Mermaid Pinball 1951

I've started an oil painting of Gottleib's 1951 pinball game, Mermaid. It's supposed to be a realistic metmaid swimming away from the game's art.  

The row boat in the picture will instead be the one from my childhood -my first birthday present called, The Hilma Boat. 

Since many people are uncomfortable with nipples, I'm planning on covering the zone with bladderwrack seaweed because I know that stuff very well.  

The following pictures are how it's progressed in about three sessions. 

You like so far? I've wanted to draw a mermaid from this angle for a long time. I hope I can draw a beam of light shining by her neck. 

Check out that 1984 picture on the right! My dad got that boat at a dump, fixed it, painted it, put my name on it with house address numbers/letters and gave it to me for my 1st bday. Best present ever. I could row well at a young age. I loooovve to row!

BAAAHHAHA HAHA I gotta tell you that I took terpenoid and made two huge holes where her eyes went because it wasn't even close to being right, so there was actually a moment where this painting was very grusome looking -like the Game of Thrones Crying Blood Trees. 

This is the inspiration! 

This is the seaweed that'll PG-ify her. Peeps can't handle nudity haha:). Hey, figure drawing is where it's at! It's difficult and a true sign of skill. 

Done with Moai Totem Pole

I'm done in three sessions. Here is: MOAI TOTEM POLE.

Special thanks to my friend since NMHS in Belfair, Minta for giving me input! Shoutout to my husband, Ryan for giving me input a couple times along the way. They both advised me to not color the Cheerios red or blue as it would take away from the cool statues. Ryan suggested that I gradually get darker from left to right -it used to be even more starkly contrasted.

Hope someone likes this! Parts of it I like for sure and it was fun to make.

It turns out I love Moai and want to go to Easter Island someday to see them in person. I could draw these statues all day and the more I draw them, the more I get to know them. They are so incredibly unique and I believe accurate to the actual person they represent. Each one has idiosyncrasies that remind me of certain people I know (I like to pretend that the bottom middle one is my ancestor). When I was drawing them, I more or less stopped when I felt like I finally did that person justice and got to know their face enough to comprehend who they were.

It would be super cool if in drawing these statues, I documented tattoos, lineage, heritage, weathering, ideology, war, history and evolution. At least, that's what I was thinking about when drawing them. Usually these statues are just caricatures, so I feel good about my MOAI TOTEM BOSS from Gradius III!  

Next drawing =

I'm thinking a mermaid, maybe with a whale shark in the background, with rainbow light shining through her floating hair as she looks at you with my eyes but cooler. I want it to be the size of a huge wall up high in our house eventually. I'm supposed to be inspired by an arcade for this next drawing/painting. I may need some encouragement to paint with oil, but that is a pretty classy medium and makes for great prints.