Painting Dilema

Well after days of painting little bit by little bit I've gotten to a point with my contest entry where I know it's missing something but I haven't decided exactly what yet. I have a few ideas of where I could go with it so I've decided to use my computer to simulate them and see how I feel about each one with out having to commit to it. I've been taking pictures at various stages to show you how I work. I've pretty much just been going with the flow on this with a vague plan of elements that I want. However one part I didn't original think of was the jellyfish, it wasn't until I was going through my aquarium photos that the idea struck me.

So this is the painting in it's current state, I've done a bit of work to bring the plankton back out a bit, put a yellow glow around the right side of the orange seahorse and added a pattern into the shadows of the blue seahorse. I'm really enjoying the jellyfish and I have a feeling I'll be painting many more in the future, good thing I have so many photos of them. 

I spotted this monster while Tom and I were out on a walk last night. It was doing some home repairs and moving around quite a bit. The reason I stopped to look at it was because while there are quite a few spiders that set up their webs next to sidewalks, they all seem to be the same type. This one is totally new to me. You'll have to try and imagine me seeing the spider and then getting excited and creeping up on it trying to get a steady shot in the dusk lighting. Not something I ever imagined doing around big arachnids. 

 

Oh yah, right after taking the picture I looked at it and realized there was a face on the spiders bottom. Sort of like this! A little dancing spider man.

Last night TOm and I walked down to the local park and into Canada Bay. We ended up walking right around to the other side and exploring the residential area. It was really different, lots of big houses, but also despite being about a 15 minute walk away from the apartment it felt like it was far away from everything. Both Tom and I got the impression that if you move there you need to have a car. As we arrived back at the park one of the houses had a vine that was covered in buds for these flowers. I imagine it will look incredible when they all bloom. No idea what they are, however Tom said the vine looked a bit like passion fruit.

 Here's the front of my building. As we looked at it both Tom and I concluded that the building looks way better with that palm tree next to it.