Betta - From start to finish -

not a lot of process work with this one just cause i didn't take screen shots as i went along but i will be describing my process since it took a surprisingly long time to get to this finished product.

So... when i drew my mermaid before i thought itwould be fun to do it based on a fish just as a personal challenge.
then i said screw it and did what i wanted.

cause not even I can tell myself what to do.

anyways i did see some really pretty fish that i would probably turn into mermaids later
cause i have always loved mermaids... little mermaid is probably my fav disney film despite how much they took liberties with this story. anyways right now i'm in a mermaid mood.
though with all this sailor moon makeup being released i may do some more chibi stickers of that series... we'll see...

anyways... when i was younger my friend had two Betta fish (though she called them Siamese fighting fish... yeah i can understand why the name was changed.) and unfortunately she didn't know they would kill each other if they were in the same tank.. so when she was cleaning out the tank and put them in the same bowl she was sad when one of them was badly hurt.

Still i thought they were really pretty despite how mean they were.

so for this i did a little reseach on beta fish, found out they come in more then just the dark blue i've seen and that they have some interesting facts... i really liked how the males would twist their body to get attention and there was a blue versio nwith pink fins that i just thought would be really pretty.... so i sketched it out.

hm..... meh?
i mean i had a lot of fun with it i just... wasn't feeling it...
still i figured it could serve another purpose.
i have had paint tool sai on my comp forever but i've never played with it cause i'm just really used to photoshop... i've been using photoshop for nearly 12 years... so trying something new is always nerve wracking.
then i found that almost all the shortcuts i use the much are the same in Sai.... so that made the switch easy... also the fact that i could save as PSD and transfer over helped ease my nerves.

so i started inking and holy hell... that ink tool with my cintiq.... so responsive.... the lines could get so thin and the program never had to think about it... it was just seamless.
i finished the inking in like... 30 minutes.... really fast even for me.. so here i am kicking myself for not trying this program sooner but of well... i know now...
but then i tried to colour and it wasn't working out... i think i need a little more experimentation to figure out why the program acts the way it does... all in time.

so the lines and 3/4 of the eyes were done in Paint tool Sai while the rest was done in photoshop.
I made 3 brushes for this piece... i'm actually finding more and more i'm making brushes to suit my need.
one was for the texture and trying to avoid usign blending
one was for sparkle to the fins cause adding sparkle is fun...
and the third was the bubbles which originally i was going to do by hand and then i said.... no.... i can make a brush to do that for me... so i did

i wanted it to br brought and colourful and in the end i'm pretty happy with it.

but yeah it was a great piece to experiment with and a lesson that even if your not thrilled with something you should try to finish it cause in the end you'll probably learn something.
alright onto the next thing... whatever that ends up being.
but i think i'll be inking in painttool sai for forever more now... so nice~

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