This month is all about the mermaids. It all started with the original “MerMay” launched in 2016 by animator Tom Bancroft. The “official” MerMay is still around, with prizes furnished by Wacom — but it’s also launched an ocean full of spin-off challenges and prompt lists. I’ve gathered some of the cleverest ones here.
Now, if mermaids aren’t your jam, you can always take the prompts in any direction you want. Candidly, I wasn’t immediately thrilled when I realized that the best art challenges this month were all on this theme — I’d prefer a little more variety, but hey, I’m just the curator. Still, a little research revealed that mermaids are an ancient and global myth, heavily freighted with stories and symbolism that could be quite inspiring. (Also, I cannot tell you how hard it was to avoid puns in that last sentence.)
Let’s play the first prompts game! See if you can match the first prompt to the challenge it belongs to — click on the challenge to find out if you’re right. Some of them are once again quite tricky!
First prompt
Moonlit Serenade
Donut
The World
Angelic
Ice
Key
15th century