fiery fishies

So, as I'm wont to do,  I went to IMC with several sketches to stare at (and ambitions of finishing all of them).

 I already talked about my week of working on that one in the lower right hand corner.  And the one on top will be a separte post all together.  But I just managed to pull that one in the lower left hand corner through the gap as well. Here it is:*

 

swimming with fiery fish

(* for some reason, blogger is putting a greenish cast on these images... here is a more accurate reproduction of the art's color.)


Swooning and surrounded by flying red fish. Are the fish being juggled?? Is the figure flying in their slipstream? Dancing with them?  When I took this one to IMC it was with the thought of shoehorning it into the "Dragon Rider" assignment. A bit of an interpretive leap, but I liked the image and wanted to make something of it. Back to calling them fish now, not dragons. But, anyways.

Here, putting this one together, from start to finish, a few in-progress shots:

The first rough sketch was a wild experiment, where I really stretched the human figure, extreme elongated distorted limbs. And rough slashing away with red marks. The fish were almost an after thought in this preliminary sketch. 

Then I began to rein in the figure, getting it a bit more under control, removing the random red slashes and incorporating the fish as the red emblems instead. 

In the middle of the painting process there was a point where I thought about toning down the red and making the fish golden instead. But during IMC Rebecca Guay did a demo painting in which she incorporated red fish in a figure's hair. It was just so perfect and I love red so much, that's where I finally took it. 

The final painting will be used by Rose Lemberg for an upcoming anthology she is editing, An Alphabet of Embers.