Pass number four. I added more light to the background – a blue tone on the upper right. I started to see how the detail would affect things and worked on the surface texture and some of the tendril frills. The form is just ok, but I need to focus on the translucency next.
Date
May 2023
Size
18″ x 24″
Medium
Oil on canvas
Story
In Progress. This jellyfish is from a series of photos taken at the Boston Aquarium in November 2022. I flipped the jellyfish upside down since most people think of them that way, like an umbrella.
Process
Starting color block-in
The colors are hard to get. For the purple part of the background, I think I used raw umber, violet, perhaps some ultramarine, plus white as it got lighter. For the blue area of the background, ultramarine and raw umber. The jellyfish is a mix of attempts. The colors that looked orange on the screen looked green when I put them down.
Adding more color. I’m not happy about stopping at this point because it’s gotten disjointed. I did start to get a handle on the colors I wanted to use. Unfortunately, the paint is too wet to keep going and correct the blotchiness. Uncharted territory. Trying to work out the colors. It was coming up so green. The purple background is making that more pronounced.
Ochre, that was it. To cut down on the green. I’m trying to get the form to work – like mushrooms. It’s lost the translucency, what little there was, in the previous step.