Painting Octopus and Tadpoles

Blue octopus sketch

Hi there, how are you?

I made birthday cards recently for family members. We like to make each other cards, they’re more personal and it’s always fun to see everyone’s ideas.

In my sketchbook I had sketched out a page of inky octopus with two brush pens, one black and the other a pale grey. The legs are a lot of fun to draw and usefully it planted an idea for a card in my head.

Inky octopus ink sketches

The image at the top of the post is the sketch for the card. I liked the colours but thought the fine liner was a little heavy.

In the card I used a thinner fine liner, it looks much better. The colours are burnt orange and Prussian blue, together they make some lovely soft greens.

After painting the octopus I decided to add a background. This is where planning would have been very handy as painting in the background in first I could have given it a nice gradient (very hard to do painting around all of those legs).

He said he liked his card and that’s the important thing.

Octopus card

The next card is a little frog looking down under the lily pad into the water. I’m not sure why the frog looks brown here as he is green on the card?

I painted in the background first this time, see planning.

I enjoyed painting this and apparently the tadpoles were a big hit hehehe.

Hey down there

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by. Till next time, have fun