Like a Fish out of Water

There's a fish swimming at the top of the picture which has beautiful blue patches and this is the next fish I decide to work on.

I lightly sketch in the shapes of the patches along the fish's back and tail using prussian blue.
Then applying the normal sequence of colors (spruce  green, oriental blue, juniper green, prussian blue, blue grey and chinese white) I fill in another area of water beside the fish, blending everything together in the usual way. The fish has a small patch of orange (middle chrome) near it's tail and again, to suggest movement I mix a little primrose yellow in the water beside the tail, blending well.

I draw in the scales, an irregular "diamond" pattern along the blue patches on the fish's back.

Then using prussian blue and lots of pressure I fill in the darker areas. When drawing, it's vital to pay attention to the shapes you see and the depth of colour, rather than trying to draw the object itself. That might not sound very logical, but any drawing is made up of shapes and colour (or negative space, if you like) and if all these are drawn accurately, an accurate drawing will be the result.

I add a few small pale orange (middle chrome) patches to the white areas of the fish's back, and continue adding more prussian blue to the fish's head.

Once again I draw over the lines of the fish scales...

... and deepen the darker areas along the dorsal fin, the back and the head of the fish. I'm fairly pleased with the result so far, but this fish looks like it's floating on top of the water, something I talked about in the last blog. I can see I'm going to have to give the water a lot more attention - at the moment it's too pale and lacking in depth, but I did know this already. I was keen to get a few fish drawn first and will probably tackle the water again when I next sit down to draw.

This is how it all looks at the moment... and yes, that blue-patched Koi in particular is looking "like a fish out of water"!

It's 1 hour and 45 minutes later (16 hours and 10 minutes in total) and I'm done for the day.

The next stage will be to deepen the colour of the water and put that fish back where it belongs!