Starfish! or Seastars!

I've been working hard lately. I received an email from someone in America asking if I was ever going to do a sea star to sell. I had been thinking about it, but had been putting it off as they are so very involved...well the ones I wanted to paint were anyway.
I'd been snorkeling in Honeymoon bay on an island just off Escondido on the Baja Peninsular of Mexico, and I saw these most amazing sea stars or starfish. They were incredible. One was full of spikes. Now, I don't ever touch anything underwater. Some corals burn and some fish are poisonous and even some shells that still have their occupants will be able to give you an extremely nasty sting...so I don't touch.

Crown-of-Thorns Starfish.

It was just as well because when we got back to the boat we looked up the spiky star fish and saw it was called a 'Crown-of-thorns' starfish. The book said that this starfish had spikes that are capable of inflicting severe wounds and poisoning....oooeeerrrr so glad I didn't try and touch it.

As we swam around we came across a large rock and on it were several gorgeous brightly coloured starfish. The book told us that these were the Common Knobbed Starfish...yes well I don't know how common they are supposed to be but I'd never seen anything like these before...and I've snorkeled in the Indian ocean, the Atlantic, all over the Caribbean, off Hawaii..so clearly I still have a few wonders to experience.:-D

Common Knobbed starfish

My Favourite one!

So Beautiful!

These are the starfish that I was considering.

I drew one out and designed the stencil, then I cut the stencil....yeah hours of cutting....then I started to paint....

The drawing...

The Stencil.

Slowly and carefully till these ones below seemed to almost appear out of the fabric. They needed considerably more hand finishing than any of my other quilt blocks that I have painted. And the photo's do little justice to the detail of the finished work.

The first.

Ahem..the second :-D

Do you like it?

THEN I decided to discard the stencil and paint from scratch. I now have produced a further two starfish that are completely hand painted and totally original. These are of the highest quality and will be placed on Etsy for $120. The vibrancy of the end product does show a little in the photographs, but once again can only truly be appreciated on close examination.

Free hand one off.

The Last one also free hand.

 There are so many extraordinarily beautiful living creatures that most people never ever see.

I was showing a young man some photo's I have of starfish and he saw some purple and pink ones that I'd photographed on Salt Spring Island, Canada, and he said when he saw them.."They're not real!" but after a careful look he realised that they were and was astounded....

Beautiful Purple Starfish at low tide..

There were loads of them :-D pink ones too.

 I'd appreciate some comments on the subject.... :-D
Thanks.