This is a painting I did of a Mantis Shrimp, (undisputedly one of the coolest sea creatures) depicted as the voice of salvation for all the little crustaceans and other lost souls. I've always had an affinity towards these mega shrimps, they have a punch that rivals the force of a rifle's bullet, which they use for blasting crab shells and smashing through aquariums of anyone foolish enough to imprison these free spirits. What really makes them cool though, are there eyes. People have three types of photoreceptors, the primary colors (to us) red, blue, yellow and those three colors make up everything we see. Mantis Shrimp have sixteen different photoreceptors in there eyes, giving them a whole new rainbow of colors and view of life and there surroundings none of us could ever imagine.
Sorry I don't have any process photos of this little cutie, I guess when I got started on him I just couldn't be detoured. I painted the stained glass portion first, and gave it an upward shading pattern, hopefully giving it "rising" or uplifting sort of feel. Then moved on to the shrimp in question. I tried to use a lot of fluorescent colors to really capture the bright colorations these guys naturally have, but then try and dampen them down with some deeper hues around the edges. When I moved on to the robe I layed down a base coat of a real real light grey and did white accents to give it a flowing feel and the reinforced it with some black, I essentially did the same thing with the cape, just with red instead.
This piece was a lot of fun to do, and probably one of my favorites I've done, but I'm probably a little biased because these are one of my favorite animals. I hope you all enjoy this handsome little guy and give me a follow if you want to see more. Thanks again my fellow steemers, have a good and steemy day.