Ms. Manta - Manta Ray Art Creation Process

The manta ray is a large marine creature, but it feeds on microorganisms and is harmless to humans. This artwork features a manta ray using its tail to grill a sea cucumber. When I was working on it, I struggled quite a bit, from figuring out the pose to deciding what food it should be grilling. So here are some behind-the-scenes.

Ms. Manta - Night Market Under The Sea

Inspiration - Why Manta Rays?

When I was little, I loved visiting the Shark Mystique at the Ocean Park in Hong Kong. In the big tank, alongside the sharks, there were always several rays that somehow coexisted peacefully. They were either “flying” gracefully through the water or resting on the glass tunnel, letting people admire their “bellies”. I’m sure I’m not the only one who, upon seeing a ray’s underside for the first time, thought their face was on their belly:

Underside of a ray looks like a face (image from Unsplash)

Of course, as I grew older, I learned that their eyes are actually on the top of their bodies. Eventually, I also came to understand that there are many different types of rays. Manta rays and stingrays are not the same, and their undersides look different too. This time, I chose to draw a manta ray because it conveys a gentler, more good-natured image. Mantas are larger in size and don’t have venomous stingers, which makes them look more friendly.

Originally, I wanted to have the manta ray, Ms. Manta, grilling a potato with her tail, like those spiral potatoes you see at night markets (also known as tornado or hurricane potatoes).

Hurricane Potato (image from Unsplash)

But before I started drawing, I felt it didn’t make much sense to grill a potato underwater, so I hastily decided to switch to grilling a fish. But when I almost finished painting a grilled sea bream, no matter how I looked at it, it just didn’t feel special or interesting enough.

So I put down my pen and started thinking… If I went back to the original spiral potato idea, could I replace it with a similarly shaped marine creature? That’s when sea cucumbers popped into my mind. Honestly, manta rays eat microorganisms. They don’t eat fish and sea cucumbers. So grilled sea cucumbers are something manta rays would never eat, and are not a usual food in human world either. It doesn’t get more bizarre than that! Plus, Ms. Manta doesn’t even eat sea cucumbers itself, yet she’s cooking them for her customers. It’s like treating them as guinea pigs. This little detail actually adds to the fun.

Ms. Manta Die-cut Sticker

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Manta Ray Art Painting Process

Ms. Manta - Digital Painting Process

Challenges

Usually, a few days or hours before I start drawing, I already have a rough image in my head, some sort of vision that gives me direction before I even touch the pen. But when I worked on this piece, the pose I originally imagined didn’t look good once I actually drew it, so I ended up making quite a few changes along the way.

I think the main reason for that is my lack of foundational training in composition and design. I also don’t have a structured creative process. Simply put, I’m not professional enough yet and still rely a lot on instinct.

And then there’s the grilled item, which I changed multiple times, from potato to fish, and finally to sea cucumber. Luckily, I’m still very happy with how the final piece turned out.