Watercolor painting: Siamese fighting fish

Here's a time-lapse video showing how I painted a Siamese fighting fish. My reference is an image on Pinterest, on a background inspired by Jean Haines' color gym exercises, the one on mixing colors for bold washes and sprinkling salt on the wet washes to create a unique effect. It's a totally fun study involving Daniel Smith Primatek, Saunders Waterford and Kuretake Gansai Tambi Starry Colors! Above is a photo of the finished piece.

To be honest, I'm not entirely happy with this study, the fish 'pops out' too much, it doesn't look harmonious to me. I'll try again but will paint the fish with colors from the background.

• The background is wet-on-wet wash of Daniel Smith Rhodonite, Mayan Blue and French Ultramarine, extremely runny and then sprinkled with kosher salt, after which I tilted the block
• The fish is painted with Daniel Smith Hansa Yellow Light and New Gamboge; made orange with Rhodonite; made gray with Mayan Blue + my cool gray mix (I premix two grays - one from my cool primaries, and another from the warm primaries)
• The shimmer is from ZIG Kuretake Gansai Tambi Starry Colors. The glimmer is nice but not as pronounced as I was going for. Hoping to try Finetec once I finish these or, okay, at least give this set a dozen tries first!
• The Saunders Waterford cold-pressed block buckled :( When I ran my palette knife around the gummed edges, some parts were already separated from the block. The Ultramarine wash seeped in through the upper right corner, which is pretty bad considering that corner is completely gummed. I am a bit disappointed but overall, it's still a great paper for this project, it has sufficient tooth to show off the granulation of the paints, but still allowed for details on the fish.

I have another color play background dry and ready, and I can't wait to have another go as soon as time permits 😄

Here's the video: