Underwater Ballet - oil painting

Hi there folks. For this picture I tried to capture movement underwater. It took a very long time with lots of layers in the water and floor to achieve the depth I was looking for. The water in the few pictures I managed to take (un ortunately not enough) was a case of pulling forward and back again until I felt happy with it. As you can see I placed the female figure and slowly worked up to the final piece whilst pushing reflections of her against the glass like that of a water tank holding fish or the likes of penguins in the zoo. I abstracted her clothing in order to create a sense of movement and made her float above the floor and let her hair drift up so as to complete the effects of water and movement. Finally I placed the bubbles in the picture and then decreased the amount until I thought I had a balance. I then worked on the reflectiions within the bubbles and finished the painted look with a few strips on the fan brush in the top left corner. This painting was a great pleasure to paint as I had never done an underwater scene before. Looking back on the progress thou I think that leaving more bubbles in the water may have made it more interesting but I painted them out as you sometimes can overwork a picture. I hope you enjoy the clips and my painting and will be going more in depth in my future paintings in the form of tutorials now that I have finally got a decent camera and work space for editing the digital side of my content.