The water took a lot of trial and error.


While looking at this painting reversed, I noticed that it was a bit unbalanced and top-heavy.  So I changed the angle of the mermaid, and repositioned the main elements.


In addition to my own photo reference, I looked to paintings by J.C. Leyendecker, Norman Rockwell, Haddon Sundblom, and Scott Gustafson for more inspiration.




I started to add more detail to the foreground rocks, then decided that they drew too much attention away from the characters.

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