Feeling crabby

This is just a crab, a sea crab of some sort. I bumped into her looking at references from the Love Life Drawing community monthly animal drawing challenges and got excited about the challenging colors on display. A crab has a fascinating combination of hard edges and organic forms. I think she turned out pretty good!

I grew up in beach towns. Crabs were an important part of that life. I have very fond memories of collecting blue crabs from our staked crates and staying up late for a crab boil right on the sand. We would steam them with beer and lots of pepper.

I’m still tweaking my main paint brush. I’m in a good place with it, I think. However, I recognize that having the chromatic jitter enabled on it is a crutch I need to move past.

Marco Bucci is my color guru. He keeps showing a color wheel that varies hue and value and talks about his theory of picking nearby colors for variability. He gets all kinds of beautiful results, and that’s what I’m trying to work toward. But as long as the brush is picking the variations, I’m not learning that technique myself.