Stingray Meets... Mer-Man by Yevgeny Sokolov

Earlier this year I decided that I wanted to expand the horizons of my Stingray commissions. Generally speaking, my prompt was always super simple: Stingray. To be sure, this simplicity has turned out some truly amazing commissions, but I thought it would be fun to try something new. I came up with a whole new prompt:
"With Stingray being the world's foremost oceanographer, he must care about the oceans, and by extension, the life in them. So wouldn't it be cool for him to meet some of the more interesting sea life that's out there?"

With this new prompt in mind, I came up with a list of aquatic characters from various corners of pop culture. The "Stingray Meets..." list now lives on my phone, ready to be shared with an artist at a moments notice. I shared the new prompt and the list with Yevgeny when we first started talking about doing a commission and he loved the idea. I asked him if any of the character struck his fancy and he said he needed some time to mull it over and look up reference for a few as he wasn't quite sure who they were. About 24 hours later he came back with his top three choices. What's interesting is he had a fairly specific idea of what he wanted to do with his #2 choice, and I really liked it, so we agreed that's what he would do. Thus, it was time for Stingray to meet Mer-Man from the Masters of the Universe (Another option from the list actually makes an appearance in this piece, and wasn't even in Yevgeny's top 3, but we'll get to that...).

I first "met" Yevgeny on an episode of Ruben DaCollector's streaming show. It was a panel discussion about commission collecting. I was there for obvious reasons and Yevgeny was there to share an artist's perspective. He admitted that he was unfamiliar with Stingray but looked him up during the show. He said Stingray looked like he would be fun to draw and I said we should make that happen. A couple of months later I reached out and here we are.

The commission process for this piece was one of the most engaging and enjoyable I've encountered. Yevgeny started by doing a couple of thumbnail sketches and having me choose the composition that I liked best. From there he did a rough sketch which then turned into a color study. I got process shots of the pencils, the paints, and the inks. The whole thing was very interactive and Yevgeny couldn't have been easier to work with. Check out the additional images for just a sampling of the process. This is easily the most well documented piece of art I own!

The finished piece is beautiful. There are so many elements that really embed the figures in the environment, adding depth to the piece. And it blows my mind how much detail Yevgeny was able to bring out with the watercolors. Look at Mer-Man's scales, the crumbling of the statues, the sharks in the background, and all the bubbles! Mer-man's armor looks like it has weight and heft to it. His spear looks solid and deadly. Meanwhile, Stingray looks heroic and ready for a fight. And the colors... man do they pop!

Now, let's talk about the statues. One of the other options on my "Stingray Meets..." list was the Aquaphibians from the 60s TV show, 'Stingray'. Yevgeny thought they would look cool as statues and he was so right! So technically, this is a two-fer!

Go follow Yevgeny on Instagram:
Yevgeny_sokolov_art

Also, check out his site and get yourself a commission:
Yevgeny Commissions