Northern Pike Painting in Progress, #1

I grew up in Washington State.  And Montana.  And North Dakota.  And... well, that's another story.  However, I do have fond memories of fishing with my dad.  One of our favorite fighters was the Northern Pike.  We'd catch them summer and winter.  Trust me, sitting out on a frozen lake in North Dakota in the middle of the winter is pretty frigid.  But that didn't matter; we had wonderful times out there on the ice, wind gusting.  We'd drill a nice hole or two and drop our lines - not like those pansy Minnesotans that put houses out on the lakes.  Often we'd have to continue to scoop at our holes to keep them from skimming over with ice.  And not like people down here that catch and release.  We EAT our fish!

It occurred to me the other day that fish really make me happy.  If I see a painting or print of a fish, I am drawn to it.  If I see a fish sculpture, it's all I can do to keep my hands off of it.  Last week I finally had the thought - why don't I paint one?  So... I'm going to show you a progression of what's up with my Northern Pike.  Of course a pike would be my first choice.  These fish give a fun fight.  One quarter of the fish is head, and that head is crammed with threateningly sharp teeth.  Once you DO catch one, you still have to be careful!  But when you have him - oh, so rewarding!

This painting is, well, I'm an artist so I haven't measured, but it's about 20x24".  What you see here is only a portion of the painting because you need a close-up to see what's going on.  I'm working on YUPO again, and this shows the mid stages.  First I drew him in with a light pencil.  After that, I painted in the fish, being careful to add some nice textures, with a friskit to protect the whites.  You can see the friskit looking a bit orange (the tint they add to it so you can see where you've painted) and in many places, simply lighter than the paint.
Once the friskit was dry, I added a layer of greens, turquoises and blues, spotting and dripping in some iridescents and other colors for interest and more texture and depth.  This had to dry for 24 hours and I added another layer of turquoise and blue to deepen the colors, toothbrush-spattering on some more iridescents, with a pearl iridescent over parts of the fish.  For this layer, I had to be super careful to not paint over any area twice, because it would have completely lifted any previous paint.

That's it for now.  I'm going upstairs to remove the friskit.  We'll see what it looks like soon...