>>> The next step is to start applying paint. I work mostly from tubes of paint, as I can squeeze them out onto my palette (seen on the left) and mix them as I go. You can also work from pans, which are just as good and can often be a bit more handy than tubes.

To paint the sky, which I want to have a sunset or sunrise sort of feeling, I mix various shades of Blue, Red and Yellow in my palette, making sure to have plenty of paint ready to go: you don't want to stop in the middle of a wash to mix more! Then taking a big, soft brush made of natural fibres, I wet the top half of my paper: the area I want the paint to go in. Then slightly holding my board at an angle to help the paint run down rather than pool, I run large, generous strokes from left to right and top to bottom, taking care to catch up the run from the last stroke in my next. As I go down the page I gradually move from a purpley-blue to red to yellow, being careful to blend gradually. This is all done in one big hit: any stopping or drying or redoing will result in a messy wash and an uneven tone. This is why the best way to go about this step is just to let go and have fun! Paint with strong colours, remembering that colours tend to fade as they dry, so that you don't have to go over it again.
 

<<< Once all the masking fluid is removed, I use some yellow and red paint to fill in the colours on the butterflies' wings. While they dry I take a blue hue and paint in the shape and contours of the rock, applying more paint in the shadow areas, such as around the base and under the mermaid. You can see this step in the inset.

After the blue paint is dry, I take some purple and follow the shadows again to give them a warmer depth and bring the rock out a bit more from the background. Slight shades of green are also applied in some areas, to suggest the wet rock reflecting a green-blue ocean, and then a general wash of a yellowy-brown colour such as Yellow Ochre is applied to make the rock more earthy. The seaweed, starfish and shells on the rock are also painted in at this stage.

You may also notice a slight colour to the mermaid's skin tone in this photo. That's because I have started to shade it in with a technique of different colour layers used by many watercolour artists to achieve a warmth and depth to human skin. If you look at your own skin, you will notice that it is not a flat colour, but is made up of lots of translucent layers: you can see hints of the blue and red from underlying veins and tissue through the surface. The first step in painting this is to fill in the shadow areas with a cooler tone such as a blue or purple. You can see that the shadows get deeper underneath the mermaid's hair and chin. Take care to soften the edges of shadows by blending out with clean water.
 

>>> After the blue tones are dry, the figure is shaded all over with a red tone. The colour is not applied in one flat wash however: it is meant to give shape to the figure. You will notice that over the top of the blue layer, this red layer begins to give depth to the shadow areas. Less colour is applied to highlighted areas, or areas where the light hits most, such as the tops of the mermaid's shoulders and the sides of her torso. I have also applied more colour to areas where the light shines partly through the skin, making it semi-translucent, such as the fingers and ears. If you hold your hand over a strong light source, you will notice the same effect in yourself. Similarly, I have added more colour to flushed areas such as the mermaid's cheeks, and areas where the skin is thicker or bunched, such as her elbows and the arch of her back. You can see that with the red tone added, the body starts to take on a much more realistic effect.
 

<<< Once this stage is dry, I begin to paint the scales of her tail and her top in. On the mermaid's top you will notice the similar technique to the last steps of applying darker shades, or thicker paint, to the shadow areas, and letting some of the white paper show through lighter layers of paint in the highlight areas. This creates a sense of shape and roundness.

The tail was initially painted with a small brush in tight, careful scales. When they were all finished however, they looked too flat and controlled and not very natural, so the gaps in between were filled out with a wash of the same colour. This is a good lesson in washing over thick areas of paint...they run when you add more water! I lost a lot of the definition I had created in individual scales, and you can see parts of both in the tail to the left.
 

>>> After creating a blotted, flat colour in the tail in the last step, I took a clean brush with some clean water and used careful strokes to lift some colour back off the paper, to add some highlight and shape to the tail. In the picture on the right, this looks very rough and unfinished, but will be softened out when I re-add some scale detail later.

I have also started to paint the hair. Initially I just use a yellow colour to suggest where the highlights and shadows are. You can see more detail in the inset. To paint the hair I always pull my brush in the direction of hair growth, letting the stroke taper at the end until it lifts from the paper. My brush stroke is fullest where the hair is in shadow, and tapers away to nothing where the hair begins to move into light. When the hair is curling, twisting or moving over or under itself as hair does, try to think about how the light hits each piece. It will be different depending on the angle of the hair as it curls.

You will also notice that I haven't painted each individual strand of hair: to do so would create a bird's nest or a haystack effect on the poor mermaid's head! When we look at human hair, or animal hair, from even a slight distance away, our eye catches not each individual hair, but rather parts of hair, or groups such as you can see in the photo on the right. Individual curls, strands or 'fly-aways' can be added around the edges of the hair so that it is not a flat block.
 

<<< When the first layer of hair is dry, I darken it with a golden brown colour, working from the shadows out and not dragging my stroke as far as I did with the yellow. This helps the brown to blend with the yellow and push the highlights to the surface away from the shadows and fold of the hair. This extra layers of colour adds depth and shine to the hair: nobody's hair is ever just one colour. Hair changes according to where the light hits it and what colours it reflects. The darker golden brown colour also serves to bring the hair out into a better relationship with the colours surrounding it: its tones match the yellowy-oranges in the butterflies' wings and some of the shells and starfish on the rock. I have also painted in the hair decoration details and further defined the mermaid's eyebrows and facial features, adding some freckles along her cheekbone, tinting the blue of her eye, flushing her lips with a scarlet colour (careful to keep the edges soft and not like harsh lipstick) and touching up her eyelashes to be a bit darker.

You can also see that I've added some more scales to the tail. I waited until it had dried completely and then used quite thick, almost undiluted watercolour paint to layers some crisp scales over the top, working them in more lightly over the highlighted areas so that they were less sharp and unnatural. You can see that this effect gives the tail a wet, reflective shine look as the sea water drips off it.

A crucial step in the skin painting was only now completed. There is no reason to wait this long when doing it: in fact it is better to complete this step straight after the red tone has dried. I only waited this long because while the skin was drying I began painting something else and got carried away! The final step for magical, realistic skin tone is to add, after the purpley-blue and the red, a light wash of a golden-brown colour such as Yellow Oxide. This anchors the reds and purples you have created into a more uniform skin tone and gives the skin the glow and natural "skin colour" that many people try to achieve with a flat brown colour alone.

The last step in the painting is to add the water spray and splashes with white gouache. I had to wait until the very end of the painting to do this because the spray will be on top of all the other layers, especially around the rock and the mermaid's tail. Using white gouache, I brush up and away from the waves as they crash against the rock and mermaid, and I spatter some paint around the tops with an old toothbrush to suggest the sea spray flying in the air. And then she's done! The next picture is the finished and scanned artwork: see what a difference scanning makes compared with bad photography!