First in my fish series

I am the type of artist that starts with one idea and ends up doing something totally different. I can never map out what I am going to do. I do it as I go along. I have a general idea just to get me started. Well, I have started a fish series which is going to be part of what I am going to exhibit in November. I wanted to do something with texture. I have a long canvas waiting for certain materials before get started on it. I need to put the polymer medium gloss on the collage elements. The background texture and color is already done.

Anyway, I had done this polymer clay fish at a workshop. I put it away for the perfect project. Since I am waiting for supplies for my other fish piece, I decided to work on this one first. This is on a piece of matboard. I used homemade paper as the background. I then took some molding paste and sand and mixed it together. I slathered it onto the matboard. I then glued on the plant leaves and then the fish. I dropped beads into the molding paste/sand mix for added texture. It looked a little too barren at this point. What else could I put on there? I did not want to do sand dollars or star fish (that is for another fish piece). Then it struck me, this piece would be named "Polluted Fish". I added small metal pieces to the piece and then some used matchsticks. I came across the small license plate and used that (Tim Holtz). I let the molding paste/sand mixture dry overnight. I then combined some white gesso, interference oxide green, and a little Phthalo Green - blue shade in a small container. I used a detail brush and went over the exposed molding paste/sand texture. It turned out to be like a seafoam color. Since the piece is called "Polluted Fish", I wanted the water to be a little dirty. I used brown shoe polish to offset the color of the water. The blades on the plant were green and yellow and did not work well with the seafoam/brown color. I added lines of red to the leaves. Did not like that, so I took some water and blended the color into more of the leaves to make the plant more red than green. I think that the plant provides a good contrast and is a good starting point for the eye. The blades/leaves lead your eye to the fish. I am pretty happy with it. Comments welcome.