For many years, we had several fish tanks around the house and this particular twin-tail goldfish was one of my favorites. It's always amazed me how much personality a fish can have. If you've ever tried photographing fish in an aquarium, you'll know it can be a bit of a trick because of glass reflections, water distortions and the tendency of fish to shy away from anything that looks like a big eye :). But I did finally get a shot that I liked - very foreshortened but that showed off his twin tails.I began with a 16 x 20 canvas panel. They have the advantage of being more rigid for paint applications that will be thick or heavy. Plus the rigid base also works better for techniques that involve pressing, rolling or stamping - the canvas doesn't flex like a traditional wrapped or mounted canvas and so the texture stays more uniform towards the edges.
I base coated the panel in a medium blue shade, then while the paint was still wet, I laid a sheet of large-bubble packing wrap over the painting and pressed it in. I let it sit for a minute to give the paint a little time to set up so I would get more dimension to the texture, then pulled it away and let the base coat finish drying.
After it had dried, I applied successive washes of a dark green and white to help "pull out" the bubble shapes on the background. The more dimension to your texture, the more paint will "catch" and show it up.
Then it was time to put my composition together.
Using a 1/2" flat wash brush, I cut in several strands of greenery and then added a first layer to the fish, leaving the area around the eye, gill and body edge near the tail fin clear so the basecoat showed through and would serve as shading under later layers. I knew I'd have some coverage issues from working with complementary colors but was still surprised by how the first layer of orange turned completely yellow. I also added a first layer to the eye with black.
Then it was time to get to the rather tedious work of applying successive layers of orange to the fish body to get deeper color but also to provide contouring. The second layer was a repeat of the first, then I began adding some fin details by shading washes of the same color over the fins, keeping the heavier gradation towards the body.
It was also time to start building up the greenery - using several mixed shades of cool and warm greens to give variety, depth and movement to the "reeds".
About the fourth or fifth layer, I added contouring to the body by using a red shade for the deeper shades and a gold mix for scale highlights. These I added one scale at a time using a slant cut, dense pack 1/4" brush and building layer on layer as I wanted the highlights to build up.
The final step (for the goldfish) was to add a final layer of orange to the body as a light wash to help blend the various areas across the fish. At the same time I picked out some of the highlights on his body that were not scales (ie. at the base of his tails).
In looking at it, it was still pretty atonal - not a lot of variation - so I picked out three of the background bubbles and outlined them with white shading. And he still felt too suspended to me. So I added a variety of colorful dots to the base to be the gravel of his tank. The fun of aquarium gravel is that is comes in such a huge spectrum of colors that I could choose anything a wanted. Then a final wash of green (algae-esque) gave a sense of uniformity to the gravel.
I finished the painting with several coats of high gloss varnish at this point (for a more watery feel to the final painting), but I later found a fun idea for framing him as well. Because I used a panel instead of a standard stretched canvas, I was able to find a 2 1/2" deep shadow box frame that suited it perfectly. The combination of glass, gloss and depth make it look even more like he is at home in his aquarium!
So my question after trying this background technique is: what else could be pressed into, dragged across or stamped on a wet base coat to create some fun and fantastic backgrounds?
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