Twice a day I wander with my dog through nature. A few years ago I found a skeleton of an invasive freshwater crayfish that has taken over the rivers and streams. They are by far bigger than the native ones.
It was almost completely intact and bleached by the sun. For comparison you will find 2 legs of the native crayfish.
I wanted to try to do something with it, although I had no idea how and where to go. The goal was to investigate this item and figure out where it would bring me.
Initial sketches
To get the “feeling” of the crayfish I started with a simple drawing.
Then I tried to capture the rhythm of the lines and forms in charcoal.
The 3rd attempt was a not so well succeeded painting in watercolour and ink on paper. It became a little bit creepy don’t you think?
And the final experimental version was an abstraction of the crayfish and its environment. Watercolour, acrylic paint and ink on paper.
The painting
I took a canvas (60 x 90 cm) and covered it with gesso and some paint I mixed with glazing medium and binder to get a glazing result. I was surprised how it worked out. It looked as a good starting point for a painting.
As always if you like something in a painting it is difficult to paint over it, so I tried to save some parts. Although you know from the start that this will be impossible. Those beautiful brushstrokes came too early in the painting process.
It went through many stages, but after some weeks I didn’t come near a conclusion. In the gallery below you will find only the most important changes. Click on the arrows of the slider to see some of them.
From this point I got more and more doubts. There was no unity in it, it were just separated parts.
I thought it had maybe too much red. So I brought more green in it. But this looked more as Jonas and the whale! And it had still no unity.
And then, as usual, you have to make drastic decisions! There was too much “noise” in the painting. It needed more quiet parts. So I sacrificed a rather nice part in the left upper corner and toned down the upper right corner.
Also here it had several phases of good and bad interventions. But I didn’t make any more photographs of it. I just struggled and kept going on. Finally I did the biggest intervention. I covered the central lower part with neutrals. And made stones of it.
Conclusion
Crayfish was not an easy subject for a painting. I found it difficult to abstract the subject. I also found out that I had too many different shapes which were also mostly red. The red asked immediately attention and “splashed” from the canvas from all the different directions where I used it. I think that’s why I didn’t get unity in the painting.
I enjoyed the process and I’m pleased with the end result although there is no crayfish anymore. On one point I had to admid that it didn’t work out in the direction I wanted and that I had to follow the painting. Because it is the painting that dictates the next step, no matter what the outcome will be.
The only traces of the freshwater crayfish are the little red blobs in the painting. Anyway, crayfish hide themselves most of the time between stones so it still has some resemblance with reality!
See below the final version with the title:
Restless stones | Moving one by one | Until the river dries.
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