Today I decided it was time to show you the progress on my two main projects of the moment. I've so many on the go that I have to switch it up every so often to keep my mind from over thinking one idea. Over thinking usually makes me stop working on a project because in my head it's finished or I just feel like doing some thing new.
So, to the currently paused while I find more animals to add project.. my flounder painting. Here I've added a fish that is hunting the flounder, it's an Aussie native called the Eastern Spiny Gurnard and lives around New South Wales.
I started to play with the phone and put the fantastic blue stripe on to the Gurnard's fins. That stripe is a big reason why I chose this particular fish. In real life it looks like its glowing due to the brightness of that blue. At this point I was trying to figure out how to deal with the sand. Like trees, sand is one of my least favourite things to paint.
Most of this dislike is due to my dilemma of how much detail I wanted to put into it as that can totally change the look and feel of the painting. Here I've opted to try a more gray colour which was very sandy looking but also much darker than I wanted.
To keep the painting from disappearing into grayness I kept some of the original colourful background.
Some blending to smooth the edges and a change in the colour of the shadow and flounder. The painting stayed like this for a few days as I was stuck on the sand again. I wanted to add a bit of detail but keep the overall feel more whimsical than realistic.
My solution was three different colours of dots. This is the current stage and I'm figuring out how to add some sand onto of the flounder with out hiding too much of the fin detail. I've got a growing list of bottom dwelling see creatures, some of which will be making an appearance. One I am set on is the cone snail which has in my opinion the most beautiful designs on its shell. It can also kill humans with it's harpoon tongue, so you know just another Australian addition.
Here are a couple examples of the dots, in this one you can also see some of the fin detail of the flounder.
More dots!
Alright, as if that wasn't enough here's my second project. The beaded fish. I started it and was going very quickly with it, so quickly in fact I had to stop my self so i could have enough time to design it's face. The orange marker in the background shows how far up the fish I am
The pattern is working out well.
Here are my fish heads. The one on the right is my final decision, it will have the same salmon colour as the main pattern with a light pink for the design. I want it to be fairly subtle.
I believe I mentioned before that these beads are smaller than the ones I was using before.
They are made so that they are totally uniform. Thinner walls and a larger hole.
They are also flat, I could stand the new one on it's side no problem. But the old one is rounded and needed some assistance. This means that all my fish will be exactly the same and straight lines will finally be straight.
One last little side note is a neat find made by Tom. It's an old diaper pin made some time after 1972.
The neat thing about it is that it's hallmarked silver. Which means a baby somewhere in this world had a very fancy diaper. Oh my.
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