In Progress:
One of the Japanese artists I quite like is Takashi Murakami , he’s one of several Japanese artists that use manga (comix) as their inspiration.
The line detail of the mermaid uses Illustrator as you can design your own brushes and this allows for a more manga style use of line and brush stroke - especially in facial details where it’s quite important to get expression right.
Again, I like using the division of the plane - in this case very regular - the idea of the pattern is to make it look like the mermaids are swimming along while being somewhat amused by their reflection.
Like “Mermaids Reflect” , “Mermaids Mirror” / ‘Mermaids Wave Hello’ is based on pattern symmetry and ideas related to self identity, self reflection but a more light hearted take and some experimentation with the breaching out of the pattern with the mermaids waving to each other.
A recent colour test shows the pattern and colour working ok.
Further development of expressions that fit within the envelope of the basic pattern were developed:
The scans get taken into Illustrator and redrawn using custom brushes, then exported to photoshop and painted with the airbrush.
Near finalized results so far: