!!! If you like romance, try her books, they're awesome), posted something that I found really awesome. Apparently, May is the month a portion of the internet dedicates to drawing mermaids. It is termed #MerMay, and it is amazing!!! Follow that hashtag (or the more specific #MerMay2019) on Twitter or Instagram if you love mermaids (which I do) because there is some lovely art out there! And what's even better is the diversity you see in the art. These aren't all Disney mermaids that are super thin with heteronormative relationships and are not all that dangerous to humans. You get some of those. There's a really cute piece of art that has Pudge from Lilo and Stitch as a mermaid hanging out with Lilo and Stitch. There are mermen, mermaids of pretty much every type of aquatic creature, every type of skin color, and every weight. I got so inspired that I decided to draw my own mermaid for #MerMay, so I thought I'd share my picture and the process it took to get me to the final product. So first steps, sketch things out. Below you can see my first "this is essentially what I want it to look like" sketch. This is after multiple erasures and dangits. I say sketch, but I don't actually know how, so I just draw lightly until I get an approximation of what I want, which is when I start drawing darker. As you can see, I don't have the face mapped out, and most of the lines are light enough that I could easily erase them without leaving too many marks on the paper. Step 2, once I'm satisfied with my sketches, is inking it out. If I'm scanning my drawings or taking a picture, sometimes pencil doesn't show up dark enough, so I tend to ink in the outlines of things. This also means that if I want to go back and make a line cleaner I can do so without worrying about erasing everything around that line too. I only ink after I'm sure of what details I want included. It's a prelude to the last step. The picture above isn't just the ink, I'd already started to color some of it in when I took the picture. At some point in my life I want to learn the art of ink drawing, but I'm not confident enough in my skills to create an entire piece of art with only pens. I like to be able to erase, or at least just make the whole thing a darker shade if I mess something up. Step 3 is coloring. As you see in the above picture, I already started. I use colored pencils mostly because if you start light enough it's relatively easy to hide any mistakes. But they're also pretty cheap and easy to find. I don't need to go to a craft store to get good ones. Below is my finished product. I've been thinking about lionfish mermaids for quite a few years, and so that's what I decided to draw. I chose brown colors because I wanted it to be somewhat realistic. I had a hard time with the hair (I was running out of browns but I also wanted everything but the dark brown streaks to be a noticeable different color) and the eyes. I had the 24-pack of Crayola colored pencils, so in some ways my color choices were limited by that. Overall, it would have been nice to have the hair and eyes blend in a bit more with the rest of the look but I'm very happy with how it turned out.
What creative pursuits do you explore sometimes? Do you have a dedicated activity? Or is it more of a "when I get the urge I do this..." type of thing for you? Let me know in the comments. Happy Reading!
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AuthorThe author is a librarian who reads "too much" (is there such a thing?) and talks just as much. As an aspiring author she gets bogged down by grammar rules when she just wants to forget them to make a sentence flow, but never seems to be able to. She appreciates thoughtful comments and constructive criticism, but internet trolls beware, she's read enough fantasy novels to know how to defeat the monsters. Archives
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