This week’s art is a small watercolour painting of a Fighting Fish (Betta splendens). They are called fighting fish because the males are extremely territorial and will fight one another if put in close proximity. In the wild one fish will normally back down from the other and swim away. In captivity however they can’t do that and so it’s recommended never to keep two males together. Housed alone or with other peaceful tankmates they are wonderful peaceful fish. I’ve kept many betta’s over the years. They are very intelligent and learn easily if you train them with food. Mine particularly loved bloodworm.
Here’s my first betta fish called Anthony…
While I didn’t draw Anthony I think my colour choices were influenced by him. Here’s my pencil drawing…
And here is the watercolour painting…
This was only a small painting done in my sketchbook during a couple of hours at an Art Club I attend at the charity Mind.
I have been planning a new watercolour this week. It’s of a lionfish. I started out making a sketch and then developing it in ink as a sort of practice run.
Here’s the lionfish practice…
Also this week I’ve been playing with some digital colour using some other ink drawings in my sketchbook…
Original ink…
And with digital colour…
Original ink…
Digital colour…
(Ink and colours are my own work but ‘Old Stony Face’ as a character belongs to Rebellion and the brilliant people at 2000AD.)
Original ink…
Digital colour…
Original ink…
Digital colour…
Original ink…(inspired by George Todorovski’s YouTube Video)
I’ve decided that, with the start of a new term, I’m going to focus on more than just sketching and inking. After 112 days of working on this I need to branch out and do some more varied art. So I’m bringing my sketching and inking challenge to an end.
My last sketch and ink picture is of a dog looking really fierce. It’s quite a forceful pose and was drawn after watching a documentary on pitbull’s. But, it does nothing for me artistically…
This was done with W&N brush markers and a copic multiliner.
I’ve been longing to work on some new exciting things in watercolour and acrylic (seperately) and I’ve also been wondering about using oils too. I want, eventually, to work on more fine art type projects but with a modern feel to them. During the time I was sketching and inking a strong feeling of going in this direction was growing in me. I’m not sure what will be the final result of following this latest quest but I think it’ll be good fun.
So, in the meantime, I began my new days of freedom with a regular pencil drawing of a grasshopper. It was a real joy to use a pencil to do more than just sketch…
After that I began to play around in my sketchbook with ideas on how to draw water realistically. It’s something I’ve been fascinated by and will look at in more detail at a later date.
This was inspired by a YouTube timelapse drawing by ‘TutoDraw’…
Here’s my picture. Without using reference for the new fish, I changed it to be a Siamese Fighting Fish – one of my most favourite fish in the world. This was a mistake as I didn’t get the shapes right, especially around the eyes. However, what I was really concentrating on was the water and I felt that at least this part of the drawing was OK, at least as a beginning…
This was drawn using PrismaColor Pencils.
Then finally I settled down to a more detailed watercolour painting. I love drawing animals of all kinds. So here he is – Gareth the Goldfish…
I used W&N Professional Watercolour paints on cold pressed watercolour paper. I didn’t make any preliminary sketches here, just drew in pencil straight onto my final sheet. It was SO MUCH FUN to paint properly in watercolour again!
It made me feel so happy that all I could think of was this scene from the movie ‘Despicable Me’…
These are photos of some of my aquariums. (I currently have just one but there was a time (when I was a bit fitter) when I ran 4 tanks in various places in my home.) I think the thing I really loved about fishkeeping is the task of setting up a perfect environment for my fish and making it into a beautiful calm aquascape too. It’s like painting with life. My favourite aquarist is Takashi Amano who is world renouned for making the most beautiful natural aquariums. Here’s a link to some of his work: Takashi Amano
Today I’m going to look at the first two I set up:
The first is a 20 litre tank. This was my first fish tank. I kept in it a Siamese Fighting Fish and two pygmy corys.
Here’s a slightly closer look:
And here’s a close up of the Fighter ‘Anthony’ (my son named him).
And here’s a close up of a pygmy cory. These are different from regualr corydorus species because they are mid water feeders. They’re amazing – they kind of hover in the middle of the tank. That said they will also pick up food from the gravel too.
My second tank was a 68 litre Amano style tank with added CO2 (don’t worry it’s not bad for the fish – it’s only on in the daytime and all the CO2 is taken up straight away by the plants who replace it with O2 making the tank highly oxygenated. Fish and plants flourish. I built the CO2 system and daylight lighting rig myself.
This is how the tank looked when first set up:
But it soon grew very strongly. In here I put Tiger Barbs and Corydorus. They were beautiful:
Here is the same tank after a short period of growth:
The plants produced oxygen so strongly in this tank that they would form oxygen bubbles on the leaves. This was taken in this tank:
jo fox - adventures in art 