Finished this at last! I had a mermaid sketch, then I wanted to do mermaid and sailor as a Multifandomdoodle treat for @rubynye's but ran out of time. Also partly inspired by Ruby's cute art style. 😘
rubynye reblogged
I am self employed, and my favorite way to make money is when people fund whatever I'm hyperfixating on. This month is mermaids.
If you have a specific fish you want to see mermified in my style, please let me know above!
If you don't know any cool fish, I made a guide to discover them here!
You can request non-fish aquatic creatures! Pinnipeds will be selkies, Cetaceans will be mammalers, and arthropods will be Fairies (tiny humanoid magical creatures) that happen to come in aquatic flavors. Anything else, I will still draw but they won't be canon to @worldofvonder
somebody should order your favorite seahorse species so i can explain mermaid mpreg to the masses
Done! *laugh*
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Content Label: Mature
Content Label: Mature
The author has indicated this post may contain content that may not be suitable for all audiences.
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A Merry MerMay to you all!🧜♀️
One of my favorite moments from faire last year was when a small girl came over to my booth, saw this print, and declared her sheer disappointment and frustration at whoever had taken this photo, instead of helping me in my moment of peril.
I assured her that the photo had been taken the very second the swarm had attacked, and that my friend helped me right afterwards.
She still seemed very unimpressed. lol
Never let the magic die. <3
I hope you all have a wonderful week. :)
Thank you to my friends for helping me on this shoot back in 2020. It's still one of my favorites to date. ♥️ lexi.the.first, steven.the.second, Rae, & Hanna V.
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rubynye reblogged
brown mermaids are scientific
I’m so sick of seeing racists try to scientificially explain why mermaids aren’t brown. Everyone’s like “eh, but they’re fictional” and while that’s true and a great argument, I would like to point out that scientific mermaids also have plenty of reasons to be brown, or any color other than white, and nature actually isn’t racist. We can actually use science in conjunction with diversity to create more lush, interesting lore for our fantasy.
Color underwater is actually really cool because water is going to scatter wavelengths of light. The further down you go, the more colors we lose. The first color to go is red, then orange, then yellow. This is why if you look at deepwater sea creatures a lot of them are actually red. This provides incredible camouflage because there’s no red light wavelengths down there to reflect it, which makes their colors so muted and dull that it’s extremely hard to see them.
If we had mermaids who were evolving for camouflage, bright red would be the strongest choice. However, orange and yellow also rapidly become dull under the water, and that’s where the vast majority of human skin tones fall on a color wheel. Although shade obviously makes a difference, it would overall be pretty negligible. Any human skin tone would quickly become muted and dull. The more interesting question isn’t whether a mermaid would have light or dark skin, but rather the pattern in which those colors would likely present themselves.
Mermaids are almost certain omnivores, just like humans are. They’re portrayed with the same teeth as us, and the mix of incisors for tearing and molars for grinding indicates a diet that would consist of plants and meats. Mermaids have long arms with dextrous fingers that would likely be used for tool use, and considering all the overlap I think it’s reasonable to assume that they would likely hunt rather than scavenge their prey.
Most ocean hunters present with countershading, a coloration pattern that involves being dark on “top” and light on “bottom”. I think the most likely coloring a scientific mermaid would have would be this two toned system, one that’s consistent across the body and tail. So a mermaid’s back would be dark, going with human skintones we would see a very deep brown, with a belly that would be extremely pale. Because of the odd way mermaids swim, it’s even very possible that this coloration would continue throughout the arms, with the backs of the hands up to the shoulders presenting with the dark brown, and the underside presenting with the pale white. Maybe we would even see dappled spots of lighter shades across the back to mimic the way light looks from the surface.
Though even then all of this assumes mermaids as deep water animals that rarely come up to the surface. If we assume that Ariel’s dad is just kind of a jerk and mermaids are naturally inclined to spend a lot of time in shallow waters, perhaps foraging through tide pools, it’s a very different idea and one that would support mermaids primarily having a dark coloration for skin protection. I think this is a really interesting concept too, because this could even provide a very strong argument for why mermaids have arms. It would make them much slower in the water than most other sea creatures, but it also makes it incredibly viable to spend time in shallow waters and tidal areas with a much lower risk of being stranded on dry land, as they could both use their arms to drag themselves into the water and get around obstacles, and also incorporate tool use that could make extended trips inland extremely beneficial.
Skin colors in humans are not a mistake. Every skin color has benefits and drawbacks from a scientific standpoint, and aside from all these fascinating discussions about UV rays and color below the sea, sexual selection matters too. If brown mermaids didn’t have a reason to be brown other than the fact that the other mermaids thought that the color was especially beautiful, that’s a scientific reason too. It’s why we have birds and fish with so many gorgeous colors that make them stand out instead of blend in.
Diversity is scientific. It’s reality. People of color exist, and we would exist in these stories of fantasy and sci-fi. Don’t let them tell you otherwise. When they say that black, latine, asian, mixed race, whatever - when they say we shouldn’t exist in these stories, they’re wrong.
No matter what your skin color, science is for you too. Keep learning. Keep arguing. We’re not going anywhere. <3
rubynye reblogged
How do mermaids swim in the winter? I’ve always wondered. If Melody can do it in The Little Mermaid 2, then they can? On the other side, they’re half human so, they would freeze? I want answers.
