Mermaid Update

Look! After 2 years of gathering dust, I've got my easel out of the corner and I'm using it again! It's been a long time since I've worked with acrylics, or done anything on this scale and at first I almost gave up in frustration. I'm become accustomed to clean bright washy watercolours and if a splash is made, (I'm very messy so a lot of splashes are made) then a splash of watercolour is easily remedied. NOT the case with acrylics as I was reminded the first day I was using them when I dripped a LARGE LOADED brush of bright red paint onto my cream rug. And it bounced.

(!)
What is a cream rug doing in a studio you may wonder.
My 'studio' is also our bedroom and I'd had rather a lot of acrylic accidents in the past, which didn't matter because the floor was vinyl. When I decided that watercolour was now to be my medium of choice I covered up the paint-stained vinyl with a new cream rug, what luxury! Needless to say I've now moved the rug well away from my painting area so brushes are safer to bounce.

Getting back to what I was saying, I found this painting frustrating at first because acrylic is so very different to watercolour and not just mess-wise. The brushes I used to use were bristly, large and to be truthful ,very cheap! I've had to use a couple of my older sable brushes for this painting and it did made life a lot easier. I need to buy some more small softer brushes because it's fun using acrylics again!

As for the mermaid painting, as you can see above it's getting to the final stages, with just the shells and flowers in her hair to do and I might put some scaly texture on her tail.

Extra Edit.....I was looking at this post and I realised it might look odd that the fish are doing a nose dive. They're not really, this is a bath panel so the design will be on it's side when the panel's back in place! :o)