What is MerMay?

Hello friends!

I haven't been around very much. This Parkinson's is getting me down.  I've been dipping in and out occasionally reading your goings on.  Need to see how you all are doing.  Most days it's a struggle to type.

The weather is nothing short of depressing isn't it? How much more rain can we take?  It's the end of April and I've still got the heating on and I'm still wearing my winter weight clothes. It has gone beyond a joke now.

I can't remember offhand what I last shared with you with my painting. However, with the end of April approaching, I am now getting ready to take part in a month of art called MerMay.  I'm taking part in an online group. hosted by Ida Andersen Lang. It's only 10 days, but the whole month of May is going to be dedicated to creating art with a theme of mermaids. I am really looking forward to this.

I found these two boxes of Jane Davenport colour sticks in my stash.  Jane Davenport is an Australian artist who does her own range of stencils, stamps, colouring products and other art materials. These colour sticks are like a chunky wax crayon in lipstick form and they react with water and behave a lot like watercolour paints.

A few days ago, I got these mica powder pallets. I like the colours, and I think they will be very useful for the MerMay project.

Anyway I've been itching and twitching to get going on the project and I reached the stage where I couldn't wait any longer with impatience. So over this past weekend I started dabbling and dipping my toe into creating mermaid art.

A while back, I used one of those Facebook apps that converted a picture of me into various things such as a Viking, a Celtic warrior, a fairy. One of the options was a mermaid. so I took one of the images and used that as my reference image to give me inspiration for the first piece I did.

Then I decided to draw a tail. Think of a mermaid that is just dived. It started out more as a doodle, so I haven't invested a lot of time and work in this piece. However, it's left me with a lot of inspiration and ideas for things I would like to explore during the coming months.

I obviously added scales on one half of it, and I painted it using metallic paints to try and give it a shimmery oceanic effect.  I also added a sort of seaweed border.

There'll be quite a few more pieces of artwork coming in the following month, I think. I hope so anyway.

until next time.

Stay well stay safe.

Debbie.