Just a Friendly Game...

I can’t recall where this idea started. But it grew from squids with woven tentacles to squids playing checkers on the resulting woven “board,” to the current version with an octopus and an ammonite. I realized, part way through this, that it’s sort of the past vs the future. That’s when I gave the ammonite a small trilobite companion.

I particularly loved painting and drawing the ammonite’s shell, and the snails.

I thought this was done on the 23rd of December, but I looked at it again Christmas Eve morning and realized that the ammonite’s shadowy parts would pop better if I pushed them towards green (they were pale violet, and too much like the shadow color on the octopus’ red tentacles). The whole painting was greatly improved - and then I saw about a hundred other little color adjustments all over the piece.

Mixed media on Arches paper - 18 x 24 inches. This one’s hanging in the kitchen at the moment. It’s the first piece to come along that could dislodge the Puffins in China (below).