Sloth in a Monstera plant : New Art

A sloth in a Swiss Cheese Plant.

Alexandra Sloth loved the Monstera plant. Of all her mistresses greenery, this one suited her best. Tho it's branches were not strong their weight would give slowly until she reached the ground and up she'd go again. It was the closest thing to speed a sloth could manage.

My new piece in my "Animals and Plants" series finds a happy little sloth enjoying the freedoms of flexible house plants.

I started with a sketch scanned then inked digitally.
This first layer will hopefully become a coloring page.

Outlining in ink before adding layers of color

I've been trying to be somewhat consistent with the overall size of these pieces in this series so they will 'fit' together if need be, tho my investigation thus far has found that many sell individual pages digitally for coloring.

The sloth gets her color in tones of pink and red

The Monstera plant and pot are next, tones of green and shade of warm pinks and browns to tie into the Sloth palette.

The rug in deeper cool tones of purple and blue.
I wanted the cool tones to ground the color and let the Sloth pop. And then adding warm ochre/mustard background I feel just gives an overall boldness I like, considering the subject matter is of course both silly and fantastical.

The final piece

What I've been finding enjoyable is after inking and outlineing/layout of the piece prior to my own painting in color, I'm rather enjoying these pieces myself as "coloring pages". There really is a meditative quality to it. I can see why it is such a popular past time. In a way it gives one that "Flow" state that I often get in art making.

I had read up on the benefits to mind of the Flow State (that timelessness one feels out of time when they are engaging in a work that is not work but a joy) and I get this both with art and in various parts of gardening as well. Even in the sweaty toil on a warm day in the garden, if I've made a plan to make a border or work on a new garden bed, once everything is laid out and I go in, it has very much that 'work in the studio flow'. Perhaps another reason plants are now playing such a role in this new series.

I hope you enjoyed today's piece and of course, here is the gif of it. I thought of using the gif's as NFT but then I'm never sure if it's also ok to have the images for sale in other ways, perhaps if I made a gif version in new colors and of course only sold the ONE version of a Gif?

Thank you for joining me today and I hope you get a moment in your day to indulge in your own "Flow Activity" whatever that might be.

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