 Hey everybody and welcome back to the average. I am gonna be doing a little fun video today I absolutely love looking at photos of the Met Gala and this year It was the theme camp notes on fashion and I'm not gonna pretend like I know a lot about what that theme means But I know that it spans from from an essay by Susan Sontang that came out in 1964 and it's all kind of about exaggeration in fashion and kind of it's an aesthetic style and Sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value Yeah, so I just read that off Google So I guess you could look at it as kind of an individual style including Stuff that's about pantomime and cabaret and over the topness and I think there's a really fun cool theme And I just thought that what I would do is take inspiration from this year's Met Gala and draw some Mermaids because it's mermaid and usually I I kind of don't follow the rule of drawing a mermaid every day last year I did all the mermaids in one day. So this year I thought I'd do a little bit different So I decided to just draw a bigger piece and take inspiration from a few people that I saw at the Met Gala I saw them there. Yeah, I went no that I saw photos of and I chose Dakota Johnson's Dress first. I thought her dress was absolutely beautiful And I thought it'd be really interesting to play on that in a mermaid sense Like maybe she's a bit of a murderess because she's got like her heart On her chest and like maybe blood dripping down But like this part of her scales and it got interesting I really like the way that she turned out So the next person that I picked or somebody I hadn't heard of before either But she's a Bollywood star and her name is Pryanka Chopper. I hope that I said that right But yeah, I thought her dress was really cool I thought I could take some elements of it and maybe like have the silver and use silver within the image and Just like the mesh that she had on top and then the floaty Skirt and cape was really cool. Next I chose Cara Delevingne And I think her outfit is one of the ones that I don't like so much, but I thought we'd translate to a really interesting mermaid because of all the colors and just something that I wouldn't probably Use very much or think about using is like stripes of color on a mermaid I know that sounds weird, but I thought it would be really interesting to kind of deconstruct that and use that somehow I think I just went with just using lines. So it's not I made that sound more interesting than it was But I think it's just fun to take an image an outfit That's just so over the top and use it as inspiration. So that's pretty much what I've done here and This time I have been using some new materials. So me and Chris we went to this sort of hmm Stationery shop and randomly they sold like sheets of wood and I was like hey I want to try doing something on wood and you know when you think of a good idea and then you use watercolors and Obviously wood warps with water so we kind of had some issues and we had some Bleeding a bleeding paint and stuff but I think I just kind of went with it because I just kept going really and It worked out. I think in the end I try to use different mixed media as I usually do. So use some Posca pens pencils I think I was thinking about using gouache, but then I didn't in the end But gouache probably have been a much better material to have used on wood because it's not as I mean It can be used as watercolor because you can add water to it to make it more floaty Or it can be used like acrylics where it's just like a solid Opaque color which would have been handy because there was a lot of running because of the grain of the wood There was a lot of lines going from the water. You can see it. I don't know why I'm explaining it but I think in in a sense it kind of worked with to Cody Johnson's mermaid because The way that I had her in the end It kind of inspired me to have the blood floating away from her hands and stuff as if she's just killed something and eaten it But then she's got to go look fabulous at the Met Gala under the sea I think overall the composition of this I wish I had bought all three mermaids up a little bit and centralize them I think my idea was that I was gonna have another mermaid in the background But I kind of forgot about that and yeah, I did do some primary work I did some nail sketches and I think what happened was that I did everything portrait and Obviously this is landscape. So it kind of muddled me up a bit and then I couldn't be bothered To work it out properly. So always do your preliminary work guys We end up with a little bit of an off off composition. I don't really mind this composition though at the end It was fun to do. I always say that when I made a mistake. I'm like, I don't really mind though It was fun, but yeah, I think that's something that I want to look for in the future is try to do some more Preliminary work and then overall come will be a bit better I think halfway through this illustration I got a bit tired because basically it took much longer than I thought so I did this in two parts I did this in one evening and then the next day I did it all morning and till mid afternoon kind of thing on the weekends So it's kind of a spam of different footage taken from different days And it took a long time, but I really enjoyed the process of this one I think it was something that I the idea that I was excited by so it was fun And I think the overall piece really shows that it really shows that I enjoyed what I was doing And I was invested in creating a final piece rather than just making something for the sake of it and hoping that it turns out good I mean, I don't do that often, but I think these days it's hard to find time for myself to draw So when I do find it, I think like I have this intent to just make something perfect But I think I'm trying to let go of that a little bit and do some studies in my spare time And yeah, I think I'm trying, I'm getting into the rhythm more, it's basically what I'm saying I found where I need to be at and I'm really thinking positively towards my new goals And there's lots of goals ahead, I want to try and make another comic I want to try and finish my book trilogy I want to try and just get better at drawing in general and post more videos if it's possible It's just not enough hours in the day sometimes, you know what I mean? Okay, that was a random tangent Anyway, back to the actual art As you can see I added a giant rock face in the background to just add a little bit more depth For a long time I was really stuck on what I wanted in the background of this image And I realised that I drew all these mermaids and then I had to paint all around them And it made for some interesting difficult times, especially with that woodgrain issue that I told you about So luckily once I started drawing lines with a pencil and putting pen down It kind of stopped any of the bleeding of the paint into each other a little bit So that helped a lot I wanted to add details, I kept trying to add depth and things And I was working on the mermaids a lot because I was trying to procrastinate Starting in the background, doing the background And I thought, you know what, I've done plenty of under-ocean water themes before So this should be a piece of cake because, well, if I've done so much before And I've like what I've done before, then why can't I do it again? So I realised what I did is I had, I have a lot of these kind of images in my sketchbooks I have the paper 3D art one and I went and I just looked at what I had done before And I looked at references online and I used them to create the overall composition that is in the background And I was really happy with it I knew that what I wanted to do was have those sort of clouds of white I don't even know what they are, like clouds of white floating water Foam rising up as if to insinuate that the water is hot I wanted to have that coming through through the wood grain But I thought it wouldn't ever work because of the way we did have that bleeding So what I did was I used my white ink and I think that it was actually really effective the way that it turned out And I'm really glad that I did that Yeah, I think it's really cool, I added a lot of detail into the foreground And as it goes, and as you go off into the distance You can see that the detail becomes less because objects further away obviously less in focus So it gives that detail to the image overall Another thing that I did do is I took the ink and I put some ink next to each character And then smudged the ink as if it's some sort of blurry water effect around them And it helped highlight and bring the characters forward And that was kind of a mistake because what I did was trying to put bubbles all over the image Because I think that looks really nice And then one I just did too much and it bled a little bit So I just tried to wash it out But actually it was kind of a happy accident as we say Because it made it look cool and then I used it again and I used it on all the other two mermaids And I think it just was a nice little effect that I'm definitely gonna experiment with using in the future So there you go, that's the overall image guys I hope that you liked it and like this video If you do, please make sure that you give me a thumbs up Because it really helps the channel, especially if you're the early squad Which a few of you are, it really makes me happy to read your comments as well It's just really nice, but yeah That's the end of the video, I hope that you liked this weird merma-met garland-may challenge And I think, yeah, I think this piece is successful And I'm really happy with the way that it turned out And well, let me know what you think, which mermaid was your favourite And if you're gonna do any met garland mermaids, please tag me on Instagram I definitely wanna see them or tag me wherever Yeah, I'm rambling now, so I'm gonna go Thanks for watching guys and I will see you next time Bye!