Challenges

May 2025 was a rough month, but I managed five mers: four originals and a redraw of an old marker mermaid sketch from Inktober 2016

In 2024 I went back to mood drawing my mers. No prompts, no structure. I managed 18 drawings and was proud of all of them. I tried a few illustrations in the styles of artists I admire like Sheilah Beckett and Harry Clarke. I got weird and experimental and had a great time, no regrets!

MerMay 2023 was an interesting exercise in which I attempted mer interpretations of romance novel covers. This was a lot of fun, even though the results were a little all over the place. The genre is still overwhelmingly white and heterosexual, so I did not end up with as much diversity as I would have liked. Still, I tried to include things like disability and work in unusual skin colors. This gallery has the second eleven drawings, plus a key that shows the original cover inspirations.

MerMay 2023 was an interesting exercise in which I attempted mer interpretations of romance novel covers. This was a lot of fun, even though the results were a little all over the place. The genre is still overwhelmingly white and heterosexual, so I did not end up with as much diversity as I would have liked. Still, I tried to include things like disability and work in unusual skin colors. This gallery has the first eleven drawings, plus a key that shows the original cover inspirations.

I didn’t manage a drawing every day in May 2022, but I was proud of what I did manage! Had lots of fun with these varied mers.

I had a very productive MerMay in 2021 and felt like I’d finally recovered some of my creative groove. I used the monthly challenge to play a lot with line and color, and while there were some experiments that didn’t quite shine, I was quite proud of a few of these merfolk and felt like I’d learned and evolved a bit as an artist (which is always the hoped-for result of a challenge like this, in my opinion). This is quite a motley assortment of mers — a Lizzo-inspired mer pops up not once but twice (with a Chris Evans-ish merman, because they were flirting on Twitter the day I drew this), there is an exploration of the two different types of sirens, and even an undersea creature inspired by No-Face from Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away. This was the first MerMay that I improvised — usually I plan them out so there is a good balance of genders and animal sidekicks. This was definitely an educational May!

As a warmup to the official MerMay challenge, I drew this warrior queen mermaid as a way of experimenting with linework and color and shaking off some of the lingering creative slump from 2020. I enjoyed playing with this fierce beauty! An Instagram poll for fave colors resulted in… no clear winner! People really loved the version they loved, it proved quite interesting. I’m glad I did this — I was in much better shape to start the actual challenge once May 1st rolled around.

Creativity during the first wave of the pandemic in early-mid 2020 was elusive. Despite my love for the annual MerMay challenge, I managed only a short comic and a few mer drawings. I was proud of any and all pandemic output. It was a rough time.