Beautiful Mermaids

As an artist one wants to create beautiful pictures. Images that will live in the mind long after the eye has ceased looking at them.

I have worked with my chosen tools for years now and have, I believe, gotten better. Progress is inevitably slow. It is what I call "little by little then all of a sudden..."

"All of sudden" you find you can do things you could only dream of before. All of a sudden, pictures flow out of you - each one a jewel. All of a sudden, your confidence grows and with it your pictures improve even faster.

This lovely mermaid was the result of a stolen idea...at least for the pose. I saw it in a picture in eBay in the clothing area and instantly felt I had to "borrow" it. Works well, doesn't it? The top is my own design. I love women with broad shoulders.

"Hey, she's got legs!" Yes, some lovely mermaids do. I had a long fight with myself about the background of this image. I wanted the moon and the sea but couldn't think of what else. Nothing I tried worked. Finally, I decided that nothing more was needed. Interestingly, some of the comments I got on this picture specifically mentioned how well the simple background worked.

Here I tried a new type of background. The underwater columns suggest to me the remains of a once-mighty undersea kingdom - long gone, now. All that's left are these wonderful ruins. Our girl strikes an arrogant pose here. Perhaps she represents the pride of the ancient builders and their lost civilization. The tiara suggests that she was once a queen.

The last image here represents an experiment in rendering. For those who know about such things: I used image-based lighting in combination with ambient occlusion. This increased the render times significantly but as you can see the result is beautiful. Note, especially, the subtle shadows around her eyes, nose and breasts. Small changes like this make the extra time worthwhile. For mermaids clothing is optional.