This week I finally made it back to work!!! I also worked on finishing a watercolour painting of a Koi Carp which I began before I was ill. I have a really strong fascination with fish. They just amaze and delight me. And I think Koi are some of the most beautiful.
I used to keep fish and would like to do so again when my health is up to doing the tank maintenance properly.
Here are some of the tanks I’ve had in the past…
30 Gallon Angel Fish Aquarium
5 Gallon Betta Aquarium
15 Gallon Tiger Barb Planted Tank with DIY CO2.
Anyway, bakc to painting. I had this idea for a Koi picture and I sketched it out on the PC using photoshop and my wacom drawing tablet. I filled in some quick colours and moved things around until I had a good plan of how I wanted the picture.
Here’s the plan…
Then I got out a lovely big A3 sheet of cold pressed watercolour paper and started to sketch…
Here are some painting process photos…


After that I added in my foliage. This also took several layers.
Then I cleaned off the masking fluid and began painting the fish!!!!! Yay!!!
…But no… My original plan was to paint the Koi in a traditional loose wet in wet watercolour style and to contrast this with a sharp tight background. My idea was that the wet in wet technique would help the fish look below the water. However, the masking fluid didn’t cover the paper as well as I’d hoped so I had some background colour steaks and some shadow colour streaks right across the white area where I want to paint my fish. It was a real pain.
So I had a bit of a think and then went to plan B. I painted several coats of white gouache over the marked paper and then used more of a gouache technique to paint the fish. It gave it a different feel, where the Koi is surfacing temporarily, but I think I’ve ended up with something that works well enough.
Here’s the final painting…