Air Port Contest

     I painted a picture of a jellyfish in watercolors.  It is blue and purple with lighter blue in the background.  The background is a box that the jellyfish sticks out of, creating depth.  The box that the jellyfish is above has light blue in it that is more concentrated at the bottom edges and gets more watered down as it goes to the center and top.  The most details are in the head thingie (cap? head? thingie?) of the jelly fish, drawing the viewers eye to that first.  I tried to make the tentacles help with that by adding less detail and not as much concentrated color as in the head, and by making them, for the most part, point back to the head.  The jellyfish also appears to be closer to the viewer in parts because the tentacles get bigger and the shading isn't as dark.  The darkest tentacles look further back because of their dark color and that they get much smaller in the places where they are supposed to be farther away.  

     The darker blue and purple of the jellyfish and the lighter blue and off-white of the background add contrast to the piece.  Contrast helps draw the eye to the main point of the image.  There is also more detail and more concentrated color in the head of the jellyfish, adding more contrast between the head of the jellyfish and the tentacles.  I also tried to make the composition lead back to the focal point, or at least not off the page but I don't know how successful that was.  The tentacles get darker towards the edges of them, and where they are supposed to be farther back in the picture, adding contrast to the darks and lights of the tentacles, and between what is further back and what is in the foreground.  

     Color has a lot of influence over what someone feels when they see any picture of painting or drawing.  I don't feel like the color of my jellyfish affects the emotion evoked in the viewer a whole lot, I just wanted to make a nice jellyfish, in color this time because the last one I did was in graphite.  I do feel like it has some degree of emotional impact though.  It is sort of calming and peaceful, which was the goal because this has the potential to be shown in an airport, and I don't want it to make someone feel sad or worried or anything because I doubt that would be a good way to feel before getting on a plane.  If the jellyfish was in other colors, perhaps red and orange or something,maybe deep black and white, it would definitely impact the mood of the piece.  It might make it feel chaotic maybe or dark and scary.  I think it would certainly look cool with any color, but for this contest, cool colors that make you feel calm or happy were the best, so blue and purple make sense for it.  

     I have never done a full project of a jellyfish before.  I have just drawn sketches in middle school and so I decided to do some projects on them.  The first one was the value project (shown below) and I did foreshortening/worms eye for it, which is something I wanted to practice with because I haven't done much of that ever, and I haven't done much physical art (because I only took digital art last year) in about a year (I did a little bit, like during Inktober last year and the odd painting I would do for some reason), and I wanted to try something newish.  Another thing I wanted to practice more with was layering with watercolors.  I have done them in the past, but typically I wouldn't layer as much as I probably should have and I would place down most of my colors when they were wet, so with this one I tried to let it dry more then go back in, which helped a lot with the colors bleeding into each other.  In the end I ended up really liking this project.  I especially like how the head of the jellyfish turned out and I like how the box background thing turned out.  I feel like I improved with watercolors and layering.  I'm also glad to be doing art again like this and I think I'm getting back into the swing of things.  I like the composition on the value jellyfish more than this one, which could have been better but overall I do like it.  I also wish the lines on the box were smoother and that the background would have stayed a bit cleaner.  

Close up of head: 

Value Project:

Rough Draft:

Progress Pictures: 

Reference: