AC 003 Common Lionfish

Was going to just call it 'Lionfish', but I may do another species at some point.

Too bad these striking, neat looking fish are so dangerous and invasive . Since I live so far from their habitat, natural or otherwise, I've never seen one in person. But from videos and pictures, they look pretty cool.

Also, with these wildlife cards I'm doing, I try to make them as scientifically (as in details or features, as opposed to hyperrealistic -- no way I'm doing that!) but sometimes I'll probably get some features wrong. I may not have the correct number or placement of stripes, spines, or fins in this case. But it looks 'Lionfish' enough. I'd go crazy trying to get every detail right. Also, photographing this is a pain; the border area should look like the left side, as the right side looks darker than it's supposed to.

Done with white charcoal pencil and Prismacolor pencil on Canson Graduate mixed media black paper. For being mixed media, it's really smooth, and not that great to work on; while I try to make the uploaded picture look like the actual physical card, I feel I have to saturate the colors juuuust slightly, as it's hard to get bold colors on this paper. Wish my local big-box store had something better. I don't have an art supply store nearby, and I hate shopping online...so I have to work with what I can get.

Still, I'm pretty happy how it turned out, though I wish it didn't take up 90% of the 2.5 by 3.5 inch paper.