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Sorry, I am mostly familiar with merpeople in Europe. This subject is so huge I intend to write at least one article about merpeople in next months. I am sure i will know more then.

He started s caricaturist. He preferred lines at first but later he focused on colors. Even there he started with very limited pallette, mostly blues, and gradually added others. He started seriously use ochres only after ten years of professional work - no kiddin'. Yes, I am familiar with this saying. Dulac wasn't top crator in all areas but he was equally passioned with everything he participated at. Professionally and privately.

Thank you for your comments below in answer to my previous observations and questions.

Please accept my apologies if I ask this question a second time. The computer crashed. I don't know if my question ended extant or extinct -- ;-D -- from that crash.

So here goes.

Amazon-basin traditions about merpeople inhabiting upside-down cities -- perhaps like UNESCO World Heritage Site Rani-ki-Vav (the Queen’s Stepwell) at Patan, Gujarat -- intrigue me.

Amazon-basin traditions invoke such native South American languages as Tupi-Guarani. Runa Shimi ("language of the people" [known as Quechua, "to steal" because of Spanish-speaking conquerors behaving badly by misnaming the language name of their conquerees]) is not an Amazon-basin native language even as it is a native language of coastal and near-coastal South America.

And yet Amazon-basin traditions list the merpeople as yacuruna (from Runa Shimi yacu runa, "water people").

Might you have seen the film The last wave by Peter Weir and with Richard Chamberlain? It notes what South-American culture and Thor Heyerdahl (Oct. 6, 1914-Apr 18, 2002) noticed: the Inca people operated linguistically in Runa Shimi, not their native language even as they originated biogeographically in lands westward from South America.

The Runa Shimi of Peru seems almost Asian tonal or Indian subcontinent-like in its sound even as the Otovalo Runa Shimi that I speak sounds not at all that way. Perhaps underwater, upside-down cities of Amazon-basin merpeople tell us of Sanskrit-talking origins of Inca peoples!

Would you have found any other stories about mermaids, mermen, merpeople wending their way through underwater, upside-down cities?

I took the striping to be cloud shadows. Why there is a blue element to it I know not.it could be blue light scattered in the atmosphere..

Thank you for your comments below in answer to my previous observations and questions.

All your son's in-text images are of such high-quality beauty (like those of his Aunt Veronica and of his mother ;-D).

The last image particularly intrigues me. What is the blue striping intermingling with the white striping from?

Isn't it interesting that he invoked the same high-quality commitment no matter what form of art interested him?

Might Edmund Dulac have mentioned anywhere whether all art mattered equally to him or whether one form mattered above all others?

(Unitedstatesians sayings note [erroneously in regard to Edmund Dulac, and of course ;-D to others], "Jack of all trades, master of none"!)

Thank you for the tip. I'll check it!

Of course, birds and fish live in different world which are so close to use, yet unreachable without some kind of technology.

Not really. But too speedy a descent .can lead to accidents I can recall having to control teenage hikers when they were sliding on loose rock towards a cliff

Ancient Amazon-basin traditions considered merpeople as watermen whose feminine counterparts came about through captured human females. Such human women configured into mermaids constituted water healers even as mermen conducted themselves always likeably with animals, sometimes unlikeably against humans.

Amazon-basin merpeople displayed feet and head facing backward! They dwelt in human-like crystal domiciles underwater. Their domiciles figured as upside down!

Have you seen the striking images of UNESCO World Heritage Site Rani-ki-Vav (the Queen’s Stepwell) at Patan, Gujarat? It's an inverted temple.

That might be what Amazon-basin traditions mustered for their merpeople!

Going too fast downward or upward in underwater situations can be disabling or even fatal.

Can such a situation happen with changing altitude quickly downward or upward?

I know of no exercises for this purpose.

We have insufficient experience at higher altitude for me to answer this question.

The computer crashed before I could continue to another component of my question.

Do you and your wife and your children deal easier, less uncomfortably, more effectively with altitude changes from lower to higher or from higher to lower?

The second paragraph to the first subheading, A difficult start, alerts us to altitude changes and to their concomitant consequences of shortness of breath among humans.

Are there breathing exercises for going into, during, coming out of altitude changes?