Mermaid @ MindSay

Aomi is a demon hell bent on learning things, so she has to take on different forms, abilities of those forms & the whole who what when where why how of them so she can travel many realms, worlds, and time.
The vast majority of these forms/stories  won't have anything to do with the "Main" story.

List of Aomi Armster's forms: some forms have various forms like a werewolf would have a wolf form etc, a vampire a bat, mermaid= fish other sea life, i won't list all of those but in general thats what I mean.

Aomi can also disembody and create a non sentient object like.. money,swords/weaponry-- of course these items are enchanted, they are made from demon essence! ;0
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Aomi is a Shekintari, a shadow/shapeshifter demon (light is within)
default demon
human with many style outfits/peoples/cultures/time periods
half demon
FULL DEMON
vampire
elf
feral demon
werewolf
chimera
frog/amphibian
succubus
mermaid
dragon/dinosaur/reptile
angel
unicorn/pegasus
hind- gnu-faun (wildebeast/camel/cow/deer/goat)
centaur
robot/mecha/cyborg/transformer/machine-type stuff
scorpion
outerspace alien/spacey futuristic aomi
A Genius Loci (plural, Genii Locorum)-- a living/sentient location/planet/town/etc
phantom/ghost/undead/zombie
titan/colossus aomi
elemental aomi
gargoyle
military-ish aomi (various time eras/realms)
zodiac/horoscopish/signs
plants
orc/troll/ogre

She doesn't yet have a name and hasn't yet found a need for one.  Her trusty koi and eel know her by  heart.  They live together in a little secluded pool in a tropical forest.  She doesn't even care that she may be the last of her kind nor is she aware that her male counterpart lives a carefree life under the care of humans.  The male, Abernathy, is lonely despite the company of other fish bowl friends.  He longs for one of his own.  This female is not lonely.  She's too busy to care about finding a mate.  Her coloring is transparent, she's able to hide in plants and muck, wearing the colors of the water, fins short and hidden.  In this painting she is captured playing in an underwater pocket of sunlight.


A close up of her face.  She looks back at us from a distance.


Her koi friend seems to be telling her something.  The bubbles are like thought balloons over his head.


The eel is sly and a show off.  He's both cute and mischevious.  What sort of hi-jinks does he have planned?


Her webbed hand grasps after the light in a way that makes it appear as if she is holding the light.


Her other hand is shows us how pale she is in contrast to the water flora that surrounds her like a cape.

Here is the original drawing.  I wasn't pleased with the pose right away because it seemed too much like a magazine model pose.  Boring and silly.  But I never throw away an idea.  I came back to her because Abernathy (the painting of the betta merman I did months before) was really longing for a companion and it made me wonder what the female betta mermaid would look like.  A quick study of the fish and out came this sketch:



This is how it looked taped up on my drawing board:



Here she is taped up on my painting board.  The lighting is dim because my apartment is rather dim and the flash from my digital camera tends to wash everything out.  You can see how she developed and how much fun I had with the colors:




I just wanted to show you the painting that started it all.  Abernathy makes his next appearance below.  I created him out of a fantastical whim.  He kind of looks like a drag queen but you have to realize that Siamese Fighting Fish males are very showy, flowy, colorful, and slightly feminine.  They are the peacocks of tropical fish.  The females are thinner, shorter, smaller, and not as colorful with stubby fins, but just as beautiful.  You get the idea.  Abernathy found a pearl that he likes to wear on his forehead.  He's into things like that.  And by the mass of bubbles you see surrounding him, he's indicating that he longs for a mate.  I wonder what would happen if he saw another Betta merman OR saw his reflection?  Ouch.  Poor little guy.


Will these two ever meet?  You'll just have to wait and see...
I originally created these creatures for my nephews.  They were the first to see the development of these mer people and got really excited about it.  So I dedicate the fish to them and promise to write a little story about them someday soon!

After working a long while (about two weeks) on this painting, I began to see the Betta Mermaid as a Merman and, in my mind as I tried to sleep, I keep seeing a few different female versions of a Siamese Fighting Fish-maid.  The name that comes to mind is that this "guy" is Abernathy.  I've always liked that name.  Sounds antique and nautical to me, like he was discovered in an old sea coastal town...

