Playing Koi During Quarantine

[ Playing Koi, 11×14″ Watercolor – SOLD! ]

So, I went back to my Koi fish from a few days ago, and painted him with some of his brothers.

This sketch looks like there’s a lot of accidental color bleeding – but really that’s not the case.

I painted each fish individually, one at a time. It was quite organized actually.

I start each fish by wetting its body and fins with clear water, let it pause just a moment to be not-sopping-wet – then touch the fish with an intense color – letting it flood into the fish silhouette.

(You might remember this is called ‘charging-in’).

Same with the floating leaves. Just touch some strong pigment to the wet-shape.

I like to touch the nose of the fish, or the tips of the leaf, so the color flows from the edge, towards the center.

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Sometimes I’d do that twice. (To get a darker color). Like the yellow fish with the orange nose. (Upper right)

Or I’d touch, leave a gap, and touch again, like the red fish with the white bands. (upper left).

Then, after my fish are fully dried, (it’s just orange fish on white paper at this point) – I wet AROUND the fish with clear water – inverting the wet shape – and painted in the dark background with bold strokes of indigo.

When that scary dark paint touches paper, I don’t have to worry about carefully painting around the fish – because I already did that with clear water. I just touch my water and the dark indigo goes where I want. This is a kind of ‘safety first’ approach :)

If you mess up the cutting in with indigo, that’s bad. But If you start with clear water and mess up – you can just let it dry and start again.

I admit it’s a little tricky to see the wet area – you have to look for the wet shine. Sometimes slanting your lighting helps see your invisible-outline.

Any effect of the fishes’ color bleeding into the background was created by dropping Pyrrol Orange into the wet Indigo. Making it look like the wet-touched-wet – but that never happened. There were no accidental bleeds – it just looks like it :)

Fun hey? By letting the water control the flow, you get all the creativity and spontaneity of watercolor – but you keep it under control so you’re happy with the accidents!

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Oh and, Iif you want to try this at home (maybe with your kids) – Here’s an older example that’s much easier to draw :)

~m