However, that's not so bad as the flagtail characin illustration is moving along much more smoothly now.. no more fighting with scale size and pattern... now it's all about trying to get the fish to look silvery.
I spent the morning continually adding pale blues and yellows to the scales to soften the colour effect and create that illusion of their shiny surface. I had to work carefully so that I did not lift any colour or mess up the scales that I had laboriously struggled with previously.
So again it was quite demanding on the eyes and I took a number of "eye-breaks" to lessen the strain on them. The fish illustration itself is about 6" (15cms) from mouth to tail tip - the body is roughly 3½" (9cms), so I'm hardly helping myself working to a smaller size... however I have to find the balance between amount of time spent painting (and obviously the bigger it is the longer it takes to paint) and the size at which my eyes can work effectively. Sadly as I get older the eyesight degenerates and in the 16 years I have worked at the zoo there is a difference in the size and amount of fine detailing I used to do to what I can do now. Ah, old age, as they say never comes alone.
There came a point at which I wasn't sure if I needed to go further with the scale work. I had a feeling I needed to do more but sometimes you can be looking at something for so long that you start to lose the overall effect. So I asked my work colleagues, Phil and Anna, for their viewpoint. I asked... when you look at it do you see a multi-coloured fish or a shiny fish reflecting light? The conclusion was I was on the right track but just needed to do a little more, as it wasn't quite there yet. So on I plodded and about midway through the afternoon I sat back and asked the question again... this time they were happy.... he looked like a shiny fish.
As luck would have it, a friend contacted me to say she was in the zoo with her kids... I grabbed the chance to have a break away and out of the studio and made my way to the children's play area, where they were. As I passed the gibbon island the large wooden climbing structure dominating the island was shored up with scaffolding and sat up high on a platform were two very un-gibbon like figures. Two of the primate keeping staff were sat splicing new rope fixings for the gibbons. I was a little envious of them being sat high with such a great view over the zoo on such a lovely afternoon. The gibbons were shut in their house, safely tucked away for the time the refurbishment work was being carried out on their island. The Easter weekend is the start of the "season" for the zoo so there is usually a rush of improvements, tidying and new stuff to be seen to and done beforehand.
After spending a lovely half hour with my friend I went back to the studio and looking at the illustration with fresh eyes I felt happy with it so far. Next I painted the head in and then started on the fins. This fish has a striking tail and is aptly named because of it. I finished the day having done four of six different types of fin this fish has - the caudal (tail), dorsal, adipose (small fin behind dorsal fin) and anal fin.
Tomorrow this beastie will be finished - ready to be checked and hopefully ok'd.
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