Michael the Fish

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine did an amazing art installation, and along with a lot of really cool pieces from her personal collection, she included for the first time live goldfish. A quick disclaimer: no fish were harmed in this piece. Once they were back home I shot several photos of the 5 fish which were dubbed The Jackson Five.

At home, I painted watercolor backgrounds on 6×6 inch Aquabord and this particular piece kept looking to me like it was an underwater scene. I pulled up the photos of the goldfish I’d taken, and decided to paint a few in and see how they looked. After putting in the first fish I decided that was it! Only one was needed —- it works compositionally —- the colors of the fish made a pleasing triangle with the colors of the red-orange of the underwater plant life. Any more fish would just clutter up the composition. It’s become my latest favorite painting! Could this possibly be the first of a new series?

Here is the finished painting below – now available to purchase.

Michael
pastel and watercolor
6×6 inches framed
$80 framed + $10 shipping and handling

Here’s photo of the painting in progress—not a lot of difference, but some changes after this was taken.

The rest of this past week I’ve been struggling with perspective on a different painting – it’s a bit larger, and while it was drying I started working on “Michael”. It was a nice diversion from the difficulties I was experiencing. I’ll share the progress of the other painting soon, but meanwhile I really had fun with this new adventure!