the mermaid and the deep sea diver

So I have finished my little watercolor studies. Ideally they would be super simplified but I wanted to flesh them out. I think I will probably stick with the first one for Reality Not Included 2 but I want to take some of the others to finish for myself. 

 This one is the most interesting one to me.

 I like the mermaids face and hair in this one. Other parts need work.

 I want to take this one to finish as well.

The original watercolor of this didn't turn out so good so I digitally reworked it to make it feel better.

Go Fish!

My three year old wanted to play Go Fish with my five year old (almost). But he doesn't know his numbers very well yet, so the poker cards were no good. I decided to make them some cards for Go Fish thinking I could do it quickly, but the project ended up taking a bit longer (like all day). First of all, our printer wasn't working very well so I decided I would have fun making stamps and color the prints with colored pencils. 

 Here are the cards before color. I really like my fish!

The stamp for the back of the cards, tested on scrap paper.

All twelve colors.

For some reason my three-year-old took a few bites out of the back stamp. Luckily, he didn't swallow. But still, what the heck, is he a boy or a dog?! It's not like he's teething either-he is three! Anyway, I tried to salvage it by going for a corroded/grunge look.

Finished! (I did end up laminating them later)

And they are a success! Little hands- they had to lay out their cards and have a barrier in between (Battleship style).

Sea Dwarf

Hooray, I finally scanned my work from last semester!

This was for one of my classes I got to pick my assignments, which was cool. This one goes along with my selkie painting. I was reading Scandinavian Folktales and really enjoyed reading a story about a man's experience with a sea dwarf. I guess a sea dwarf is like a leprechaun of the sea, he is human on top and seal on bottom (almost like a mermaid). He's very mischievous and very tricky. Things didn't end well for the man who caught him, but then I'm not sure if it was the sea dwarfs fault or his own. I read it in a book or else I would post the link.

This is a color study I did by coloring my thumbnail in Photoshop. Even though it's just a thumbnail, I really like it. It has nice texture.

Oh and here are some fun watercolor studies I did while watching Disney's Oceans.