Seeing spots

Trout in progress watercolour, pen & ink

Crop showing pointillism

Progress, watercolour and start of pen and ink overlay

When you have a fish with dark pigment on it what else could you call it but Spot? When you add pen and ink in pointillism it reinforces the name.

I have been submerged in fish lately from prints to paintings as well as other elements of life that have taken over a bit including a shoulder problem that's made painting a bit challenging this week.

This particular piece started out as a study for planned piece. I want to experiment with some watercolour pours and add either fish prints or paintings to the full sheet. So I was seeing how a painting of a fish would look and it seemed to take on a life of its own.

Trout are fairly covered with minute black spots and larger areas of darker pigmentation. I started out in watercolour but it didn't give me the detail that I wanted. I pulled out a .25 Rapidograph pen and started adding tiny dots to create shading and the pigmentation. This method of working is very time consuming but I greatly enjoy it and it becomes almost soothing to sit there dotting away for ages.

I also laid my hands on a few bottles of irridescent acrylic ink and added tiny touches of this to the watercolour wash. I don't want the piece to be completely shiny and artificial looking, just make the viewer wonder if its their eye or is it really a little irridescent.

This is a piece in progress as I haven't completed the ink or the watercolour layers yet and will continue to slowly build them.

A friend's pond full of expensive koi carp was hit by deep ice and cold and a number of the fish died and were presented to me half frozen in a bag one evening last week. I haven't had a chance to do much with them this week, but they look promising as the scale pattern is so pronounced on the carp. I took one print but the fish wasn't thawed enough so the ice melted a little even after drying the skin and interfered with the ability to get a clear print.

I've continued to work on the original fish prints that I made with a rainbow trout and am creating both cards and paintings with them.


They seem to bring out a looser side of me and using brighter colours and abstract shapes is very freeing, even if going back to detail always appeals to me.

Its another part of Watermarks that I am grateful for - the push to experimentation and exploration. Thank you!