I'm currently trying to draw a mermaid silhouette I saw painted on a wall yesterday. The mermaid has no arms, so don't comment on that. And the bottom gets cut of, so I won't draw the fins. It should look rather like a dress.
For the rest, feel free to post suggestions on how I could enhance the shape.



joey.

Nice drawing.
Her face is a little flat and doesn't look like a pritty mermaid :).
Try make the nose a littlebit more 'pointy', and a slightly curved line between nose and mouth. I think some more hair on top of her head will look better as well.

You should also think ocean waves for the hair. Also without a tail fin you might move the profile away from vertical -she looks like she is standing; in the absence of other clues that she is a mermaid then she should be in a swimming or 'floating in the water' aspect to supply additional visual cues to the viewer. Finally consider a very rough sketch with very loose lines on a layer first, to work out a flowing feel, then put your image on top and try to incorporate some of that. Anyway good effort. Silhouettes can be powerful.

well, i've first made a sketch with pen and paper, scanned the image and repainted it in inkscape afterwards. that was my sketch:


i've refined the shape and altered the hair a bit, that's how it looks like now (no big difference). the standing shape comes from the original.


thanks for your comment... is the face better now? how about the hair? the proportions?

joey.

Well my biggest criticism would be that I wouldn't recognize it as a mermaid without the title saying so. Unfortunately I don't know of much you could do better right now...

Maybe one thing: Imo she shouldn't have a butt the way you did it. She should be quite "fishy" from the hips and below and so wouldn't have such a (in addition to that in your picture also exaggerated ) butt...

Then there is the hair which rather looks like she's standing in a wind tunnel. You might want not to have just some small "arms" of hair that point towards the same direction what supports this feeling of hair in the wind bending around but kind of one big string of hair where small parts stick out in various directions. Well I don't know how to better describe it but it should have this feeling of zero gravity i.e. when you stop a fast diving movement and the hair falls down like in slow-motion - a snapshot of this is what I mean...

Enjoy your meal
Toast

Okay, maybe this shape wasn't even a mermaid, you might be right here. As for the hair, I tried it with one big hair stream with many small hairs coming out at the sides, but this looked rather like a fire burst or something similar. maybe I should combine these two looks somehow...

One question still: What about the neck? Doesn't it look a bit too long right now?

it's no fishy tail. looks more like a dress.

Yes I agree, it looks more like a dress. I took a couple of rough swipes at the image to show which direction I would go in if I wanted to change the tail to look more fish-like.




If I were you I would not begin to ask about proportions because if you begin asking about proportions then I am afraid you might have to redraw the majority of the body. I think instead of proportions you should try to make things look like they are supposed to( ex. make the fin look like a fin) But I did start cutting away some from the back of the neck.

I like the style of image and I like the improved hair a lot. Good luck with it.

the legs are too short. there is no lower leg visible. The tail grows right out of the knee. That looks strange and most mermaids don't look that way.