Witches – Zum Kritzeleck

Character sheet, digital painting, comic style: Merindiana Jane, a mermaid resembling Indiana Jones, light brown skin, bluish black long hair, brown fish tail with a golden tail fin, bellyfree tanktop, a belt across her hips with a light blue whip at her left hip, she is looking determinded putting a ray as hat in her head; the background is pergament coloured, resembling a journal page; explanatory text: "Merindiana Jane - Restless Raider of the Sunken Arks -; Inofficial leader of the Mermay Squad; Adventurous treasure hunter and enterprising explorer, risk-takingly eager to swim where no mermaid had swum before; Discoverer of the Lost Pineapple, finder of the Golden Spatula, Seeker of the Dentist's Bubble Chest; The whip is made of jellyfish tentacles; The hat always comes back to her (because it's a stingray); Always getting in trouble but also being able to wriggle out of it; Coffee addict since an adventure involving a sunken truck, hot underwater springs and a wagonload of best Arabica-Coffee Extra Strong; She only fears Seantipedes: Giant underwater centipedes haunting the Lost Pineapple Plains and other places; Archrival: Captain "Sushi" Tigra Selachii, Pirate of the High Seas, Terror of the Seven Beaches since they are usually hunting the same treasures; Met Ceratia the anglerfish mermaid (and became her friend) after she had to walk the plank over a deep sea trench".

Merindiana’s Character Sheet – Weaving Magic

Another week flew by, some more paintings got finished and since it’s beginning of April, I already started preparing for Mermay (this time the actual Mermay, not the redraws of my old Mermay mermaid OCs). I can’t tell you yet, so please stay patient.

In the meantime more ideas grew regarding Crissy and Raven + Samandra but I’m not sure when (or if) I will be able to finalize them. But don’t let’s talk about what I may not be able to, let’s see what I managed during the past week:

Merindiana’s Character Sheet

In the beginning of the past week I finally finished Merindiana’s character sheet in addition to the last week’s redraw. It mentions a lot of events from previous Mermay paintings depicting her.

I also love to put in pop cultural references into my paintings and my OCs. In this one, there are at least nine different ones. Leave a comment, if you can spot them!

Weaving Magic

Another follow-up to last week’s PaintLog is the continuation of Raven the Witch Apprentice’s story.

Last week, I introduced Samandra Elvennewt. This week, I threw more light onto Samandra’s witchcraft skills. The painting kinda got out of hand since I originally only planned a quick, tiny drawing, not necessarily even with Raven in it. However, this is a crucial part of the story of their relationship, so Raven had to be with part of the picture. And after this, I got carried away more and more.

I tried to change the body poses a little bit and to play around with blur and lighting. Then, in the middle of the drawing process, I got this idea of Sam’s spots glowing whenever she does magic.

First I thought of her living in some kind of closet with clothes hanging in the foreground but then I loved the idea of a full moon shining on the two of them and her sleeping place actually being in the attic of her witch’s hat (the only place she could spare as she hexed her into human being):

Saying Samandra was a great fabric mage wasn’t just figuratively speaking. She found her special field of study in bewitching clothes. This came handy after Raven nearly lost her amulet in the course of an unintented form-changing frog moment. The amulet was all that remained of Raven’s family. Sam, after having learned about this, tailored her a special collar to make sure this would never happen again.

Digital Painting, comic style: Raven, a young woman with light rosy skin, short white hair in sidecut, barefoot, wearing a golden brown dress, tied with a rope in the middle, a pouch and a necklace with a raven charme, the left hand and the right foot are turned into frog hand and foot, Raven is looking amused towards the right, her her left a small pink frog sitting on the floor, Text: "Raven Frogfeet"

Raven and Sam – Merindiana Jane and The Mermay Squad 3/X

When reading these words you surely will notice, I’ve switched to English language when writing my PaintLog. Last week it was the second birthday of my website. It started as a German speaking website since I only had a German speaking target groupe. This changed in the course of the last one and a half year since I started posting on Instagram and joining English speaking Discord servers.

Even then I stuck to German and just added an English translation but since my target groupe became more international and the translation (and linking in both columns) always needs its time, even with DeepL translate, I’m going to try to skip the German part and writing in English right away. I’m also going to change the PaintLog’s structure a little bit (well … giving it structure!):

Raven and Sam

Last week I introduced my new OC Raven Frogfeet, my entry for the SoG Moodboard Challenge but also an OC who enriched my imagination. Not long after submitting my entry, I painted her in frog form and after that I now created Samandra Elvennewt, her companion and soulmate.

