Painting a Mermaid with Metallic Watercolors, Color Pencils and Gouache “Aeria”

️Here is your real-time (unnarrated) video Reward for May! 🥳️In this video you can see how I created my newest painting “Aeria” for the Bad Apple Artist Collective Auction in May! To make the reference I used various AI programs and Photoshop  but as always I needed to pose myself for the hands and part of the upper body – because AI always spits out mutant hands lol! 🤦‍♀️
For the painting process I tried out metallic paints I found in a hobby store (The store is called “Action” in Germany) – I was so curious if their quality was good because they were so cheap (maybe 3 € per palette)! They were actually really nice but the metallic effect was a bit too strong so I only used them a bit on the moon and the tail! But I will probably use them in future because they came in many colors – even the in the random orange shade of the moon!
For all the intense pinks I used Opera Rose (which I have both as Watercolor and Gouache Paint) , which is probably my favourite pink color right now! I also painted on the Hahnemühle “The Collecton” 640 grams Hot Pressed Satined paper again to avoid any warping – this is my favourite charateristic of this paper! It’s just so nice to not have your painting warped! 😋
Enjoy! 😁

Video Length: ~ 8 h

Painting Size: 36 x 48 cm / 14.2 x 18.9 in

Materials: [Available for Members]

The finished Painting:

My Reference:

My Sketch: 

To create this sketch I used the Photoshop filter “Photocopier” and then inverted the colors (because the filter makes it black) – For this sketch I wanted a colored sketch and I decided blue would fit very well to the subject. I then printed the sketch on my watercolor paper with the Canon PRO-1000 which prints waterproof and voilà my sketch was ready o paint! So easy and rewarding! 😍