14 May 2010

Flying Fish!

Flying fish! I painted these as one long strip, to be cut up into four cards afterwards. It'll be tiny on the blog, but here's the whole thing:


When I drew these, I started by drawing some sketches from reference photos (thank you, Google Images). Then I used the poses I liked best, and changed some of the details--especially in the fins.


I came up with the colours in the same sort of way. I looked at a lot of pictures, then came up with my own colour scheme.


The result is Grave's Flying Fish, Cheilopogon gravesi, discovered by Gideon Grave on one of this adventures. Their geographical range is uncertain at present, but I'm hoping a thorough search of Grave's notes will provide some clues. It seems unlikely that it was a native of the waters around Frisland, but it is a possibility.


This last one is my favorite, because it ended up having the best composition when the four cards were separated. I also think it best captures the semi-transparent nature of their "wings."


I've now mailed these off to their swap coordinator, as hard as that was, but I'll be making greeting cards, and maybe a t-shirt with the full strip of fishes.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Did you ever make a T-shirt?

Unknown said...

Hi, thanks for commenting!

I haven't made a t-shirt yet, but I'm certainly open to it if there's interest.

One reason I didn't was because I wasn't sure which place was the best for shirts -- I have Cafe Press, Printfection, and Zazzle accounts, and they all seem to have pros and cons.

One of my goals for the coming year is to get more of my work available in more forms, so stay tuned (and if you'd really like a shirt, feel free to comment again, and I'll hurry up and get one available).