Behind the Scenes: "Nixie" Step by Step

Well this took much too long for me to get to creating this guide. I unexpectedly had a lot dumped on my plate and I guess it got like, hidden behind a stack of papers or something.

So without further ado, let's explore the making of my Nixie image!

I started with this pose that I made in Design Doll. I based it off of a combination several images I found of women underwater.

I knew I wanted her nude, but I also didn't want to employ "conveniently located strands of hair" (which I find more jarring and distracting than nipples) and wasn't sure about the Librum Prodigiusum's boobies policy, so when I saw a photo of a diver holding her arms near her face I knew that's where I wanted to go. It reminded me a little of cutesy photo booth poses and, as we all know, being appealing is step one in luring men to their watery graves.

**I never did receive any money for working on this book by the way.

Starting in on the lines. Man, I had to look at way too much amateur porn for this drawing. See, the posing programs are great and all but they're never particularly anatomically accurate and thus always require a lot of back and forth reworking and double checking to make sure everything looks the way it's supposed to.

I wanted to keep her features rather fishy (for what I hope are obvious reasons) which, because I can't help myself, included big ol' golden orb eyes. I also gave her rather shallow facial features comparatively and a flattened nose bridge to suggest her more alien origin.

Nixies were traditionally portrayed as what are essentially freshwater mermaids, further muddying the folkloric territory between nixies, mermaids, and sirens. For awhile I considered giving her some sort of sturgeon-esque tail but wasn't sure I wanted to create what amounted to just another mermaid image, especially considering how Nixies have since evolved in pop-culture. I eventually held a poll online and fishy featured lady won out.

Sketched in the hair line. The tiny 'x' suggests the top of the head. I was just showing an observer my intent, but now you get to see it too!

I also did some corrections to her elbows and knee - which I would continue to tweak for ages.

Her butt was also... unexpectedly difficult to translate correctly from this angle and I spent some time figuring out how to use dimples and the lower outline of her midsection to communicate it.

Added her axolotl styled appendages and all that hair.

I actually had a lot of fun lining the hair. Hair underwater has similar but not identical qualities to dry hair and showing the shape, flow, and billowing forms becomes all that much more important. Line weighting really helps define segments as they wrap in and out of each other. If it helps you can imagine it like ribbons twisting and turning in the wind.

Technically those appendages on an axolotl are gills. Axolotls also exchange oxygen directly through their skin and possess rudimentary lungs (which they seldom use).

I squanched the hair and axolotl parts. They were just a little too long compared to the other side. Pretty sure I used ClipStudio's mesh transformation tool for this.

It's best to nip these things in the bud as soon as you see them or they'll get harder and harder to compensate for over time.

And don't be lazy and blow it off either. Bad artist!

Fins! I spent a long time deliberating on how these would look - adding fish fins to her arms seemed wrong, since fins basically are arms already so I'd ostensibly be putting arms on arms which didn't make much sense to me. Instead I opted for these sail like fins, similar to what one might see on the dorsal fin of a koi or goldfish. Her feet, however, are more similar to a frog or crocodile (which is also reflected in her pointy and centralized fingernails). Look at her darling toesies!

I am aware most people would not be concerned with this kind of anatomically pondering and world building. I have no choice but to be true to my failings.

More fins and fin details. Now with finger webbing! I also erased out sections along the edges of the spines since I wanted those to be opaque within the otherwise semi transparent membrane. I also dropped the opacity on the outer edges of the fins.

Again I was looking at fish references, but was only half paying attention. After a certain point it's okay to just go with how you feel.

I tested a lot of different scale brushes from the ClipStudio asset store and decided I liked this one best. Nothing complicated here - I laid out a stroke, used the mesh transform tool to make a more rounded form that followed the shape of her arms, then erased along the edges to blend it out.

I accidentally missed a smudge of scale on her nose but I left it there for a long time since I liked the way it looked. I brought it back when I colored it.

More scales! And bubbles! So many bubbles! The thing with bubbles is to remember that they are seldom truly round - they get deformed by external forces. Areas with more movement will have a higher number of smaller bubbles, and larger bubbles will shift and billow like water balloons as pressure is exerted on them, wrapping and deforming around shapes.

The scales I generally married to the fins, but I also added some lightly to her face, specifically along the brow ridge, forehead/hairline and outside of her face as well as some larger scale marks on her cheekbones and shoulders.

Also cue the shoulder doodly wops. Why? Composition really.

 ...and charm.

Flat colors.

Lots of gradients here - across the image in general to suggest light spilling in from the left hand side (literally picked based on a random suggestion on stream), over the bubbles, mixed tones in her hair, and within her eyes. This gives me a foundation to start with when I start blending in shadows. If it were a picture with more complicated lighting or colors this stage would reasonably get more complex.

