About the Art: Jellies Too

Update 2017/05/21: Changed post title from “New Art: Jellies Too” to “About the Art: Jellies Too”

Here’s a new artwork I’d like to show you.

This is called Jellies Too. I’ve drawn jellyfish before, and in fact this artwork spawned the other one. Here’s the story:

Last summer I was hanging out at Hubby’s aunt and uncle’s bungalow out on the Mira. It’s a really gorgeous place, just so inspiring. I so love being out there. Being surrounded by water and green just puts me at peace, and I get this zen I-want-to-express-everything kind of feeling. It’s hard to explain, but greenery always does that to me.

Anyhow, when hanging out with people I’m often not far from a sketchbook or drawing pad, and this day I was drawing jellies while sitting around the table hanging out with family.

I finished the drawing that afternoon, and when I got home that night, I colored in the bodies of the jellies with Sharpies. While sometimes marker strokes can be used for effect, I didn’t want them at all, so I applied the color heavily to make solid color areas. I soulprinted over top of the color in one jelly body, but I really didn’t like the results. The color was too dark and I couldn’t see the soulprinting. So, I drew another set of jellies on another sheet of paper to use a different coloring method and that work eventually became Jellies. And the first work, the work that inspired Jellies, sat around unfinished for months.

The other day I realized that piece was leaving an unfinished energy around, and who needs that? It’s better to finish it and let it be whatever it will be. So, I decided to finish it. I filled in the rest of the soulprinting, so at this point the jelly bodies were in color with soulprinting and the tentacles were left clear, just the outline. I definitely wasn’t happy with how the soulprinting wasn’t very visible, but I figured someone else might like the bold colors.

But then I thought about it a bit and realized what I didn’t like was that there was such a discrepancy between the heavily tinted bodies and the completely colorless tentacles. So, using a different set of markers, I colored in the tentacles with a similar but lighter color, and BAM! it was done. Even with not being able to see the soulprinting very well, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. {:

NB: I do my best to make the scanned image look as close as possible to the original, but really, it just looks so much better in person.