This is going to boil down to:
- Mammal vs. fish
- Evolution (either humans evolved into mermaids, or mermaids evolved into humans, or they derived from a common ancestor)
- Magical influences on biology
None of the three are mutually exclusive. Your answer is going to be on a x-y-z axis plotting these out.
- Mammal vs. fish: Mammals are warm-blooded and usually rely on blubber to keep their body temperature up. Fish are cold blooded (most fish) and so their metabolism is designed to work in these temperatures. Are your mermaids more mammal or more fish?
- Evolution: This is where your world building gets fun / tricky / hard / delves into the deep lore. The short answers are similar to "chicken vs. egg, which came first" but can best be set up with "are your mermaids warm blooded or cold blooded?" Cold blooded mermaids who use the sun's warmth in bright months and thermal vents in dark months would be neat. Especially when you investigate real-world thermal vent creatures and coral and algae and... (...rambles for 14 hours).
- Magic: This (can) split into a few areas as well. Take your answer from #2 and decide "was there a singular magical event, a la The Big Bang, that caused this path?" Is it a continual magical event pushing the diversion forward? If continual, is the affect lingering or was it one-and-done? This will help you figure out cultural frameworks in, like, a lot of ways. It can also help figure out body shapes, depth levels they live at, dive to comfortably, cannot pass... etc.
Ultimately the mermaids exist in your world and so your rules go.
You're going to get people who argue with you... I speak from experience... and compare your world to properties you did not create, cannot influence, and do not profit from. This is the nature of making stuff, ignore / adapt with them to your tolerance / their attitude.
If you want short and quick answers, their bottom half is less likely to be cold because of weight and blubber, but their top half will need clothing and/or magic of some sort.
This is similar, but in reverse, to how you can get away with thicker coat than pants. Your core is up high and full of stuff that needs to stay warm. They have a a big ol' lower section with trunk to spare.
One could argue that their organs would be redistributed given they essentially have two large areas for organs. If we are workshopping this together, I would argue against it, given a mermaid is going to need that trunk for massive muscles given the density of water as a medium + pressure at various depths + regular needs to float.
But if we are not working together -- your mermaids, your rules.
As a final note to #2, as a general loud reminder: Humans do not need to exist in your world at all. You can have a fantasy world that does not currently have and/or has never had humans and/or will never have humans. This is perfectly okay, morally acceptable, and without ethical dilemmas.
I appreciate this is not a common choice for reasons... (angry rambles for the next 20 years as to why humanity writes stories as they do) ...but it is absolutely allowed.
Or more appropriately, there aren't story cops who can stop you.
Three Sisters. For Mermay
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hanfu-mermay
rubynye reblogged
Had so much fun designing this series of mermaid paintings based off of Indian saris! More art here: www.instagram.com/kelseyeng32
Also I am looking for illustration work - editiorial, YA, etc if anyone knows of anything :)
varda-ruunaser-alighieri
Indian mermaids?!? On MY DASH?!?
I will never not reblog this
rubynye reblogged
Anonymous asked:
do you have any cool nudibranch facts?
most nudibranchs lay eggs in bright fanciful ribbons that look like flowers or coral!
can you imagine if these things had taken a similar role to flowers in human culture?
this valentines day, give her the gift of NUDIBRANCH EGGS
rubynye reblogged
Anonymous asked:
I've heard some people with the theory that mermaids could exist as humans that branched off and evolved to the sea but I've always been skeptical about how we haven't seen their impact on ecosystems. Do you think we would have seen clear evidence of their effects on aquatic life by now or is the ocean really that vast?
like I said in the megalodon post, you don’t actually have to observe an animal directly to be able to divine its presence in the ecosystem by observing its effects on said ecosystem! and we haven’t found anything that would suggest there’s a super-intelligent being with hands living in our oceans.
but more importantly in this case- it takes more time to evolve a fully-aquatic form from a land-based mammal than you would expect, and the math just doesn’t work out for human-derived mermaids.
see, for whales to evolve from a fully-land-based mammal to their very first fully-aquatic form took 12 million years.
and modern humans, depending on who you ask, have only been around 500,000 to 200,000 years.
even if we were generous and said it could be a human-stem mermaid, the entire basal human lineage has only been around for about 6 million years!
and if a mermaid-like creature had evolved in that time, most importantly, it would still be an air breather because mammal metabolisms are too active to be able to get by on the little oxygen that gills could supply, even if it managed to somehow re-evolved them! (this is also why no aquatic mammal species has ever taken steps towards re-evolving gills- breathing air is just so much more efficient and supports a MUCH higher activity level! this is also why most fish are cold-blooded.) and if it was an air breather, we absolutely would have seen/caught one by now. the oceans are vast, but most of them is unlivable empty desert and most air-breathing species tend to stick close to shorelines.
so sorry, mermaids are staying firmly in the realms of fantasy where they belong!
rubynye reblogged
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES (2011) PETER PAN (1953) SIREN: SEASON 2 EPISODE 10 (2019) HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE (2005) THE LITTLE MERMAID (1989) THE LIGHTHOUSE (2019) HOOK (1991) THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE (2005) PONYO ON THE CLIFF BY THE SEA (2008) AQUAMARINE (2006)
