Just one more and I can master painting koi, I told myself.

One problem with all these stumbles and pretty crappy paintings is that it has pretty much ceased to be fun. And I do this for fun! Yes, it is nice to sell a painting or print but really, I do it because I love it and enjoy it. And yet, now I am dreading it.

So just one more.

I’m getting better on leaves but not happy. Here’s a reference photo that I look at an actual koi pond.

Here’s the layout I did of the leaves – and masked with Fineline Masking fluid. This time I was confident enough to just do koi freehand without a reference photo.

The background I saw as simply murky water. I didn’t want to go too dark with the water as then you have dark leaves, dark fish and dark water. If I were doing this again, I would probably lighten the water for more contrast – but please don’t let me do this again!

I used mostly Cerulean, Undersea Green and Mayan Blue. Mayan is a very different sort of blue/green and it granulates beautifully. Undersea Green is a mix of Quinacridone Gold and Prussian Blue sso when you throw a bit of salt on it, it separates out into weird golds and greens.

After removing the masking, I wanted the leaves to glow so I did a background wash of Hansa Yellow Light and let it dry.

Then started painting the leaves, getting them really wet and floating in Hooker’s Green with Jadeite in the center. There’s something about straight Hooker’s Green that has always bothered me – it doesn’t look like a color found in nature but with a little ochre in it to tone it down, it works for me. Usually I mix colors on the paper by getting an area wet and letting the different pigments flow together but greens I mix on the palette. The Jadeite is dark and granulates in the center and the edges are lightened with Hansa Yellow Light.

This shows how wet I get it.

After the leaves dried, I went back with a damp brush and lifted some of the green pigment on the little sharp leaf edges and then added more Hansa yellow. Then with a damp flat oil painting brush, I did the leaf veins – trying not to get them too “perfect”” but appearing and disappearing.

Then the base coat on the first koi.

As before, I painted the koi bodies in solid washes so I could then “lift” the details.

To me it is like carving, lift to lighten, add a little pigment to darken and build the form up. As crappy as these painting are turning out, I really enjoy the process of building out the form of the fish.

More lifting to lighten and then adding pigment for detail.

I used the stiff oil painting brush again for the fins, tail and the stems. I can’t do a fine line well enough with a watercolor brush and an oil brush just works so well. It doesn’t hold much pigment but it doesn’t have to for small details.

And there you have it. It’s almost good!