Nerina - From Start to finish -

So, i'm in a bit of a slump lately...
"but Kat" i hear you all cry out. "You said art block doesn't exist!"
yep... cause it doesn't... Art block suggests that you can't physically draw despite being healthy enough to draw (read as not lying comatose in a hospital) and this simply isn't true. you are always capable of drawing something.... you just may not be happy with what your producing or you may not be coming up with any ideas.
This is called a slump and/or hitting a wall.
it almost always means you are getting more critical of your work and theres almost always a large improvement shortly after you beat the slump into the ground. not always but I find the only way to get out of a slump is to produce something i'm happy with.

but maybe that's just me...

so anyways... i've been in a slump for a week or so and drawn two full pages of chibis and a bust of my character niut and i still wasn't happy....
so i though i could draw the next picture in the Estelle Series.
ah but what to do for a pose?
i start thumb nailing (i would show my thumbnails but they are incomprehensible/ done in col erase which doesn't seem to scan despite being red.) and one of them for fun was a mermaid.
this mermaid specifically

and i though... well... Estelle was a one off that i turned/am turning into a series.... why can't this mermaid become one too?
oh shoot but she's based 'loosly' on the little mermaid.... i should be in public domain but you never know cause of disney *quick search later* nope... completely public domain... YAY as long as i don't allude to anything disney like it should be fine.

ah but i can't keep calling her Seafoam... *goes on baby name sites that she frequents a lot for character names) Nerina - Water Nymph.
works for me~

so i do a quick sketch... again abusing the poor col erase but it just erases so much cleaner then pencil so it's great for figuring out the pose.

problem 1 - ran ouf of room on the page cause of the tail....
problem 2 - how am i going to ink this.... oh no... this si going to be one of the experiments with transparencies isn't it.... oh boy... should be fun.
Problem 3 - Scales... ugh...

still i brought it into photoshop, gave myself more room to work and started playing around...
and in the end i had a lot of fun
has it kicked me out of my slump? no but i think the slump has more to do with the fact theres a book i really want to read but haven't had any time for and for the moment i rather be reading then drawing, but drawing is always more important so... i tend to fill my free time with drawing *sighs*.... but once i finish that book i'll be back to my crazy drawing self.

so... since every pick i've posted with Nerina i've shown a lineless version.

as much as i love the lineless version i'm just a pig fan of lines... can't help it.

i just feel like it helps add another layer of depth... still this was a lot of fun and probably one of my fav experiments... dunno if i'm actually make it into a series.... but i probably will. or now though there is an Aaron Pogue novel thats sitting at around 20% finished and thats just not good enough.

oh quick note before i go, when i had life drawing my favorite poses were always of the back... i know most people hated them since it doesn't have as many landmarks as the front but i dunno... always found it fun... so yeah... that's probably why in the past year or so i've done a lot of pictures from a back angle.
ok reading time~

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