Oceanic Tendrils

The Piece And The Process...

Jun 16, 2026

In my 2026 Appearances post, I listed the Blue & White Invitational at the Holland Museum as a maybe, because I hadn’t heard back whether I was in or not at the time. Guess what? I got in! So, that was a cool thing and it is my first time exhibiting at a museum, so I like that. The opening reception was this past Friday and was well attended. Packed, actually. The pieces ranged from ones directly referencing Delftware pottery, in which the show was based on to whimsical and weird and everything in between. It’s a good collection of imagination and craftsmanship. If you are in the Holland, MI area between now and October, check out this exhibition.

Here’s the piece:

9x12, scratchboard/clayboard and watercolor

Besides the tentacles and shark heads, I put in the some gulper eels, a deep sea fish because they are really cool looking. Maybe even menacing. The truth is that they are all of three inches, or so long. If that. But I like ‘em, so they went in.

My original idea was to submit a sculpture and then this one, if finished in time. the sculpture was started last year, originally to be a small pewter casting. Then, I was inspired by Alberto Giacometti and how he primarily worked in plaster and I have a lot of plaster chucks laying around the garage from various projects and thought that I could put one of them to work on this piece. If I want to cast in bronze at a later date, then that can be accomplished. So, I thought that I could adapt this already started piece for the Blue & White show with a few minor changes. I would tint the plaster blue and have those very same tentacles that you see in Oceanic Tendrils coming up from the base. I’ll finish it, but I did hit a wall with what seemed to be a simple object. When my friend and fellow artist Mary suggested getting together to work on some white clayboard ideas, it wasn’t a long stretch to take that idea from the sculpture and adapt that to this.

These are the first sketch ideas as to what I was going to do for the base of the sculpture:

Then, of course, I just had to add a gulper eel to the mix…

Then, my ideas for the scratchboard design were taking hold and a pattern of sorts was emerging.

Some hammerheads needed to be represented and then the final composition emerged, as well. Just a little bit of tweaking.

I then drew my design to the appropriate size. As you can see below, I had put a deep sea angler in there, but decided to take it out to balance the image just a little better.

The next step had me prepping the clayboard for scratchin.’ I probably put on a few more coats of watercolor than necessary, but I was trying to smooth out the streaks. A lost cause and I do think that that added to the overall look, so at some point I considered it to be applied.

Then, the transfer of the image was next. A red pen is a good idea, to keep track of where you are at and not going over the same area more than necessary. Plus, the red looks cool combined with the blue.