Erotic Mermaid Drawing Lesson From Kahbbie

In celebration of our upcoming NYE event Erotic Aquatic, our resident artist Khabbie has provided an original drawing, along with lessons for aspiring illustrators. Kahbbie is also the host of our monthly Figures and Fantasies event, held on the first Monday, during Sass After Class.

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Hello everyone! I’m Tina, my art alias is Kahbbie and today I’m going to briefly go over how to fit multiple characters into a piece and some tips and tricks that I use to make art and have fun while doing it.

Drawing more than one character interacting with each other can be really tough but if you keep a couple key points in mind you can do so with a little more ease.

First, have a spot on your piece or even a whole character to focus on, in this piece the red-headed snorkeler was my focus. When you spend the most time and detail on one focal point or person in a piece you save yourself some effort grueling over every detail and character while also showing the viewer the most important part of your piece.

Second, you have to be mildly aware of where all of everyone’s limbs are so you don’t end up with awkwardly missing hands or legs. To make this problem easier to work out I try to sketch each character in a different color so I can see at a glance where a character’s hand goes when it’s behind another character – I’ve gotten to the point where I can estimate where limbs that aren’t shown in the piece are hiding, but if you’re unsure about where an arm over the shoulder or behind the back would go I suggest sketching out each character’s entire body to make sure characters are placed where you want them.

Lastly don’t be afraid to shift things around mid-piece or adjust the number of characters to suit your mood – if you decide that you only want to draw two mermaids when you started out drawing four don’t hold yourself to your past decisions. Those changes might make your piece turn out even better than your original idea (I was going to only have one mermaid and a scuba diver washed up on a beach but I got ambitious and I think it paid off).

Making any type of art is about having a good time and expressing yourself, so here’s a little list of tricks to make art easier I’ve picked up from art school and drawing for fun.

• Add something small that makes you excited to work on an art piece – for me adding the diver’s Oasis logo bikini added an extra bit of fun to this piece that made me excited to do it.
•  If you make a mistake make it look intentional, I didn’t originally plan to have the purple mermaid have black lips – but when I realized I’d accidentally colored them black I decided it would be cool if she was a Goth mermaid, so I adjusted the color scheme instead of recoloring her lips.
• Before you say you’re finished with a piece leave it alone and come back to it in 5-10 minutes, sometimes if you look at a piece for too long your eyes will start overlooking small details