Once again I dove into unknown territory when I decided to paint seals diving. I chose baby harp seals for my subject as they have beautiful white fur when very young. If they look rather fat and round it is because they are, in real life, so cute! Doing a bit of research when looking for ideas for bubbles, I discovered that seals breathe out before they dive (to reduce buoyancy) and that enough oxygen is stored in their blood for them to be under water for quite some time. I wanted bubbles so I did some coming from the tail as I had seen in seal-diving videos where air was brought down into the water when they dive. Not sure I got the bubbles right but anyway...I used white gouache for them and all the other whites are unpainted paper (Arches cold press 300lb).
I chose to use Schmincke supergranulating blues for the water, from various Galaxy and Glacier ranges, sometimes mixing two together until I got what I wanted. It was quite difficult thing for me to paint (isn't everything! 🤣) as I think I have only ever done two undersea paintings before, of a turtle and a coral reef.
I didn't use a single reference photo for the seals but used a medley of several photos and video images.
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