PROCESS // pink fish, part 3 (Patreon)

Here is the final part of the process for my veiltail painting! Part 1 is here and part 2 is here. 

This is the part where I just smooth things out and add the final pass of detail. I sped it up to 3x the original speed, so in real life I took about 3 and a half hours to do this part. I always feel like this is the phase where the least happens: from a distance, it barely changes. But up close, I’m trying to smooth out the rougher details and get the image to feel like a finished work. In this case, I’m trying to blend in edges with the brush without losing the angular aspect of the rendering style.

This is the part of my process where reference is really important, because it helps me to understand those smaller details which are needed to bring certain elements to life. By looking for reference for the fish, I realized that adding some lighter scales to the bottom would give texture and variation to the painting. And when looking up reference for the bubbles, I found out how I could have them reflect the light in the image in interesting ways, and try out shapes other than just round or oval. So I usually grab some extra reference photos during the rendering process to get those details just right.

Hope you like it and as always, feel free to ask any questions!