Our lady koi is ready to enter into her world. How is she going to look underwater? This is my favorite thing about watercolor painting. Wet on wet! I absolutely love the way that the colors bleed pool and spread when you give them water to travel on. There is no better experience than carefully wetting where you want the color to transform and then dropping color and watching the magic in front of your eyes. Beginning at the extreme curve of her body and working my way under her chin her underwater world appears.
Don’t Play Koi With Me #5 D1018, 11”w x 11”h watercolor on 140lb WC paper
Don’t Play Koi With Me #4 D1018, 11”w x 11”h watercolor on 140lb WC paper
I continue to add color to her scale areas getting the majority of her done. The next area is her back tail where I am opting to give her a real colorful fin to stand on for her statement. The tricky part for me here is to give her an impression of standing on two legs without giving her legs at all. How do you make fins kind of sort of being legs? Well here is my best stab at it.
Don’t Play Koi #3 D1018, 11”w x 11”h watercolor on 140lb WC paper
At this point, I begin to add the areas of different colors on my koi character taking turns between adding scale patterns and shadow shapes. She is colorful with white, gold, orange, red, and black patches.
I add darkness in layers we are able to see the depth of her open mouth which makes her expression have much more impact. The darkness on her right chin makes her lips seem to jut out toward us. As I work with the eyes I darken where the shadows are along with her iris. Isn’t it great how watercolor allows you to carefully bleed the edges of the shadow to gently show a curving eyeball?
I noticed her dorsal fin is not right and am able to correct that with darkening in the back that reduces it to the correct size.
Don’t Play Koi #2 D1018, 11”w x 11”h watercolor on 140lb WC paper
The SWS meeting is tomorrow night. You may notice in this picture that I was in the middle of doing a wedding couple’s portrait on the desk. I had to put it aside to hop onto the next project in order to get it done on time. Switch to another train works well for when I tend to procrastinate too long too.
I learned how to switch train tracks in the art studio when a customer puts a hold on something and another client wants something else right away. Happens quite frequently.
Don’t Play Koi #1 D1018, 11”w x 11”h watercolor on 140lb WC paper
A challenge to paint something fishy from the Spokane Watercolor Society begins this painting. My brain immediately pictures a koi, seeing a talking fish saying, “Don’t you play koi with me!”. I remember, the old-time movie, “The Incredible Mr. Limpet” where Don Knotts plays a mild-mannered bookkeeper who falls into the water and becomes a fish.
Painting Begins
Starting with a pencil sketch showing a fish with mouth open and eyes wide open. She is standing with its left fin pointing up and out and its right fin reaching down to her hip. The character I see is a sassy woman putting her right hand on her hip. Her left hand is up in the air pointing as she declares this powerful statement.
I first reserve fin areas with transparent yellow. Then, proceed with putting a light wash of shadowed scale pattern on her body. My main goal was just to be able to see the roundness of her form before putting her colors on.
This little watercolor was a challenge from the Spokane Watercolor Society (SWS), which is a club that I love being part of. It is great to be able to see fellow artists every month throughout the year and be able to learn from and inspire each other. At these meetings each month we are asked to paint something and then bring it to the next meeting for show and tell. This challenge was to paint something “Fishy”.
The “koi” thought appeared because Vicki A. West and I spent an evening showing people how to paint these fish at the SWS art show opening a month before. Vicki is quite a talented artist, and it was an eye-opener to see her quick and decisive strokes blossom into beautiful koi images.
