Merlin Art

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Tropes and genres
Synonym(s)Merlin Fanart
Related tropes/genresCategory:Merlin Art
See alsoMerlin, Merlin Vids, Merlin Fanfiction
Related articles on Fanlore.
The Merlin Zodiac Project, an example of collaboration

Merlin is a fandom with a large, active community of fan artists and a high degree of collaboration between visual artists, fic writers, and other fan creators. This page will give information on graphic fanart and crafts.

For more information on collaborations and other types of fanworks, see the main page and Category:Merlin.

Pairing centric artwork is popular, but works featuring a single characters are very common as well. Recently, the dA communities have had a notable increase of fanworks concentrating on the actors behind the characters.

Crafts

Merlin and Arthur as mice, by o_deanna.

Merlin fandom has an active community of crafters doing things from knitting and cloth printing to explicit cake making. Various types of dolls (knitted, clay or ball-joint) are common and craft works are often made in pairs, generally to represent the maker's love for Merlin/Arthur. LJ community Craftalot was made exclusively for Merlin-related crafts a short time after the end of the first season, in December 2008, as a community "for sharing creative, crafty things inspired by the BBC's Merlin. All kinds of handicrafts are welcome, including (but not limited to) cooking, sewing, costuming, knitting, decorating, jewelry-making, and papercrafts."[1]

Cosplay

Cosplay is often done in groups with representatives of the main four characters, Arthur, Gwen, Merlin and Morgana.

Drawing & Painting

Drawing and painting gained even popularity in the hiatus after the first season. Digital and traditional methods are both common. Primary ships in terms of fanworks created are Merlin/Arthur and Arthur/Gwen with example numbers of 224 for the former and 59 for the latter taken from BBC Merlin News[2]. However, those numbers are contested on the ground that the newsletter's fanart tag isn't applied only to drawn fanart, and that the very definition of what counts as a pairing in a drawing can be more subjective than in other types of fanart[3].

For more information about the art examples click the images or follow the links:

Fancomics/cartoons:

Icons

icons used as chapter banner in In Want of a Wife by syllic

There are many LiveJournal communities for icons, some of them open only to elite icon makers, some running challenges or contests like LIMS. Icon posts are accepted at most pairing- and character-centric communities, even if the icons are seemingly 'gen'.

Icons are the art form most likely to feature minor characters and characters not so often present in other fanart.

Photomanipulations and Banners

There is no central community for posting manips and banners, but they are accepted in most general and pairing communities.

Modern AU manips and banners are often used for fic headers and as vid banners.

Vids

See main page and Category:Merlin Vids

Communities

On Livejournal

"The Ceremony" by itzcoatl. Illustration for venivincere's Paperlegends novel Light of Arthur.
Blade Runner by newkidfan was created for reel_merlin as a fusion with the movie Blade Runner.
illustration of Aurhter and Merlin facing each other, Merlin highlighted in blue and Arthur in yellow. They are surrounded by the roots and branches of a tree, with the sun in the tree's branches and a cresent moon below among the roots
Winter Solstice. Gift art by goss for all Merry Merthur participants.

On Y-gal

Deviantart

Recs & Resources

References