MERMAID’S WISH
SHANNON MAER
F
or US-based comics and cover artist Shannon
Maer, “dedicating yourself to your passions is
always an arduous journey. It is both rewarding
and a difficult path to follow. The time and
energy I invest in my art can feel overwhelming at
times, but as for the experience of it, each image is a
world that I get to live in during its creation.”03
CONTRAST AND LIGHTING
Here, I both adjusted the pose to add some
life to the figure as well as the early stages of adding
some contrast and lighting to the environment.DISCOVER HOW SHANNON MAER MADE THIS ETHEREAL DIGITAL PAINTING
01
INITIAL SKETCH
Getting an overall feel for the direction of
a piece is vital at an early stage. Limiting it to black
and white helps me to focus on the image in a
purely graphic manner.02
UNDERPAINTING
Laying down a base for all the colours as
well as the basic shading, sets a tone before all the
heavy lifting goes into detailing.For this personal art piece, Mermaid’s Wish, Maer
was “exploring a more natural and organic feel in my
work... And what better way to explore that than by
attempting to capture the ethereal essence of a
mermaid? For this very reason, you will see that
throughout the process, I made several changes in
pursuit of this goal.” Photoshop is a fundamentalHOW I MADE TECHNIQUES
part of this iterative process, although Maer says “I
like to approach the image with as much of a
traditional method as possible. In the early stages I
use countless layers, but eventually I will merge
down to a single layer to work on. Retaining separate
masks and alpha channels however, is a powerful
asset that Photoshop excels in.”