deviantART Daily Deviation

   My "La Mer" has been featured today as one of the Daily Deviations at deviantART.com.  This is my third picture to be selected, and I have to say that I did not expect it at all because this piece has been up for quite some time.  It was also nice to get a suggestion for DD from someone other than Hellobaby  (Don't get me wrong.  I adore her art and she's such a great asset to dA community with all she does on top of her art!).  It was a dA member by the username of Astralseed who suggested it with a comment of "Beautiful colors and great details make La Mer by *aruarian-dancer feel like you're in a underwater world".  That makes me happy! :D


   "La Mer" was done in the spring of 2010 (This was months before I got involved with the Enchanted Visions Project and the subsequent licensing deals that followed, so there's no watermark on this image at deviantART.), just when I was getting into my fantasy phase, coming from primarily doing nothing but anime fan art and beginning to do my own surreal drawings in pen and ink.  The coloring of "La Mer" shows both the transitional phase of my coloring technique as I was working diligently to find a way to produce a look similar to watercolor using Corel Painter and the remnants of my crazy doodle with areas of tight details vs. sparsely-filled open areas. 


   What I really like about "La Mer" is that this mermaid is my original design with outrageous ears and excessive pearls, huge piercing eyes, scaly skin, and long sharp claws.  I've always disliked the Disney's version of "the Little Mermaid" for the obnoxious red hair and overly Americanized perky personality.  I imagined mermaids to be cold-blooded and predatory in nature, luring unsuspecting men who happened to or dared to come into their underwater world with their beauty and mystique, but the men are nothing but a prey to them. *giggles*  I imagined that on this mermaid, behind that enigmatic expression, she probably hides rows and rows of tiny shark teeth. :D