Part Two: The Making of Some Delicate Rainbow Octopuses

Continuing on with the rainbow octopuses…

Even though the first rainbow octopus is just for practice, I think it still looks really cool. The background is too light with the white gouache on top; there isn’t a lot of contrast. But I was pretty happy with the technique I used for the octopus skin texture; it was pretty close to what I pictured.

Looking at the source photo when I created the first octopus, I realized that the photo was AI-generated, which really annoyed me. (I am quite the curmudgeon when it comes to AI imagery, but that is a discussion for another day.) Before trying another octopus, I needed to draw this octopus the way an octopus is supposed to look, without legs in weird spots and other small body parts that don’t make sense.

I took what I learned from the first painting and began the second one. I didn’t draw the octopuses on the paper first with pencil or watercolor markers; I just went for it with the white lines on each of these paintings. So, whatever I put down is what it was going to be. There’s a bit of a thrill and a lot of nervousness when going about it in that way. I really didn’t want to mess up!

I was mostly happy with the second one. There’s a lot of contrast between the white lines in the background. But there are a few spots on the tentacles where I felt like the lines are a little wonky. Most people aren’t going to notice that; it’s really only something that will bother me.

With the third octopus, I decided to try and make it bigger and fill the page more, like the source photo. It was surprisingly difficult for me to change the scale. There was a purple dot in the middle of the green, and I decided to use that for the placement of the octopus’s eye. In retrospect, I don’t like that choice. None of the other octopuses has a dark eye like that. On this one, I also started getting more intentional with the skin texture, and I really liked the way that turned out.

With each new version, I got better and better at drawing the octopus and making the lines flow really well. I think the texture gets better with each one, as well.

Fourth octopus (above), 9×12 inches.

The octopus that stands out the most is the fifth one (above). It began as a line drawing because it’s blue, not white. The colors are also extremely bold. I love the way this one turned out, and I plan to try a few more with this technique. 

My husband liked this one the best, so we used it for our New Year’s holiday card.

For the sixth one, I had saved this background for one of the last, but now I can see that there isn’t a lot of contrast between the white gouache lines and the colorful background. 

The octopus itself looks great. As it turns out, painting the same thing over and over gets better each time.