Leona's Mermaid

Leona came to me with a picture of a mermaid, possibly a pen and ink (or watercolour) painting and wanted me to re-create it with a few changes. 

Firstly, she was keen to see the whole mermaid, in the original the tail is lopped off and only partially formed. She liked the blonde hair and the full figure (and specifically requested a nipple) and she picked a few colours that she wanted to see in the painting - she's fond of the blue side of the colour wheel.

She also gave me licence to add a few embellishments and "make it my own".

I've realigned the image so that it's front and centre on the 45x60cm canvas.

The colours Leona pointed out when we were discussing this piece reminded me of a peacock. I wanted to try and keep the original style of the image (there was a reason she fell in love with it) but I've used a peacock inspired palette to pull it off. 

Things started getting a bit tricky around this point. The hand and face is very stylised, it's almost cartoonish, and I wanted to keep that style but embellish it, really flesh her out and add a touch of realism to her features.

Hands are incredibly difficult to capture. The original has that stylised, cartoonish hand with fingers splayed out at awkward angles so I've given her hand a more regal shape. I also painted it a bit larger than the original though it's still quite small in proportion to the body.

I've possibly overdone it with the curling tongs! But the face is were I'm truly struggling, I'm not satisfied with it. (Keep in mind that I'm yet to paint the eyebrows, they'll finish off her facial expression.)

It's lost some of the original expression and I need to draw that out again. I've changed the shape of her eyes (made them rounder, more realistic) and I've changed the direction that she's looking in so that's she's peering out to the viewer rather than off over her shoulder. So I'm going back to the drawing board to rethink those changes. 

And in the meantime I'll be glossing over some sections of tail to draw out the deep blues and highlight her hip.

 Stay tuned!