These ideas were heavily influenced by the Tiffany Aching novels of the late Terry Pratchett. They have some nice witch apprentices interactions within them and somehow like this witches‘ universe I imagine my witch universe with Raven (and now Samandra) in it.

The witches are less morally integer than Granny Weatherwax, obviously, turning people into animals and vice versa on purpose. They may not intend any harm and in fact Raven as well as Sam are quite content with their new lives, still this is a mistreatment they will struggle with, a plot point for further exploration later on.

After finishing the introducing Samandra charachters sheet, I also gave them a sheet of their own:

$Digital Painting, comic style: Raven to the left, a young woman with light rosy skin, short white hair in sidecut, barefoot, wearing a golden brown dress, tied with a rope in the middle, a pouch and a necklace with a raven charme, the left hand and the right foot are turned into frog hand and foot, Raven is looking annpoyed towards the frog foot; Samandra to the right, a young woman with brown skin and yellow frackles and spots on her body, neck long red hair, barefoot, wearing light brown leather trousers with buttons on the sides of the legs, a red tailor's bag by her side and a grey apron-like dress held by some ropes as straps, a scissor and needles tucked into a band on the of front part of her dress, a ruler in her right hand; she's looking amused towards Raven, covering her grin with the left hand; Text: "Samandra Elvennewt", "When you are a witch apprentice, you meet other witch apprentices. One of them was Samandra Elvennewt. She was a natural with needle and thread and experienced in retailoring clothes of people who occasionally turn into animals (you get them a lot around witches and wizards). She retailored Raven's dress which was no more than a mere sack before and together they travelled around a lot.>>"$
$Digital Painting, comic style: Raven to the left, a young woman with light rosy skin, short white hair in sidecut, barefoot, wearing a golden brown dress, tied with a rope in the middle, a pouch and a necklace with a raven charme, the left hand and the right foot are turned into frog hand and foot, Raven is looking amused towards Samandra, to her left a small pink frog sitting on the floor; Samandra to the right, a young woman with brown skin and yellow frackles and spots on her body, neck long red hair, barefoot, wearing light brown leather trousers with buttons on the sides of the legs, a red tailor's bag by her side and a grey apron-like dress held by some ropes as straps, a scissor and needles tucked into a band on the of front part of her dress, a ruler in her right hand, a tall fire salamander's tail appeared on her back, waving the back of her dress into the air, she's looking embarrassed out of the corners of her eyes towards the tail, blushing, still covering her mouth with the left hand, right to her a small fire salamander; Text: "Samandra shared Raven's fate in reverse. Originally she was a fire salamander. The whitch she was apprentice of was in need of a helper who could do the chores she wasn't able to do anymore. So she simply turned a newt into a human being. Since Sam was a fast learner and also showed talent in witchcraft, she finally raised her as her apprentice. Although not completely voluntarily drawn into apprenticeship, she, like Raven, preferred her new life to the old one (not having many memories of it anyway)."$

Merindiana and The Mermay Squad

Well, no, your calendar is not wrong, it’s still March, it’s still a month to go until Mermay. Still, you may remember that I started to redraw my Mermay OCs in the beginning of this year.

I already did redraws of Nema and Merdusa, this week it was Merindiana’s turn. I wasn’t able to finish the character sheet yet but i surely will be next week (it’s always good to have a painting for the next PaintLog up the sleeves).

Merindiana is one of my most often drawn mermaids ever. I created her for my first Mermay participation in Mermay 2019 in which she had four appeareances and once again four times in Mermay 2020 and in Mermay 2021. In the meantime there even was a cameo in my Inktober 2019 painting.

In all this time there were visible design changes and this time I changed her slightly, too. The most obvious item is the belt to fix the whip (it was never depicted how she actually carry it along before). Other changes were made with the fin tail, it’s more transparent now, the top has become bellyfree, she got more muscles and visible abs and the hip crest and the top are torn at some points.

Of course, I put her together with Nema and Merdusa into The Mermay Squad painting I talked about some time again. There are still some of my Mermay OCs missing but now it’s coming together.

Merindiana Jane