Fish @ MindSay

The first two images are a bit cloudy and dark because I didn't have a good bright light source to show the pencil drawings in detail, but it should give you an idea what direction I was going to work into...

I've been working, slowly, on a painting of a Betta Mermaid.  Here's how she's been coming into view:

The first color wash above.

Second color wash. The paper is still wet here.

Let dry, then I worked in more detail, including some color on the shell and foliage around the figure. Imagine that the Betta Mermaid is quite small. The shell is most likely from a snail. She holds onto it near the top of a tank or glass bowl.

A close up of the mermaid's face. Her personality is showing!

Another detailed close-up of the mermaid.

And here she gets her scales and fins detailed! I used wet on dry color for this part of the process.

Another close up. I like how the water reflected the light from the flash. It gave me an idea on how to bring out her eyes.
There will be more to come soon. The painting is developing beautifully!

This is the new fishtank we bought today.

We walked into a tropical fish store to look at the pretty fish...

and decided that we wanted to get a salt-water tank.

haha

so we bought a tank, we're going to get a filtration system and such soon.

then we'll get around to setting up the tank to make it livable for fish.

and don't worry, animal lovers.

we're doing our research, and we're going to take the very best care of these fish that we can!

we're planning on staining the stand black, as well.

it'll be prettier.