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Mermaid Monday #2: Copper-Tailed Mermaid with White and Blue Silk Top

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This copper-tailed mermaid is sister to the golden-tailed mermaid we saw a few weeks back, and I suppose there must be a sister with a silver tail in the mix somewhere, because I can’t draw silver either and it’s high time I learned. Anyways, she is a little more fond of decoration than her sister, wearing fine silk and warm-colored precious stones daily. In truth, she is somewhat self-conscious about her tail, since she picked up the idea somewhere that copper is less precious than silver or gold, and she feels a need to compensate with expensive decorations. (Copper tails, actually, are slightly less common than either color, but somehow that doesn’t comfort her. And what’s the most uncommon color? Stay tuned and we will find out in a future Mermaid Monday.)

So I don’t forget, copper colors are, from darkest to lightest: dark umber, sienna brown, burnt ochre, pumpkin orange, mineral orange, peach, light peach and white. And of course, the colorless blender, which makes everything beautiful.

Mermaid Monday #1: Golden Kelp Mermaid

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When I look at my site stats, the new blog’s most popular page (besides the doll) is consistently the mermaid one, and a lot of the search engine keywords are mermaid-related. Yes, that’s right, people aren’t searching for zombie paperdolls, they aren’t searching for cupcake aprons, but instead they are searching for mermaids. Now if they were searching overwhelmingly for zombie paperdolls, it’s still unlikely I would have Soulless Saturdays or Flesh-Eating Fridays, but I just love drawing my mermaids.

So, from now until I get bored of it, every Monday is Mermaid Monday! (Except for when it’s not. For example, St. Patrick’s Day next week will not feature a green mermaid, I’ve got plans for that day.) Mermaid Monday might mean old-school shimmery mermaid tails and all the accessories currently fashionable under the sea, or the kinds of things mermaids might wear, should they have to venture on the land for some reason — diplomatic errands, say, or to try capturing the heart of a human, or for just simple curiosity. (What, that just sounds like an excuse to draw pretty gowns in cool colors? I don’t know why you would think such a thing…)

Now, this mermaid, even among mermaids (not renowned for their modesty) is really quite vain. She looks down on those that drape themselves with pearls, jewels, chains and silky fabrics, because to her, all of that artificiality is unnecessary for one with such a shining golden tail. Adding more gold to gold would just be gilding the lily; one might even say “tacky,” and that is a sin with her set. So she goes for a more natural look, for a contrast.

Blue and Sea Green Mermaid Tail with White and Gold Top

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If you like this mermaid, click the “Mermaid Monday!” tag for more — I draw a mermaid, or a mermaid-related outfit, every Monday.

Me and my mermaids! I don’t know when I started drawing paperdolls, but I can assure you there was a mermaid tail or two among those first batches, unscanned and lost. In the doll-drawing process the question “Is she mermaidable?” is a lot more important than “Are her hands right?” (Because the odds are good her hands aren’t right, and I may as well worry about what’s fixable.)

The mermaid tail process has actually been about the same since I started. Consider Exhibit A, one of about a dozen mermaids drawn for the long-gone Paper Doll Boutique, and Exhibit B, Anna’s foray into mermaidhood. I thought I had lost it, but, unlike many things that could be classified as useful life skills, coloring mermaid tails is something I’ve retained, and the basic technique has always been the same. (The main difference between exhibit A and B and the current one is the method used for blending. At the time of the Boutique, I was blending with white and not the colorless blender, which gives them an odd pearly look… Plus the scanner was not as nice as my current one.) I should do a tutorial sometime, it’s really quite easy.