A siren

This is my second piece from my Kerby Rosanes Mythomorphia coloring book.

Sirens are undersea monsters who lure sailors towards rocks with their beautiful music and lovely singing voices, and who eat sailors for supper after their ships get wrecked on the rocks... hence the two skulls at the foot of this picture.

I went with purple, my favorite color, for the siren, and a complementary sage green for her fins. I lightened the purple shade to lilac and pinks on the parts facing the (imagined) light source. I colored in several layers of color with a light touch this time, after having pressed much harder with the harpy (see previous post here).

The treasure chest was layered in several shades of brown, and my Prismacolor set didn't disappoint with its sheer blendability. I picked several shades of warm grey for the anchor, from the 10% (lightest) to the 90%, to recreate the sharp contrasts one would expect in metal. The other objects in the picture were fairly quickly done - the fish, seaweed, skulls, sand and items in the treasure chest.

The siren's hair: I was undecided on the color. I had thought to make her blond, but ended up going with pastel rainbow hues. It makes her almost girly, which is hard to reconcile with her grisly dining habits.

I was going to leave the background white again, like I did with the harpy, but decided on the spur of the moment to color it in to see whether I could recreate rays of sunlight piercing the water, shining on the creature's face and upper body. I can't say I'm entirely satisfied, but I don't regret trying.

This page gives a good idea of what it should look like.  This one too. I thought of adding those wavy strips of paler color over the siren's face and upper arms, but was afraid it wouldn't turn out right, so I left it as you see it.

Looking at the completed picture, I wonder now if I should have rendered the siren in a stronger color so that she would pop from the background, which is in the same family of colors. I have seen several other artists' renditions of this same picture; I do believe, however, that colors can be too raw and too strong. Some artists like to go with raw greens, blues and reds. The result seems too garish for me.

My Sec 4 art teacher (RIP, Mrs Woon) used to berate us for using paints straight out of the tube. If you are painting something for nature, the green that comes in the standard set of 12 tubes of pastel paints will almost always never do. Add yellow, she would advise.