At this point, I decided that I really needed to learn how to paint a koi fish. I know. I had just painted them 5-6 times and this just occurred to me.

However, it helps if you know the anatomy of something and don’t just try to fake it. In art school, they made us draw all the bones and then the muscles and label them. They even took the life drawing class to the morgue for corpse dissection but I skipped that day!

I wanted a good, close up photo of a koi and remembered some I actually took myself at the Sunken Gardens in St. Petersburg, Fl (a wonderful place!)

I chose this one.

Yes, I have NO idea how I am going to paint this. I did have the idea of using soap bubbles again as a background. I imagined doing the bubbles with my favorite – Daniel Smith Terre Verte and one Daniel Smith pigment that I don’t much like – Fuchsite Genuine . The fuchsite is a gorgeous pale green but as a “Primatek” paint made from minerals, it has a very sparkly, glittery look that I think only works in very limited instances. Here, I though it might give the water a shimmer.

Since I was going to get messy with foam, I laid down painter’s tape over the drafting tape AND strapping tape that I usually use to create a margin. Turns out this just plain doesn’t work and paint will seep under it.

As this was going to get messy, I masked the whole koi and masked a few little floating leaves like in the reference photo. Then after the mask had totally dried, I did a light wash of Quin Gold to give it a little glow. At least if it all works right.

Here’s my set up – a bowl of water with just a drop or two of Dawn dishwashing liquid, a soda straw to blow bubbles and a plastic trowel to plop the foam on the paper.

Next step is covering the paper with bubbles and dribbling pigments on top.

I added pigment after pigment and at one point was not too happy as you can get “blooms” or “backruns” with foam just like any other watercolor – where the pigment creates a hard edge around a painted area.

The foam dries in minutes so I think I have time to fix this and keep blowing bubbles and adding more.

There’s still a few hard edges there but I think they now add to the texture.

After it all had dried, I learned another lesson. I love Fineline mask. I find it easy to apply and control BUT, it turns out that when it gets old, it can get sticky and hard to remove. A bottle is good for months – but how many I still have not figured out.

This is past its time and almost impossible to pull up. It’s not the Dawn as this has not happened before on other pieces where I have tried using foam.

Going over it and over it with a rubber cement pickup, I finally got it all up.

I really had no idea how to paint the fish and keep staring at the reference photo. I decided to lay down a layer of gold and build from there. I think this was Quin gold and whatever else I had on my palette.

Over that I layered siennas, burnt orange and deep scarlet and whatever oranges or reds were to hand!

At this point, I still had no idea what to do so I tried something I have never really done before. I think of it as “carving” but the technical term is “lifting”. With lifting, you take something like a sponge, Q-tip, tissue or brush and gently remove or soften color – making it lighter instead of darker.

I got so into it, I didn’t take progress photos but what worked best for me was to take a small, stiff oil painting brush – a #1 flat if you want to get technical – get it damp or wet, lift a little, wipe it, rinse and repeat. I just went a little at a time, hence it feeling like “carving” the shape to me.

Here’s my set up. You can see how I keep wiping the brush.

Here’s how it ended up. I found that for doing the fine details of the fins and tale, the oil painting brush was perfect for fine lines and is now something I use quite often for little details.

While I am not happy with the painting overall, I do love the background. I tried to photo in full sun to catch the little glint and glitter of the Fuchsite but it doesn’t really photo well.