Obsessed with Koi

Jean Janssen is a local watercolorist and one of my best friends.  She has been teaching for many years, at community centers,  the Universify of the Pacific, and privately.  Many of her paintings have won blue ribbons throughout the Central Valley here in California.    One of her best selling themes are koi.  She has developed her own palette and technique.

One day Creative Catalyst sent a promo for a watercolor video for  an artist she had heard of but had never seen his workshops.   I showed her the prmo and she was so excited, he used a slightly different technique.  We ordered the video. I watched it first and OMG I was excited too, knowing she would soon be trying out his techniques  and adapting them into her own style.
Well, that got me kind of hooked on koi, but in acrylics.

Not long afterwards Creative Catalyst offered a video on painting koi by a different artist in a totally different way.  So I ordered it to and we compared them and had a lot of interesting discussions about the techniques.   

I had recently restocked my acrylic paint supplies, and I decided to paint koi myself.    Mostly because some years ago Jean had given me 3 canvasses that she didnt plan to use. I had painted over one but had two left.  When I dug them out, I found she had sketched several koi on one  in pencil.  She decided she didnt like acrylic paintings so had never done anything with it. 

Well, there were those koi.   Hmmm.  First I thought I would collage them,  but instead collaged a background of old maps from an atlas I use as a paper source.

Then i played with sketching koi from internet koi sources.   I kept three of Jeans original koi, but did the others based on my sketches.    Layer by layer, tweak by tweak gradually it came together.

I remembered reading about using Citrasolv to clean acrylic paints and inks from brayers, so I wondered if I could scrub out some fish shapes from my dark water background.  It worked. Just as Jean and these other artists could lift watercolor paint with a damp clean brush to bring out their fish, I could do it with acrylics.  Only instead of water, I needed a product to scrub away the layers of paints and glazes.  I tried using alcohol first but wasnt as successful  as using the Citrosolv. 

As the first fish began to emerge, I felt like I had really accomplished something.  It took some time and heavy scrubbing and some judgement to decide when to stop and let it be.    It was so much fun.  I think I am now obsessed with koi. 

The painting lives above my bathtub.  Here are some pics.  You will notice I collaged and then stained and painted over some of the fish.

Fish in pond

These koi are on a new companion piece to the larger koi painting.   I am trying to keep the background lighter, so the old maps show through the glazes. But I rather like the darker one better.  I will live with it awhile and see. 

Another fish..... muxed media

I was going for light hearted simple piece.  I dont want to fuss over it. I think it will end up out on patio wall.

Whats that fish doing there?

This one was pretty mych done but the fish cutout was on my work table.....  mixed media artists can guess the rest.     It was a use it or lose it moment.  

Flowers and fish

Here are some recent paintings.  98% completed.

  this one I thought was finished a month or two ago, but it needed something more. So I added greenery, fallen blossom and foliage and finally the fish.  I want to add a shadow behind the fish and then let it go. 

Mixed media play day.

After seeing Jane Davies post, I challenged our group to either draw, or collage cards with heads, torsos, or legs and feet.   Most did theirs before our meeting, but some worked on them here.   We passed them around, and changed them and had lots of good fun.   There were 11 at the table.  Chitter chatter and giggles.  Here are some of mine.

Busy busy

So many interesting things going on lately.
Our old Wackos group has started meeting again in Modesto.  Beverly has turned her parents house which is on the same property as her own home where she and her husband raised their children, into an art house.   She calls it THE HOME.    It is full of rooms of books, supplies and work spaces. Im looking forward CV to our next get together  when we will work on gelli printing.  Its magical.

Some of our projects will be using supplies we havent touched for a few years, so we can revisit techniques and learn new ones.

The mixed media group that meets at my place, which I call THE BEACH HOUSE, had a bang up day yesterday.   Carol, Sue, Marilyn, Nancy, Sally, Trina, Taffee, Elizabeth, Pamela, Rosemary, Cat and me.  Full table.   I will post pics later. 

This is a piece I did for Valentines day.  I will be teaching a couple of the newbies how to create similar pieces later this month. 

 Basically its layers of papers, napkins, tissues, glazes and tissues.     There are a lot of steps. 

I need to prepare for this mornings painting group. Ill try to update my blog this weekend.