Mermaids of Nemaris Island

This was a commission for author J.D. Delzer, of the mermaids in his book, The Buccaneer of Nemaris. Please do check his website for more information on the book and characters.

So, I LOVE drawing mermaids. I was so excited about this commission!
Here's the sketch that started it:

This image basically just established the stony crag between islands where the mermaids tend to relax, and their basic shapes.

Added the foliage, as this area is supposed to be very luxurious. After a chat with my commissioner I realized that this looked more like a lagoon than a crag, and some changes were done to fix that:

At this point the sketch was done and I needed to fineline my characters (when painting semirealistically, I don't really lineart, but go over the lines softly so I can delimit my color regions)

Then, I placed down the flat colors for the image:

Sorry if this image looks way too bright, I tend to work from light to dark...
So then I added texture, color and shading to the surrounding rocks and the luxurious foliage:

And then had fun splashing waves into the water teehee!

The final step was shading in the characters, adding effects to each of them as I went along:

If you'd like to see a somewhat larger version of the finished image, check out DeviantArt.