Circle Project

This piece evolved from the central motif of a circle. I had recently seen a huge spider crawling on a leaf outside of the window at a GSTA meeting, and it was one of those really fat ones that look like an acorn. I thought that I could make a spider with a circular abdomen. The artwork is zoomed in on a spider, with its legs stretching past the edge of the canvas.

I used acrylic paint to make my spider. I started with a layer of basic browns, mostly with red tints. I added red to make patterns, into which I incorporated more circles. This ended up making the spider look too menacing, so I decided that I would add a softer color to even it out. I added yellow lighting coming from the side of the spider, which made it look a little less blood stained. Now that I had my basic layer I went in and added the hairs of the spider, which are the best part of the painting. They add a lot of texture to the work, and making them yellow made the composition more evened out between red and yellow. I added a black background and a web underneath the spider to fill in the black space left on the painting. After this I just tried to add in more circles, like with the joints of the spiders legs or the water drops on the spider web.

The intention of this work was to create a spider that didn’t look very scary, because everyone always views them negatively. I believe that the reddish-browns that I used in the beginning would have given the wrong effect. Using the yellow created a sort of neutral feeling to the spider, which is much better than trying to use blatantly soft colors like pink or baby blue.