Mermaid Piece part 19

All deadlines related to the holidays and school are taken care of.  Pieces for winter shows are all framed and installed.  So it should be time for business as usual.  Have ideas for a few new prints, but before I get to those, I still have one old bit of business to deal with- the mermaid.

Due to all the other deadlines I have had to deal with in the past few months, with no immediate deadline for completing this, I haven't touched it since early December.  Which means all those colored inks are now dried, something I've been checking on during Studio visits.   Here's where I left off-

At this point I felt it was mostly done, but a few more things were needed.  The color I had mixed for the starfishes was reasonable for such creatures but I thought the piece could use more contrast between those and the hair, so I had planned to make it darker.  And while I had colored the 1/2" wood edge in some places, I hadn't got to it in others.  So that lets you know what I attacked today.

In terms of colors, I went from lighter to darker, so first was the white edge along the giant scallop shell bikini top, and then I gradually mixed various browns to repaint the starfishes.  The most common starfish color around here is probably somewhere between what I had and what I've turned it into, but there are thousands of species all over the world and they can come in any color you might think of.  I ended up making it more brown than they were, mostly to create more contrast between the starfish and the mermaid's hair.  The last step today was to finish putting some color on the wood edge all the way around her tail.  I had done some before, a mix of pthalo blue and white, but had stopped because much of the other color was still wet and I had no safe way to hold it while I painted the edges.  All dry now, so I mixed and applied more of that color.  Had some extra so I applied it to spots on the tops surface that showed bare wood.  Figured it fit in with multiple color layers common in fish bodies.  Below you can see the whole thing.

Left it in my drying rack for now.  Based on past experience, this could take a few weeks.  It would be much better before it's fully dry before I take it anywhere or try to hang it on wall.