Part two of “here’s what happened”. Like I said in my last post, I haven’t been posting here due to a run of failure.

So what? Why is that worth a post? I think I am probably not the only artist to go through this.

So there I was, churning out pretty good painting after pretty good painting. I was trying new things and getting better each time. Then I tried something new and… doom.

Tried it again. Doom.

I pondered long how to explain my journey out of the “pit”. Now, I am not talking illness, depression or any of that, just complete failure to produce a painting that even halfway worked. I thought a series of short posts documenting my slide in and then slowly out of the pit might encourage others. I do confess, I have forgotten some of the details and probably the exact sequence but bear with me.

What happened is on my journey to paint water reflections and ripples, I tried to think of a new subject to center the water around. And what came to me was the start of my plunge into a form of madness…

Koi fish. They are so lovely. I looked online at all sorts of fish. Sites that sell koi gave me ideas for colors and such. And into the koi pond I plunged.

Again, I wanted to play with water ripples so I did a simple layout of 2 koi and masked their edges so I could be a bit sloppy with the background wash.

The first progress painting that I saved was after I had laid out the background wash in Cerulean, Terre Verte and Cobalt and the masking was removed.

I tried to create reflections/lighter areas as a went along by putting more water in those areas and sweeping the pigment away. If the paper is wet enough, this works.

I then went in with a Q-tip and tried to further lighten those areas. You can also see in this detail how wonderfully the colors granulate.

Here it is after some fiddling.

Now for the koi. I did not use one reference photo but several to just get the “feel” of koi. A mistake. There are endless variations in their markings and scales so I gave it my best shot masking out some scales. Note that in water, the scales really only show near the tops of the fish.

I tried to build up the color and the shadows on the lower portions to give volume to the fish bodies. Then I removed the masking and smeared some of the pigment already on the fish across the white areas.

I think it was at this point that I felt like a student opening the test and realizing that I really was NOT prepared. I tried. I went back in lightening some areas and darkening others.

Then I thought, this is so bad, why don’t I try using some ink to pump up those scales?

Can you say “cartoon”? Yep.

I gave up.

Materials

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All Daniel Smith:
Cerulean
Terre Verte
Cobalt
Quinacridone Gold
Aussie Red Gold
Pyrrol Scarlet
Transparent Yellow Oxide

Arches 300lb watercolor paper
Fineline Masking Fluid
Drafting tape (for margins)
Strapping tape (to keep paper flat)

And a little cabernet to sooth the failure afterwards…