Crab-Net – Watercolor

Crab-Net, Transparent Watercolor on Paper, 30″ x 22″ was a challenging proposition. This painting was a fun subject that emerged from a fun day of catching a fun sea life in traps and on camera. The composition mesmerized me while I was learning how to crab.

Watercolor was for all that the right medium for one of the most intricate and difficult of my paintings.  I love nets and irregular open spacing found in nets and lace. String, an inexpensive crab catcher for $2.50 was the crab’s waterloo, as all their dangerous pincers which ran for our toes more than once got easily tangled in the web. Don’t feel bad for the crabs. They had a good life, and fed us their delicious meat to dip in heated butter and eat.

This painting has had quite a trek, going from Southern Watercolor Society’s Show in Texas to Southern Colorado’s Aqueous International to National Watercolor Society’s Members Only Show in San Pedro, California, before she landed back home in the studio, just waiting for her new home and adoptive parents.

I love negative space, weaving, the blue N.C. crabs. Once I had begun, I kept seeing new patterns emerging and so I would erase portions and re-do the pencil lines to introduce the metallic inner circle, the radiant vortexes of the simple trap. The subject emerged entwined in spirals of knotted twine which revealed as much holes as it did crabs in the net. Simple string outmaneuvered the cranky crabs.

Unframed Painting: