Delving into the rockpool

I was back at work today after an 11 day break, thanks to a double bank holiday at the beginning of last week and having booked the Wednesday of the week off as well. The usual check of my emails revealed no outstanding requests for replacement signs or new IDs to be added to my list. There had been one request but in my absence my line manager, Phil, did the replacement sign.

So, onto the next illustration on my list - the rockpool. This is for the British rockpool display that has been set up in Bug World and will go on the general information sign. All the ID's for this display are being done separately so this illustration needs only to show a general view and as it will be reduced in size to about 5"x 3" it does not need to be complicated or massively detailed... however as it is a 'general' illustration it may come in useful for something else, so I need to paint it with that in mind (i.e. that one day it may be presented at a larger size).

I started by gathering all my reference pictures of rockpools, some photos and some illustrations/paintings done by other artists. I looked through these to get ideas on how to present the rockpool .. do I paint it as if viewed from above, as a cutaway view or at a bit of an angle somewhere in between? Do I portray the rockpool as a whole or go in close on a part of it? What elements do I want to incorporate - seaweeds, stones, rocks, shells, inverts, fish? I studied the reference and made note of the things I liked and after a quick discussion with Phil on what he would like, I had a plan.

I printed off the reference pictures that would help me compose my rockpool and did a quick rough sketch of a cutaway view - the shape and form of which I made up completely, but that had been influenced by my reference. For example I liked the steepsides one picture had so I gave my rock pool steep sides around part of it, another showed loose stones so I added my own, throwing in a large slab rock lying on top of some. I liked the idea of showing half buried seashells and pebbles in sand, so I will have something similar.

I showed Phil my rough sketch to see if it was what he was thinking of and was pleased to get the go ahead. So I sized my sketched to fit comfortably onto an A4 piece of paper and then scanned it in on the computer. I then droppped the image of the sketch into the 'picture box' on the sign file to make sure that the composition fitted the shape format okay. Having done many illustrations to fit into this shape over the years, it was not difficult to draw something freely that would sit comfortably within it but I just needed to check it wasn't to wide or too deep, before I start throwing on the paint.

After lunch there was a delay of just over an hour as I had to attend an all staff meeting before I could get on with the next stage.

I traced the outline of the rockpool shape and main rocks onto a piece of 300grm watercolour paper and began mixing colours. First a good blue for a summer sky to form the basic colour backdrop behind the pool and then a bluey grey to be the colour of the cutaway rock that the pool sits on.

As I was mixing colours for most of the afternoon I spent a lot of it sat holding my colour test paper under the table lamp - the heat from the bulb dries the paint quicker. The one drawback with gouache is that whilst fluid and wet it looks a lot lighter than it does when it dries. So much time is used waiting for colour tests to dry to make sure I got the mix right/as I want it. 

I am looking forward to tomorrow when I can start really painting the rockpool - this will be one of the most 'free' paintings I have done in my 16 years at the zoo. Almost everything else has to be exact... this is made up and if I paint a rock a little bit bigger than planned or a different shape or colour... it's not going to matter at all. Aaaaah the luxury of that feeling and freedom!