The Unfinished Mermaid

At the begging of this project my original goal was to finish at least one painting every week. As we are now into the third week of this project I now see that my original goal was unrealistic. I did not realize how much time that it would take to finish a painting. That you cannot just sit down in one day and finish a painting. You must take into consideration of how long it takes for pain to dry, depending on how much detail you want to put into each painting, and extra. There was not any extra time in my schedule for mishaps to happen. I planned on trying to complete two painting over spring break, I did not anticipate that I would be sick the whole week and do nothing but sleep. However, I am feeling better and how to finish this painting soon. 

I stared with a blank canvas. Just staring at it, I could not figure out what I wanted to paint. 

Finally, I had an idea to try and paint a mermaid. Knowing that this would push my skills to the absolute max. I am trying to make this painting as detailed as I can. I know that I need to push my skills to their highest ability to see the results that I would like to see by the end of this project. 

I knew that I needed to start by painting the background ocean color. As you can see here I took that in a few small steps. The second picture is the first layer of paint. There was a lot of paint put into this step of the painting. 

The third and final picture that you see here is still the ocean background. I realized that I needed to add more intricate details to this painting for myself to be completely satisfied with the final painting. So, I went back in and added another few layers of paint to make the ocean look the way I wanted. I also added white streaks to the top left side of this painting hoping that it will look like there is light shining down on my mermaid. 

If you have any suggestions for me such as what colors I should use, brushes, what I should try to paint, etc.. I would love to hear all of your suggestions and comments.

I hope to have the rest of this painting done this weekend.