observational color mini figure

I painted a crab lying on what I meant to be seaweed. I sketched out the crab with a graphite pencil and then colored it and the background using some watercolor pencils and watercolors paints. I chose the crab because I thought it would look good if I used used more exotic colors than are expected on a crab. I used color in the crab body, claws, and legs as well as in the background. There isn’t much value in the crab as most of the colors I put on were relatively flat layers. The flat layers did add a texture however and the crab was pretty smooth looking.

This artwork was arranged with the crab off to one side of the paper. This showed informal balance because the crab was more towards the left side of the paper and the right side was empty. The colors on the crab were originally very lights and unsaturated and they were somewhat lost in the background. I went over the crab again using just the watercolor pigments and that solved that issue. The background was also very boring, it was an uneven wash of a red-orange and some other colors mixed in. I added the yellow lines over the red and it made it look a little more interesting.

I was going to use less regular colors than what is usually expected on a crab but when I started painting in my outline I just began painting the more realistic colors for a crab. I tried to replicate seaweed to make it look like the crab had just been discovered. I have found crabs in a similar manner multiple times and I was trying to replicate that experience. To improve this artwork I would probably add darker colors to make the crab look more three dimensional. I would also add more lines and colors to the background to make it look like seaweed.