The past week’s painting took some efforts. It was an exercise likewise in perspective as well in background and water details. Especially getting the water right with all the movement and the reflections was hard.

We again followed one of my very first Mermay mermaids, Engineeriel. You already saw her in week 1, as tiny dot in the background, though. She escaped the Kraken succesfully and unscarred, although her friend an assistant Founder as usual got the damage. Now, safe and sound back again in less dangerous waters, they turned to a new project.

The idea of a bridge connecting the mermaid and the human world came to my mind as I looked over the prompts Potato and I so thoughtfully collected to create our 4WeeksMermay. „Steampunk“ and „Bridge“ connected immediately, likewise the fact that I a) already had an engineering mermaid OC and b) I even before the start of creating the prompt board I planned draw my Steampunk mechanic Crissy in a mermaid version.

Some more remarks about Engineeriel and Founder. They both first appeared in Mermay 2019. Quite soon Founder got injured in an accidant with a merdroid, so Engineeriel made him a cyborg fish to save his life.

Bot are references to „The Little Mermaid“, obviously, with a twist. Therefore I originally named them after the names of the German synchro of the movie. Only one and a half year ago I learned the there is a difference to the English ones. I easily could switch Engineeriels name towards the English form but Flounder is called „Fabius“ in the German version („Fabricius“ in my own one). I learned about that only some months ago. To keep the spirit of the name and also keep him recognizable for English readers, I from then on went with „Founder“.

Btw: I hate it when German syncs do those things, why can’t they just keep the names? Nobody would have thought of the washing soap „Ariel“ which is popular in Germany, and „Flounder“ quite obviously is NOT a flounder. We are not THAT dumb and the majority know how flounders look like.

Sorry for my wandering thoughts but it had to be said and hopefully gave you an insight not only into my drawing process but also into the thought accompanying the development of my OCs.

Still, there also were some design changes since Enginneeriel’s humble beginnings. In 2021 I gave her a full engineer’s overall built by her hip fins to emphasize her occupation. I did similar with Crissea, my OC Crissy turned into a mermaid but this time the strings are opened to put a glimpse of variation into the composition.

So, as with Engineeriel, Crissea’s overall is actually a combination of parts of her body, of her fins. You also will find that her fish tail loosely has a sea dragon as reference, this giving there the stability to float almost unaffected by the moving waters of the river.

The stripes on her tail are of course the same ones she has on her working trousers and then there is the watch. If her creator doesn’t forget ist *cough*, she always has the watch with her. But what kind of watch does a mermaid carry around? I simply thought of a Water Watch, a watch driven by water and telling the time by water (you may spot it if you zoom in).

Plus ther is a water bear around, the kind of water bears my compromised fantasy came up with and which doesn’t have to do much with real water bears. To put the fork in Crissea’s pocket was some kind of makeshift to check another prompt from the prompt checklist.

As with Paula … one of the prompts was „The Guardian“. What Guardian did I want for these two workers? Then, Paula came into my mind. It would’ve been a nice thought to mermaid her too. It also would be her full character trait to guard her girlfriend … or rather to do the watcher’s job. So, she is guardian and if you look where she is you will see, she is glancing at Crissea’s butt.

To meet her personality I also gave her the tail of a pike, a hunter, a predator, fast and agile, preying on other fishes (mermaids). Ther also it the proverb in German that literally translates to „stunning pike“, referring to a person (usually a man but I won’t mind using it for any sex and gender) who is attractive and sexual active to a large extent.

Btw, while thinking about mermaid Paula’s fishtail I also thought about her name and finally, she got a suname: Luce – from „Lucius“, the Latin name of the Northern Pike. I first thought of calling her „Paula Pike“ but, well, that would’ve been a name for a Disney cartoon character, so „Luce“ it is!

For the third week we again prepared a cutout. This time we changed the style to a blur with clear parts, so it hopefully will look better.

We also are plannning to give again an introduction to the prompts but it isn’t ready, yet. I will share them here as soon as this is the case.