Mermaid: Working with separate elements

I'm starting to think my works-in-progress never get done. This one here is an illustration I planned on submitting as a figure design, so she was drawn with a turnaround.

When I started inking I knew I wanted to work with and practice my thin lines. It was something I used to do ages ago but working on animation and comics, I had to learn to work with thicker lines. I miss working with thinner lines and still prefer it for my illustration work.

Anyway, I added color and because of the detail of the ink lines, the coloring came out "tight." I prefer a "looser" style, more energy and movement in the lines and color. My mermaid is finished but her turnaround and background elements are not. I need to keep working on getting the balance I want.

I added the background after the mermaid was finished but it feels out of place. This always happens to me when I work on elements of an illustration separately. When I was teaching, I always taught my students to draw out the whole illustration first before adding detail and color.

The illustration/figure design is paired with a centaur so I'm still working in an awkward way for myself. So lets see how that goes, still gotta long way to go. O__o