Here is a short guide on how it was done. The model was first primed in white, no zenith priming or anything like that. The reason was to make it easier to keep the white belly on the bottom. Fish and sharks are countershaded so that they are darker on the top than the bottom. Zenith priming could be used by spraying at the model upside down, but there is also the sharp delineation of dark and light for sharks to consider, so a gray gradient would make it harder to do that.
The first coats were done with a mixture of Cerulean Blue ink (Liquitex Pro ink), Raw Umber ink and black paint. The mixtures were varied, with more black and blue on the upper back and more umber closer to the mid-line. The mixture was thin due to the use of inks, but was a very strong color, so it was painted on with long brush-strokes. There was no real blending going on as they tended to make the paint very patchy, so the idea was just to quickly apply paint like a watercolor painting. The color was painted down to the edge of the midline, where the counter-shading switches to white. Below that, a mixture of Cerulean Blue ink, black and white paint was applied and blended to make a gradient darkening under the shark, where more black was mixed in. This creates the shadow below, so the overall tone goes dark - light - medium from top to bottom. It is fairly ugly at this point actually, but the colors are blocked out now.
The next step was to smooth out the top gradient, adding more layers of blue+black+umber, with some white mixed in to help add some opacity where there the ink mixture was streaking. It took a few layers of this to smooth it out. The flanks were highlighted with thinned white and the edge of light and dark was cleaned up. The major part of this step was adding highlights to the scratches using thinned white paint, adding them to the bottom edge to make it appear like light from above was striking them. Lots of little scratches, dings and dots were added for texture to the skin. inside the dings was added thinned red+black paint to make the wounds appear fresher. The older dings were shaded with a glaze of black paint + Cerulean Blue ink. The mouth was painted with thinned pink paint on the gums and a bit on the underside of the nose, then black+red was used to shade around the teeth, which were finally highlighted in a few layers of pure white, building up to the tips.
The most important highlight was done along the lower back about 1/3 of the way down, using thinned white paint in an airbrush. This is the diffuse reflection on the shark from the light above. It would have been done with multiple layers of white paint using a brush and a lot of blending but I was in a hurry, and the airbrush makes this step simpler. Some splatter from the airbrush needed to be cleaned up but it worked out well enough. Finally, the rope was given a thin layer of a golden bone color (Reaper Golden Highlight) and the hook a layer of bronze metallic ink (Liquitex). These were then shaded with pure Raw Umber ink.
The last steps were more of of the same, adding more edge highlights with thinned white paint, enhancing the shadows with thinned back paint and a bit of blue ink. The broken harpoon and spear stuck in the beast were painted with a light tan first, then let dry, then glazed with Burnt Umber ink a few times to add some deep brown color. A few thin black grain lines were added along the length of the shafts, which were then highlighted with a very thin line of white paint on the bottom edge. The ropes were pained with Golden Highlight and shaded with Raw Umber ink. Highlights were done with a mix of Cerulean Blue, Burn Umber and white, applied in thin glazes. Some white edge highlights were added here and there, then some Sap Green ink was glazed on the parts where the rope and metal fixing was attached to the shaft of the harpoon. Sap Green was also glazed on the spear shaft in a random pattern. The eyes were painted with thinned black to start, then with a central area covering most of the eye with a mix of Cerulean Blue ink + white. When this dried, layers of thinned black were added to the center of the eye to leave only a thin circle of light blue. The eye had a diffuse hotspot reflection added near the top with thinned white. This is not meant to be as bright a reflection as a eye would have on land.
The last step was the base, which was painted with a mixture of red, orange, yellow and magenta inks for the corals, and Sap Green ink for algae. Shadows were added with thinned black paint, Burnt Umber ink and Phthalo Blue ink. highlights were drybrushed with Golden Highlight + white paint, up to pure white paint for some edge of the corals.
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