Air Kiss Walkthrouh

For May's contest over at Club-Tutu, the theme was underwater, and was open to a variety of depictions, so long as the characters were actually in the water. After trying a number of ideas, including a pairing with Mytho and Rue, Ahiru and Rue together, I eventually settled on doing either Fakir and Ahiru fluff or a cute Ahiru solo. Below are the pen sketches I did one evening, and put up to get feedback. The Fakiru piece was the one chosen.

Next came a number of studies. This is one page I did of some kissing studies. I also reviewed some potential fish for mer!Fakir, including stingrays and swordfish, before settling on the visually interesting lionfish.

After the studies, I moved on to the actual work. Started with a blue Colerase pencil. You can see the details I added, from the rough figures, to the fins and the mask held by Fakir.

Inking. I opted to use FW acrylic ink this time to be sure the ink would go over the pencil lines well.

 

Here is where I deviated from my original plans. I had planned to color it in Photoshop, but I was running out of time, and I'm still not very comfortable with coloring. I also recently found some lovely B&W art that was inspiration for me to try using solid blacks. I used a #3 brush to paint around the figures, which was not as neat as I would have liked, and used a white gel pen to draw in the bubbles.

Final version, with blue lines removed and contrast evened out.