When we last left our buddy, Abernathy, this is how he looked:


Sometimes, in order to finish a really good painting, you have to stop work on it and just stare at it for awhile.  After that while, I realized that the scales should appear more translucent. Normally I don't use a lot of white watercolor, I usually just erase color with water, but since I put a lot of dark color on his scales, a washing out would overall give a more gray lavender sheen underneath the scales. So here is the result:


Here's a close-up of the detail I put in his mysterious eyes:

Can you see how he has started to seem more male in personality and appearance? I love how character develops like that. Start with a few strokes of the brush and pencil lines and soon someone you didn't expect at first appears!

Here is where I started to become more and more satisfied with the appearance of the scales. This was the moment I came to know the figure as "Abernathy" and started to fall in love with him.

What would you do if you encountered this Merman? Doesn't he look fierce?

To show you the scale of the painting, I took a photo of Mr. Snuggles carefully stepping around my drawing board.

To check my detail, I often take a photo of a painting in black and white. I also, if I have enough time and computer access, scan in the painting, invert the colors, and/or reverse it to see how it would look in a book. I do this not just to gauge a different perspective, but to see if I got anything in improper perspective. Then it's back to refining the image.

I don't think Abernathy would be totally alone in his tank, so as I began to detail the bubbles in the water and background, I lifted some color with water to allow some space for a few new watery friends...

Enter a goldfish and a guppy! Now we can really see how small (or is that how big?) Abernathy really is. Considering the size of the other fish, I now see him as being almost as big as a kitten.

And now we are nearly done with the painting. The goldfish and guppy (someone wanna come up with some names for them?) are more detailed and Abernathy is looking more and more pleased with himself. I imagine a male Betta merman would be kind of like a peacock -- not necessarily conceited, but happy being the only one of his kind and secure knowing that he is the most beautiful thing in his world.

If you are keen to notice, our Abernathy is ready to mate. He has begun to build a nest of bubbles at the surface of the tank. He doesn't know yet if there are any female Betta mermaids to be found, but he's willing to send out a mating call into the universe.

From close-up you can see a slight smile on Abernathy's face. Maybe all he needs is you?

Wait and see.

The first two images are a bit cloudy and dark because I didn't have a good bright light source to show the pencil drawings in detail, but it should give you an idea what direction I was going to work into...

I've been working, slowly, on a painting of a Betta Mermaid.  Here's how she's been coming into view:

The first color wash above.

Second color wash. The paper is still wet here.

Let dry, then I worked in more detail, including some color on the shell and foliage around the figure. Imagine that the Betta Mermaid is quite small. The shell is most likely from a snail. She holds onto it near the top of a tank or glass bowl.

A close up of the mermaid's face. Her personality is showing!

Another detailed close-up of the mermaid.

And here she gets her scales and fins detailed! I used wet on dry color for this part of the process.

Another close up. I like how the water reflected the light from the flash. It gave me an idea on how to bring out her eyes.
There will be more to come soon. The painting is developing beautifully!

Ok so The Little Mermaid is a classic, right? Well Disney, being the money hungry assholes they are, decided to make a straight to DVD movie called "Ariel's Beginning" or something like that. Like seriously, wtf?!?! It was bad enough they made a Mulan II that was only about being against arranged marriages, had shitty songs, and Mulan was breaking even more gender roles but kinda in shitty non-Chinese ways. Oh and then awhile ago they had 2 more sequels to Beauty and the Beast. I only saw one and it was Christmas themed, with the motto being that hope is the greatest gift to receive and Paul Reubens the dude from Pee Wee's Playhouse was the voice for a musical instrument. (Yay run-on sentences!)

Anyhoo the point is Disney keeps fucking with classics and I'm sick of it. I mean i believe this is the third sequel to The Little Mermaid. They made that awful second movie where Ariel has a daughter, and of course it sucked. Hey Disney, stop slamming the head of good ideas against the wall till it explodes and leaves blood anywhere and no one remembers what the head looked like in the first place because its so nasty no one wants to watch it.