Creation of the Cephalopod Mermaid

The inspiration for this piece came from cephalopods. This exclusively marine creatures with their prominent head and set of tentacles are graceful and scary at the same time, which gives them a unique beauty. 

I wanted to create a creature to capture both the beauty and creepiness of the cephalopods, and the shell-headed tentacle-haired mermaid started swimming around my brain.

This was the initial sketch:

Looking at her, staring at the empty hand, I realized something was missing. I didn't wanted her to be lonely, so these two guys came along:

Sadly the fellow on her head was messing up the whole composition so he had to go. Bye, bye little hermit crab!

The inking process is something that I'm always looking forward. I like doing precise things, guess that's why in one point of my life I thought that I will be a scientist. Yeah right - too many rules there. Anyway enough digression...

I was so happy how the inking process went - smooth like butter:

The coloring phase is always a struggle for me, so many palette options to choose from. But I decided to use the original coloring of a nautilus. I like it's striped shell and dotted head and as a bonus it's analogous color palette will be a wonderful contrast for the blue background:

image source: http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?enlarge=0000+0000+1210+0135

After color blocking, it took me two days of coloring, erasing, changing bits and pieces here and there to get her to the final colors of her body face and shell:

I thought that now the tentacles are the hardest thing left and the fins - that's the easy part, but... Something did not feel right about her fins. I wanted her to be mollusk like and she looked, well fishy. I really liked her ear and i decided not to change that but to work on different design for her fins only.

I persuaded my mermaid to try on different fins. After throwing away hours of work on intricate inking and spending half day changing fin designs (wardrobe), this one hit the spot:

After that it was only matter of hours of coloring the fins and shading the background. And here's my Cephalopod Mermaid in all her glory:

And a close up of her face and the hermit crab:

This lovely lady ignited a spark for creating a whole mermaid series, so be sure to subscribe to my newsletter for more behind the scenes and a little nonsensical digressions here and there ;)