You can also see the layers of transparency used for the fins now. I used two layers where they overlapped to make sure the color built up correctly. I originally filled them in using bright red just so I could see what I was doing - highly recomended. I also like neon pink and green.

I also highly recommend this fill tool here if you are using ClipStudio Paint as well as it's corresponding eraser.

I also cleaned up the linework for the bubbles.

From here I jumped into Krita and started blocking in the light and shadows. Just creating a basic idea of how it's going to look. Mapping out the shapes and forms. Scribbling. Thinking.

I used to do my shading piece by piece and section by section, but lately I've been doing it wholesale over the entire image then going back in to work it over in parts, moving around the image more as I finalize the render.

The color of the shadows and highlights might not be as accurate with such a universal treatment - but the Nixie is all blue so it frankly doesn't matter in this case.

Also not visible in small form - there is a small bit of scale texture in her iris, done in bright gold.

Why?

I keep my shadows and highlights on separate layers so I just clicked my highlight layer off. Tada. I would flick it back on now and then as needed but for the most part just lived in the shadow dimension for awhile.

Krita makes this sort of work go a lot faster for me, but results may vary. The program's oil brushes and blenders remind me of when I was working with real media charcoal - which is perhaps a weird comparison for a self described "oil brush" but, lucky me, I find it incredibly intuitive.

Oh, and yes, swirling teal bubbly sediment water. It really adds to the motion of the piece, doesn't it? A bunch of layered grungy brushes. I made sure to add some around the edges of her form to break up the outline and blend her into her surroundings. It's hard to see here but it will become more obvious in the coming images.

I also made efforts to fade/darken/obscure her feet and lower (back?) half to imply the three-dimensionality of the figure as it moves away into the image and further through the water. Water, like fog, is quick to create layers of tonal shift and obfuscation, so you can use it to your advantage!

Highlights! There's a lot of ambient light it water, so everything becomes sort of dreamlike and glowy, giving plenty of excuses for lots of sumptuous rimlighting. Remember, rimlighting exists in places where light can reasonably be bounced around - it's reflected from other sources or backlit. It's helpful to delineate shapes on stylistic drawings like this, but we can't just go throwing it around all willy nilly. If two forms making a corner are both bathed in shadow, or light is otherwise obscured, it's unlikely they'll form one.

Just be mindful of the light in general, really. Light is the language of visual space. Light communicates information to our brains - all we have to do is train ourselves to listen. What I will say next is risking being condescending but I never know what magic assembly of words will make something click for someone so... If you're struggling with light try tracing the rays with your mind. If the light source were an eye, what could it see? If it was a tiny bullet, where would it bounce? Use your phone to shine sunlight at people's faces and see what angles you have to hold it at to blind them best. Whatever works for you.

Unrelatedly I see now that I messed up shading her waist area. Don't tell anyone please.

I worked into her face a lot over the last few steps. It was... rather tricky to get right.

Now with colorful glittering holo sparkles in brilliant neon blue to communicate that reflective quality of certain fish scales.

Like, for real, isn't this gorgeous? No need to reinvent the wheel here.

I experimented with a number of different effects for the fins, ending on the one shown here. I had originally wanted them to be more strikingly golden and shimmering brilliant...

... but it didn't work compositionally. So I pulled it back quite a lot, leaving only the fleeting suggestions around the fin edges and the flashes where they would catch the light (as if they were coated in interference paint).

I also trimmed back some of the grungy splattering that was directly overlapping her highlights

And then in comes the post processing.

Now I legitimately do try to put a lot of tonal variance in my images (I do come from a photography background afterall), which allows me to somewhat effortlessly do these complete overhauls once I've finished rendering. If I didn't there wouldn't be enough data to support yanking things around with the curves adjustment tool this much.

Should I have been adding this much dark to light variance during the rendering process to begin with? 

Probably. 

But I didn't and I wanted it so I made it happen.

Did I need to make it as dark as I did? 

Probably not. 

But I liked the way it looked.

If you're struggling with tonal variance (ie overly "gray" images) try practicing painting in gray scale or occasionally using a grayscale adjustment in your image to make sure you are seeing a complete scale of black to white. Within reason anyway - some pictures are just foggy and gray or blown out or contrasted or so on and so forth etc.

The last step is perhaps the least obvious. I added greeny color overlays, some more gradients, and muted the bubbles around her feet - again in pursuit of that sense of space within the water.

Brief Q&A:

Why aren't there more steps in the coloring part?
I'm dumb and didn't save more

This post isn't really more useful than the gif.
Is that a question? Uh. Sorry.

How long have you been making art?
Ever since I picked up crayons and drew all over my bedroom walls. I honestly should be better by now.

Using a 3D model is cheating!
Also not a question. Look up pinhole projections and cry.

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