Yes, I have come to hate Koi. Never going to paint another, I keep telling myself.

!

It was a bad experience that went on and on and… on too long. And never got better. Time to end the experiment. Yes, I learned. Yes, I have even gotten better at it but at some point, you have to say “enough!!”

But here’s the thing; I have all these failed paintings on a shelf in my studio where I can see them whenever I walk into the room. And I can see the good and bad points of each. And I can see how I can improve them. (yes, this is my messy “studio” AKA spare bedroom)

On one the leaves are good. Another has great colors. One has a wonderful water background but terrible leaves.

I do like the dark background here and I want to play with that again.

So, I have to paint one more koi. I can see it in my head.

Sigh.

So I plan it out. I know how to do the water and the lily pads this time. I know what colors I want the koi to be. I want dark water. I know I need a little more detail in the actual fish body. I go check out more koi reference photos.

Online shops that sell koi have good photos for colors and body type. I find one that is perfect and have the idea of playing with the photo a little as I am just going to use if for anatomy.

I don’t have photoshop but do have some simple photo editor programs so I bump the contrast and sharpness way up then convert to almost black and white. Perfect.

But I need to bend the body a bit and draw it out. I work on a sketch of how the fish will be. Not the most exciting composition in the world but it will work.

Now to sketch in some leaves and get out the Fineline Masking Fluid.

Now to paint in the background. I chose Blue Apatite Genuine as it granulates wonderfully and spread in a little Undersea Green. Undersea is a pretty hideous color on its own but blends well with blues and separates out when salt is applied.

After I get a good wet background, I scattered some Morton’s Table Salt around to create texture.

Here it is dry.

Watercolor in progress - Daniel Smith Blue Apatite

Detail of granulation – helped by a little salt.

For the leaves, I did an underwash of bright yellow – Transparent Yellow Oxide.

Yes, something dripped there when I set the painting upright to dry. It can be fixed. Yes, I also painted one leaf before I decided I should probably do the underwash to make the pop and frankly to make the whole process easier.

To paint the leaves, I waited for the underwash to dry then got the leaf surface very wet. I floated Hooker’s Green mixed with Burgundy Yellow Ochre over the leaves then floated some Jadeite in the center for the darker areas. The Jadeite tends to “clump” and not spread with is perfect. 99% of the time I mix colors on the paper, not in the palette. Hooker’s green and any ochre is the exception. There’s just something about Hooker’s green that looks unnatural unless toned down.

For the edges of the leaves, I used a brush to sweep the greens towards the center and added a little Hansa Yellow Light on the serrated leaf tips. I did the leaf veins with a damp oil painting brush. Oil painting brushes are much stiffer and with a small one, you can get good straight lines easily. They just don’t hold a lot of paint.

Starting off the fish. Basically, I am doing an orange and a red/silver. I think I was using all the oranges I had to build up the fish body including Goethite and Aussie Yellow Gold. For the fish on the left, I was shading with Sodalite – a dark granulating blue.

Yes, I have no idea how to do this but am just winging it.

I continued to build up the fish bodies and then started to play with reds to get the right shade for the patches. Big mistake. With such a strong color, I now had to be incredibly careful not to go near it so as not to smear it. The best red was Deep Scarlet.

Getting there – I am using a damp oil painting brush to lift and carve the fish shapes.

One thing I tried for the first time is using Undersea Green and Rare Green Earth in the lower shadows. After all, these are supposed to fish underwater. Not sure it really helped but it didn’t hurt.