I was trying to create a Children's Fairy Tale portfolio and I thought it would be fun to depict the Hans Christian Anderson's story. She ended up looking a lot older than the preteen I first envisioned and I have to add that the Prince looks pretty mature as well. It was funny that when I first started coloring the mermaid, her hair was red and her tail was aqua. I didn't realize that the Disney movie was engrained in my subconscious. I looked at a lot of reference for the sea creatures (from a undersea photo CD at work) and at a lot of pics I took while on visit to an aquarium in Hawaii during my honeymoon.