- Goldfish -

What?! ANOTHER complete work?! In full color?! AND A FULL BODY?! Madness I say, MADNESS! I guess my art block is gone

Fathers Day is coming up, did you know? Yes... it's not one of my favorite holidays. No no, it's not that I don't love my dad! It's just that I never know what to get him! Most people would joke, "Get him a tie!"... but my dad never, ever, EVER wears ties. He's not a buisinessman, he's a mechanic. There's no "tie" invovled. Meh... if only it were that simple! Actually, I don't think I've ever bought him a tie in all my life. Hmm...

Anyway, yeah, he's hard to shop for. Anything he would really, really like I can't afford x.x And it's only Fathers Day for crying out loud! I don't take Mothers/Fathers day as seriously as, say, Christmas. It's just a day to remind us to spend some quality time with our folks. But, well... anyway.

So I racked my brain on what to get him. At first I was hesitant to draw him something. I wasn't sure if he'd really appreciate it or not. Either way, this is what I came up with. I drew the sketch on paper (just like - Viel-) then I scanned it and inked it in Open Canvas. I think the ink job is alot thinner on this one, which is nice. I ended up coloring this in PSP since I wanted to do lots of color gradiations. I've been working on this literally ALL DAY. It must've took me 3-4 hours just to ink the damn thing... and in the end alot of extra stuff got omitted. She was going to have seaweed circleing her like my Tropical Sea Mermaid picture, but in the end I discarded it because A) it would have taken WAY too long, and B) it would have cluttered up the image. There are also some parts I forgot to add (namely, a frilly dorsal fin that was supposed to be on the back of her tail and fins on her wrists).

From the beginning I had in mind a mermaid that had goldfish features. I wonder if most people think of a type of fish when they draw mermaids. Your average, run-of-the-mill mermaid is usually not much more then a woman with a green or blue fishtail and clamshells or starfish or what have you for a bra. Even the more dynamic images are still very simple. They seem to just be thier own "species". Here, this mermaid is modeled after a goldish. I made her hair "finny" and her tail billowy... I think it looks really charming. I kept the image of the pokemon Goldeen in my head the whole time Thinking of the beautiful sunset of colors (I love this color scheme, yellow to orange to red). I kept asking my mom for her opinion, and then I got the idea to add the black spots. It ended up making her look alot more like a goldfish, and made her look wild I like it.

I kept messing around with it more and more... I added the background (I figured out a way to make a simple watery-like background) and then I added some eye make-up and nail polish, it was fun! And then I added the frame in PSP and bubbles... wah! I just keep fiddleing with it - and in the end the picture suffered a little jpg compression It's alright though, it kind of gives it a texture.

My only regret is that you can't really appreciate all the details in this smaller version... there's lots of fine lines here and there and stuff. Off well. Hope you all like it anyway! I think this may be my best work in a long time.