Water Lily Mermaid Hand Painted Bracelet

I have been working on a series of hand painted projects and this is my latest hand painted wood bracelet – Water Lily Mermaid.  I began with an idea in mind, probably inspired by Monet’s garden, of a beautiful mermaid floating amongst the water lilies with lotus flowers in her hair and a beautiful goldfishy tail.

I researched some poses and drew up this quick sketch:

Then I transferred my sketch to the plain wood bracelet, which I had already sanded for a nice smooth painting surface:

I painted the inside of the bracelet first in a beautiful green, then I painted the background around the mermaid and started painting her skin, hair and face.  I always give extra attention to the face to make the piece as beautiful as possible.  I add blushing on the cheeks and white highlights around the inside corners of her eyes and the tip of her nose.

Her tail comes next and then the beautiful lilypads and flowers around her.  Her hair and the scales on her mermaid tail are highlighted with gold paint.  I add sparkles and ripples on the water using pure white paint.  The paints I use are non-toxic acrylic paints which dry quickly, don’t have a strong smell, and are easy to wash up afterwards using water.  Once the paint has dried for about 24 hours, I do several coats of high gloss varnish (probably about 7 or 8 coats overall).  The bracelet then needs to dry for a least a week until the varnish has hardened.

This bracelet is now SOLD.  To see more of my art for sale please visit my Etsy shop here:

http://www.etsy.com/au/shop/AMBroughtonArt