Mermaid of the Lunar Sea

~Bad Poetry~Pen Brush Sword~Tributes

Nov. 10

Written By Tiler 'Ti' Bradshaw

Aside from swords and blood, this has just about all the things that I am drawn to thematically: fantasy creature, space, the moon, implication of magic, the void, and women. The idea for this is not entirely my own, as I've always had this same title in mind, 'Mermaid of the Lunar Sea,' is actually a lyric lifted from one of my favorite Rush albums Counterparts, and this line comes from the first song Animate, which is similarly my favorite song at least on that album. The album is essentially about how despite the individual directions and leanings and dispositions and situations of a diverse set of people, all of us are counterpart to another in some way that should be celebrated in a fitting manner. The conceit is that each one of us fits in somewhere with someone, be it a matter of sex (an especially difficult symbol to avoid here) gender, relationships with friends or lovers, familial and economic situations. My habit for listening to albums start-to-finish enforces the deliberate manner that this album was designed with and really drives the themes well. This piece is ultimately my tribute to the band Rush and how much I enjoy their work, particularly here.

How this piece came about for me was through my desire to explore my techniques somewhat, like draw a healthy looking, large and consistent black space (harder than you may think with ink!) and to play with some masking techniques and learning about how this paper behaves with this ink (does it bleed around masks? Does it apply too thick too soon? etc.)

I wanted to make a scene that felt a little fantastical and slightly weird yet elegant and majestic. I'm really happy about how it turned out. I do wish that i could have made better use of the white space and masking/very selective grading for simulating light. As well, I really with I had the presence of mind that night to keep more light on the tail and turn down the light on the planet in the background, as it kind of interferes with the subject's contrast.

Regardless of how it came out in the end and what i think of my performance here, I am very happy for the confidence that this painting gave me. For at that point I was aware of just what things I could get away with and where I could start exploring how to expand on different methods to enhance my work.