In yesterday's post I showed you my new haootia quadriformis sculpture. Last night I got stuck in and painted it.
The big question here was what colour to make it. Jellyfish are the closest things to haootia that still exist today, and they can sometimes be brightly coloured. But what about an animal that lived 560 million years ago in the Ediacaran period? Haootia didn’t have eyes as far as we can tell and neither did anything else around at the time; there’s no fossil evidence for eyes before the Cambrian. Would Ediacaran life forms have evolved coloured skins when there was nothing that could see them? Unfortunately we will probably never know, so this is one of those situations where an artist has to use their best judgement.
I took the conservative approach and used very little colour, just white and indigo.
I may go back and re-touch some of the paint inside the haootia because it's not exactly my best work. By the time I got to those parts of the sculpture it was late and I had a migraine. I was determined to finish the job, but I wasn't really feeling it and it shows.
I'll also give the sculpture a coat of matte or semi-gloss varnish.
The big question here was what colour to make it. Jellyfish are the closest things to haootia that still exist today, and they can sometimes be brightly coloured. But what about an animal that lived 560 million years ago in the Ediacaran period? Haootia didn’t have eyes as far as we can tell and neither did anything else around at the time; there’s no fossil evidence for eyes before the Cambrian. Would Ediacaran life forms have evolved coloured skins when there was nothing that could see them? Unfortunately we will probably never know, so this is one of those situations where an artist has to use their best judgement.
I took the conservative approach and used very little colour, just white and indigo.
I may go back and re-touch some of the paint inside the haootia because it's not exactly my best work. By the time I got to those parts of the sculpture it was late and I had a migraine. I was determined to finish the job, but I wasn't really feeling it and it shows.
I'll also give the sculpture a coat of matte or semi-gloss varnish.
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