Conquering the scales

With a few alterations on yesterday's work I started to feel that things were now heading in the right direction, scale-wise. However, yesterday I had only placed the position of the scales with rough blobs, now I needed to shape them, thin the lines between each scale and even out spacing. This took me all day and was extremely hard on the eyes, I could feel the muscles around my eyes start to feel the strain. I had to keep my head from getting too close as I worked, as I would lose focus if I got nearer than a forearms distance. But I do have a tendancy to get be too close to the work.

Consequently I needed to take frequent breaks by looking out of the closest window, so that my eyes focused on something distant to relax them. I found the golden lion tamarins playing chase with each other in the enclosure opposite the building I was in, a worthwhile distraction. To see their dark honey coloured coats shining in the Spring sunshine and watch their antics as they bounded about was a delight.

Over lunch a friend visited the zoo, on my way to meet her I passed the meerkat enclosure - they were all out enjoying the warm sunshine. The three babies were tucked up to Mum's tummy suckling and the adults were all sat up on their hind legs facing the sun on various rocks and logs. I love the little chattery "mur" "mur" noises they make to each other.... but no time to stop and listen now. My friend Kate and I sat in a quiet spot by the hebaeceous border and apart from a few folk walking by the aviairs close by, our only other companions were three of the many wild moorhens that choose to live in the zoo. With Spring in the air there's a lot of displaying going on right now.

Finally not long after lunch I was done on the scales. They weren't perfect but it was the best I could do without either blowing a gasket, or reducing my eyesight to a fuzzy mess. I felt it was a fair representation of the scale patterning and size.



Next I put on some shadowing on each scale with a pale grey wash. Although this will be over painted with colour it should show through enough to give scales more depth. I laid some colour washes over the body as I had done yesterday, before I had decided to paint it all out again. Laying wet washes over gouache has to be done very carefully so as not to lift the paint underneath. It's hard to say exactly how I do this, except that having used this medium for over 30 years experience has given me a feel for just how much water to add to the wash or how long the paint needs to dry before I go over it. It's not an exact science and difficult to teach... it really is a question of learningt to feel your way with the paint. As I did before, I build up colours and tones to form the body shape with various shades of blue, blue green, pink, purple, green, yellow, peach and orange. The colour is put on thinly enough for the dark lines between the scales still to be showing.


I finished the day by starting to add some colour to the scales to form highlights and to hopefully create the look of a silver fish reflecting light rather than being a rainbow colour fish. This I can continue next week now, as my days at the zoo for this week are done. Time to go and work at home for a few days.