Mermaids grant their wisdom

The lessons I've learned half way through Mermay

Oh my goodness I missed a newsletter! 

I have my special Authorstrator schedule and notebook and even with all my careful planning, birthday season still got the better of me. Yes, its birthday season in our house. Multiple birthdays and kid parties back to back to back. Bouncy castles and the predictable injuries that come with, cake messes and wrapping paper explosions and elaborate meal requests. Plus sports for each kiddo has ramped up. So in short, It's CHAOS.

Nevertheless, I was horrified when I finally had a quiet moment to return to my notebook and see I missed a day. SO. The only fix I can see is this unscheduled Authorstrator post. Next week, we return to our regular biweekly schedule.

We're just barely half way through Mermay, and I'm already feeling the burn of the whole endeavor. Even with trying to take it easy and not post every day, putting together an illustration I'm proud of every couple days is a lot of illustrations! But with all that effort, lessons are being learned and that's the whole point of the month, isn't it? That, and to celebrate mermaids for the magical awesome that they are.

Anyway, let’s get to it - what Mermay has taught me so far:

prompt: “toe beans”

1. Story is everything - as a writer, I always knew this. But Mermay drives the lesson home day after day that a single image can tell a story without any words at all. It's always the illustrations with a story that bring me the most joy, the most laughs, or the most interest. Even in my own illustrations - sometimes a prompt isn't enough for me to think too hard and I just draw a mermaid holding a coconut or swimming with fish. But when I take the time to think a bit harder, tell a story, even if it's just one image, I get a much bigger response from viewers. People engage with the piece and connect with me and the community. For example, toe beans. He's having a great relaxing day, but what happens as soon as this curious merm touches his toe? Why is her friend licking her lips? Are they man eating merms? Or do they think his toes are fish? Or worms? Or krill? What do mermaids eat? An upcoming prompt is "sequential." I have great ambition to illustrate a comic story, but we'll see if I can pull it off in time (I suspect I will have to abandon a multi panel story for a single panel, but we’ll see).

Prompt: Bluey! (this one is inspired by the Stickbird episode - IYKYK)

2. Keep it simple - For a challenge like Mermay, time saving choices are a big help and go a long way to getting things done. The Bluey prompt really shocked me at just how much information can be conveyed with the right colour palette. Especially time of day - morning, noon, dusk, twilight, midnight, dawn. Bluey tells you everything you need to know about the time of day using only colour. When studying frames of Bluey to figure out how to do my mermay illustration, I was struck by how simple the colour palette was. The piece came together SO FAST because Bluey keeps it simple! By studying Bluey, I learned you don’t need a ton of fancy shading and rendering to convey light and shadow and atmosphere. And when I think about my own style, I'm often getting stuck because I'm trying to do too many things at once. So I need to remember to take a breath, and think smarter. How can the message be conveyed in the simplest way? 

Prompt: “lei”

3. Backgrounds aren’t so bad. After I finished the sketch for 'lei' I was dreading the background I had set up. All those details felt overwhelming and scary but once I dug into it, it wasn’t so bad. In fact, I found myself enjoying the challenge. How do I want convey tropical water? How do I want to style the rocks? How do I make the day feel clear and sunny? All these questions lead to fun experimentation and what came out of the experiments are lessons to take with me to new illustrations. So don’t be afraid to step outside your comfort zone and try something new. Even if an experiment doesn’t work out, its all information in your artistic toolbox that will help you on the next piece!

rough sketches - ideas!

4. Some nights are just for rough sketches, and that's awesome. Some nights, I don't have the energy to do a full illustration, but with monthly challenges, I often feel pressure not to slow down. Even this year, when I planned to just do a few prompts to take it easy on myself, some nights I’ve been too tired to come up with an idea let alone start what I know I will have to to be completed eventually. I needed to find ways to take it easy. This year, I had a lot of fun scribbling rough ideas. I'd tell myself I was just going to do a rough sketch for an upcoming prompt and often times, I found doing that one rough sketch would give me the boost I needed to come up with a bunch of other rough sketches! When the muse strikes and the ideas flow, I gave into it and just scribbled idea after idea and put the work away. Coming back to drawing on a night when I’m drained felt easier, because I had a framework waiting for me. I didn’t have to think too hard. I could just put on some jeopardy and draw.

5. I really need to write a mermaid story. Technically, I already did. The YA mermaid graphic novel is out the door and its fate is in the hands of the story gods now. BUT I’m itching for a dangerous mermaid story. Written in prose. You don’t have to be on the Mermay hashtag for long to find a scary merm, and boy do they set my brain alight with ideas. After all, wasn’t the mermaid of myth a dangerous maneater, originally? I love the idea of this disney-fied sparkling magical beauty coming back to her roots as a horror of the deep.

SO on that note, it’s mothers day and I have an afternoon to myself while the kids are out visiting grandma and collecting what they will make me for dinner (sausages and captain crunch, I’m sure) so I may just indulge myself with an afternoon of writing scary mermaids.

Doodle

Because I’m writing this newsletter on Mother’s Day, this image from last year felt right.

What I’m Working On

Because it's Mermay, I thought it only fitting to watch a mermaid movie. I have not yet seen the live action Little Mermaid and what luck! Its on Disney plus! On Thursday May 16, at 9 pm EST join me in a live draw on the Authorstrator chat! Let’s draw mermaids together! I'll be sharing my progress from sketch to colours to final. Don’t know how to get on the Authorstrator chat? It’s easy!

How to get started

1. Download the app by clicking this link or the button below. Substack Chat is now available on both iOS and Android.

2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for the Authorstrator chat inside.

3. That’s it! Jump into the thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.

Also! If you haven’t been following Lava Cat Cruise Ship, my serial b-movie style creature feature/horror-comedy, we’re more than half way through! Find the latest chapter here. I’ve only really been posting to Notes when chapters drop so I thought I should update you guys in email form. If you’re new to Authorstrator (omg hi! So glad you’re here!) here’s the deal with Lava Cat Cruise Ship:

When luxury cruiseliner The Silver Queen finds giant, parasitic saber-tooths onboard, it's up to the captain's son to save both the ship, and all of humankind.

*****

Sixteen-year-old Eidon Miller thinks his summer aboard his dad's Alaskan Cruise Ship is going to be boring - but when the ship comes across a lifeless vessel and they are forced to rescue the lone, bloodied survivor, things turn from boring to deadly. First the sea begins to boil beneath the ship. People start turning up dead - and then Eidon finds massive, bloody paw prints on deck. Something has awakened beneath the boiling sea and released monsters - giant, parasitic Sabertooths - that had been extinct from the earth for centuries. They've come out of the sea, onto the Silver Queen -- and they are hungry for blood.

Check the LCC section of Authorstrator (which you can find in the banner) or start chapter 1 here! After the final chapter drops, the story will only be available for a short while, but paid subscribers can download the ebook any time!

Paid Subscribers - the results of the poll are in! Its a tie between more tutorials and more writing so I’m cooking up some new Paid features for both categories. You can look forward to pages of annotated notes on my previous works, new fiction, and writing tips!

And last but not least, for all subscribers, I’ll be introducing a new addition to the Authorstrator posts - The Authorstrator Listy List! I’m finding the “What I’m Reading” section of the newsletter needs more breathing room, plus I’m not just reading stuff! I am a movie and tv nerd and I want to geek out with you about all that stuff too. SO, look out for the Listy List in the coming week, I’ll be sharing a collection of my favourite reads, articles, shows, movies, stationery and art supplies!

Alright, this is already too long. See you next Monday for another newsletter where we get back on track after my total brain fart.

Til’ next time!