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Description
Here's a something I made for MerMay! I'm not able to do the one a day challenge, but I've been wanting to draw a mermaid for this month for years now after seeing so many people's cool art This one's a bit weird for me since I don't usually put so much focus and detail on the background. I also was apparently still in a space mood from a recent previous artwork, so I ended up with this concept that combined space and ocean themes. I had no idea if it was going to work out and was just sort of winging it, but it looks decent enough that I count it as a success lmao. The name Astraea comes from Greek mythology, and means something like "star-maiden." The title is a bit of a joke - instead of being a straight up mermaid(en), she's a starmaid(en). Anyways, I hope y'all enjoy and are staying happy and healthy out there!

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So, this one had a lot more parts in it than I usually have when drawing. The rough draft pretty much just consisted of the mermaid and the shape of the planets. I was free handing a lot of stuff just based on the vague ocean/space concept that was floating (lol) in my head. I kind of wish I did my lineart a lot thinner, but I made up for it by varying the lineart's color using the clip layer method, which made it look more interesting. The first thing I worked on after the lineart was the bottom/space half. Having recently done another space scene, I thought it wouldn't take too much time and effort to do something similar. I was wrong lmao. It took some time to get it looking right, and even then I'm not quite satisfied with it (I feel like it could do with less shiny stars). I used a ton of different brushes here (and throughout the whole process), most notably the airbrush to get particular soft-edged shapes or to achieve various lighting effects. Airbrush isn't generally something to overuse, but I felt that it got a lot of decent use here (it took a lot of trial and error though). I had decided at that point that the work would primarily be colored in blues to suit the combined theme, though I feel it would have looked just as good if I had varied the colors more. Moving on to the top/ocean "half," I hope I did enough to convey the ocean/underwater part of the theme since the space part ended up taking more than half the work lol. A random unintentional detail that I want to point out is the stars from the bottom half transitioning into particles underwater. For the floating planet(oids?), each of them have a different color, but the smaller ones ended up losing their color when I airbrushed the "glow" on. Once I had all the background done, I was kinda stumped on what to do with the actual mermaid (which I found hilarious since it's usually the other way around for me). I tried to get the hair and fins to look translucent. I tried out a ton of different skin tones, patterns, and texture before setting on the current design. Overall, there's still a lot that I know I need to improve on, but I'm satisfied with how it turned out.

Also, of course I used a gradient, its the transition from the black of space to the blue of the water surface. xD

Description
Here's a something I made for MerMay! I'm not able to do the one a day challenge, but I've been wanting to draw a mermaid for this month for years now after seeing so many people's cool art This one's a bit weird for me since I don't usually put so much focus and detail on the background. I also was apparently still in a space mood from a recent previous artwork, so I ended up with this concept that combined space and ocean themes. I had no idea if it was going to work out and was just sort of winging it, but it looks decent enough that I count it as a success lmao. The name Astraea comes from Greek mythology, and means something like "star-maiden." The title is a bit of a joke - instead of being a straight up mermaid(en), she's a starmaid(en). Anyways, I hope y'all enjoy and are staying happy and healthy out there!

---

So, this one had a lot more parts in it than I usually have when drawing. The rough draft pretty much just consisted of the mermaid and the shape of the planets. I was free handing a lot of stuff just based on the vague ocean/space concept that was floating (lol) in my head. I kind of wish I did my lineart a lot thinner, but I made up for it by varying the lineart's color using the clip layer method, which made it look more interesting. The first thing I worked on after the lineart was the bottom/space half. Having recently done another space scene, I thought it wouldn't take too much time and effort to do something similar. I was wrong lmao. It took some time to get it looking right, and even then I'm not quite satisfied with it (I feel like it could do with less shiny stars). I used a ton of different brushes here (and throughout the whole process), most notably the airbrush to get particular soft-edged shapes or to achieve various lighting effects. Airbrush isn't generally something to overuse, but I felt that it got a lot of decent use here (it took a lot of trial and error though). I had decided at that point that the work would primarily be colored in blues to suit the combined theme, though I feel it would have looked just as good if I had varied the colors more. Moving on to the top/ocean "half," I hope I did enough to convey the ocean/underwater part of the theme since the space part ended up taking more than half the work lol. A random unintentional detail that I want to point out is the stars from the bottom half transitioning into particles underwater. For the floating planet(oids?), each of them have a different color, but the smaller ones ended up losing their color when I airbrushed the "glow" on. Once I had all the background done, I was kinda stumped on what to do with the actual mermaid (which I found hilarious since it's usually the other way around for me). I tried to get the hair and fins to look translucent. I tried out a ton of different skin tones, patterns, and texture before setting on the current design. Overall, there's still a lot that I know I need to improve on, but I'm satisfied with how it turned out.

Also, of course I used a gradient, its the transition from the black of space to the blue of the water surface. xD