How can i paint a jumping spider “Cute”

One day I caught up a video on YouTube called “Lucas the spider“. I’m not sure if Lucas is a jumping spider, but look at an example of their videos,

I was really interested in this concept. And Lucas the spider just “cute”, especially the voice. To be honest, I can’t deal with insects. I’m OK with butterfly (not caterpillar stage) and bees as long as they don’t bother me. But more legs they have more fears I grow. I believe spider is my bottom line because I know people keep spider as pet. And I love to watch Charlotte’s web.

So after watching the video my question is, how could I paint a CUTE spider?

I have some reference photos of jumping spider I think. And my initial though was using a palette that was not “spider” color. But the colors can’t be too loud or too strong. Everything has to be soft and subtle in order to have some “cute” feeling. I finally decided to go with pink. I choose a pinkish/princess feeling color palette to paint a spider. But I forgot they have eight legs. In the first color layer the rare half of its body overwhelmed the whole picture. I checked back with Lucas and found out that they focused on Lucas’s big eyes and “face”. Only 4 eyeballs out of 8 can be seen directly on Lucas. So I tried to soft the rare body of the spider and made it more subtle. That worked. At least to me the whole picture looked better.

Here I present a pink spider painting~

I hope you can enjoy this piece. Well you don’t have to feel it is cute, but as long as you don’t feel “yak”, then I think my work is done. And I’ve reached my bottom line. I would go no further on insects LOL.

Thank you.

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My paintings are an outlet to express the imagination I have inside my head that I can not put into words. After trying many mediums, I always find myself coming back to paint and brushes. In my current artistic practice, I use oil paint and mainly create portraits of mythical creatures and animals transfixed in the shifting colours of seascapes and landscapes. There is a natural spirit and magic to these creatures and their energy draws me in. Choosing to paint these creatures as real living wildlife rather than abstractions, I use bold and vivid colours to express the imaginary intertwined with reality, finding magic between the seams. Using a saturated colour palette, I create bold and striking imagery, contrasted between foreground and background, subject and landscape, and light and darkness. Weaving their bodies and the surface of the landscape into each other through organic forms and flowing brush strokes, I find beauty, strength and innocence in these creatures that reflect my inner world.

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