Freshwater Mer-Newt (Creature Concept)

For this piece (created for #mermay 2021) I wanted to design a creature based around the general theme of mermaids but instead of using a human as the base form, I took aspects from various animals to try and see if I could make something that was less fantastical but much more strange in appearance as a result. Rather than having a clear separation between fish-like and human features of a traditional mermaid, I tried to blend the anatomy together whilst still keeping the overall body plan somewhat recognisable. The sketches show some experimentation with different animal species as the base form before sketching what would become the final illustration, where the creature has a combination of Newt, Arapaima (fish) and (vaguely) human anatomies.