Hello guys! Today's study was especially fun to do :D I got very lucky with the reference, because as soon as I searched fish in Pixabay I found the perfect photo. I wanted something from Pixabay so that I can share the reference with you guys. The fish itself isn’t very handsome, but the colors and lighting are incredible. I knew instantly that I’ll want to use this elements in my future art.
This study is a part of my bigger project that you can read all about here:
My Mermaids Art Project Plan for July!
My today’s reference:
Image Source-Pixabay
I started with the usual 2 layers of simple sketches. The first one is much rougher, just to position the main object in space. The second one is for details.
After the sketch I worked on layers under the sketch until the details phase where I turned off the sketch layer. I started painting the background first as a warm up. The background is rather blurry on purpose so that the fish stands out more.
When doing studies I avoid color picking from reference. Though my colors may be a bit wrong in the end, the exercise is more useful. However, I do color pick constantly on my painting, as it’s faster and easier just like I do on my other digital art. For the fish I started with a base color, over which I added the rest of colors.
I try to use very saturated brushes when painting as the final result feels more lively. For this study I used a single basic brush, usually called chalk brush.
I created all of the textures effects manually as it gives the texture randomness that a brush can hardly emulate and it’s fun to do.

The following is a gif with more steps so you can more easily see how I did the study. The study took me roughly 3h and 30min. When doing studies, I think it's better to do less studies but to put more time into them. That way you will learn more and faster. For complete art beginners A good amount of study per painting is roughly 5-8h per photo. That's why you should choose carefully your reference :)
My favorite Artist for the day:
Peter Chan- he did concept art for Unfortunate Events movie and he worked on Monkey Island 2!
My favorite music for the day:
Eluvietie-Omnos and Britcom. This is a Celtic Folk Metal Band :)
Crazy fish fact for the day!
Gold fish have teeth and can be trained! :O
@enternamehere , @katalinaooma , @hiddenblade, @adamada , @gotmeens , @nanosesame , @arepazo , @claucor20 , @mrichter, @jodekss, @cryptocariad
If you'd like to be tagged/untagged in my posts for notification, please let me know! I will only tag you in long posts.
I'll give away 1SBD to a random resteemer. Thank you for your support!
The painting in this post was made by me @kristyglas!
I hope you enjoyed it and thank you for reading!♡ Day 1; Day 2