Octopus Witch - Traditional Art (Patreon)

Last week I was a bit in a slump, that May Illustration took it all out of me when it came to digital work so I decided to take an evening off and do some traditional painting.
I had some polls running on Instagram so I did not have to think about what to draw myself and they decided on an Octopus Witch in watercolors.
Here are some in progress pics, sadly, the light I work with at night is not ideal for taking pictures.
At first I was not sure what kind of critter it should be, the prompts were vague so I had some leeway when sketching. This one was just "Give me something with tentacles". I tried some more anthropomorphic and humanoid things first but then decided to just go with an octopus. I still really love the jellyfish sketch and might do that one digital, since transparencies are much easier to work with digitally.
The steps on this illustration were not super complicated. I used some masking fluid for the moon in the background, since I wanted to do several washes for the background and doing that and retaining sharp edges without masking fluid is nearly impossible. Some people can do that but I am too clumsy.
I decided, since the prompt was watercolor, to not use ink outlines which I think I have not done, ever? And I really hated the first try of painted outlines with the brown color. But then i added some indigo to give the outlines in the shadows a blue hint and darken them and I am really happy with this turned out.
After adding some white and gold highlights I am pretty content with the outcome of this experiment.

Caution, there is a not so small rant here:
I am a tiny bit annoyed that I went back to this kind of style. Just because over the last year I started doing a lot more humans or humanoid characters. It is a thing that I enjoy doing. And I was getting used that that kind of art (digital art of humanoids) was not getting a lot of traction on social media. Twitter was fine but Insta is not really into my digital style.
When I posted this it had better traction than a lot of my other art, and I am concerned that people expect me to draw in this style and this type of subject more often.
Sometimes I feel like I need to make a decision with where my art is heading and what kind of things I want to draw.
But in the end, I don't want to make that decision, I enjoy different things at different times. And I don't want to do only one thing just because there might be somebody disappointed about how messy my social media feed is. Or because they only enjoy traditional art.
It is really hard to get over that feeling though, because as an artist you want your art to be enjoyed by people.
I don't know where I am going with this, this post is a mess.

I hope you are doing well. I'll try to get back to some general normalcy now, More regular Patreon posts and so on.
<3 Sarah