Decapod

This is my Creative Color Animal Project. For this project I had to draw an animal from a figure, and color it using non-traditional colors. This means that the color of the animal would not be a natural color. I also had to do the project of a very large scale. This project is much larger than most of the projects I've ever done. For my project I chose to make a crab. I had multiple possible materials to use, but I mainly focused on oil paint sticks, and a little bit of water color towards the end of the project.

I started out by sketching the general shape onto a very large canvas. I wanted the crab to be big so and take up most of the paper. My first step in coloring was to do the legs and claws and face. I did this because I wanted them to be a more natural color, like a real crab. However, I was supposed to have some untraditional colors, so I chose to show these in the shell. I used oranges, reds, and yellows to alternate down the crabs legs. I also used white, and light blue to make a contrasting highlight on the legs and claws. I made the tips of the claws and the eyes black. Next I made the shell. I used the colors of the rainbow ROYGBIV, in that pattern, alternating down the creases in the shell. I wanted a soft contrast so I used a lot of white to allow a more pastel shell. I then went through and thoroughly blended the shell.

After completing the crab there were a few things I needed to fix. First I needed to fix the black. Black on its own is not something seen in nature much, but just really dark colors. I went through to the areas I had used black and put brown watercolor, or another corresponding dark color, over the black to give the idea of a shade instead of just a black spot. Next I needed to add texture. The claws of a crustacean tend to be more rigid so instead of the smooth claws I added teeth in water color. Lastly I needed a background. I wanted to give a sort of sea vibe, as well as maybe doing a shell theme. I followed the basic outline of the crab in gestural movements in blue oil paint. Then I followed those in purple, then green, blue, etc... I was not satisfied with this, so I went through each area of white space and filled it in with the corresponding color of watercolor. I left the section closest to the crab white to make it stand out.