trout and otters

I have discovered I really like painting fish. It’s my friend’s birthday coming up and I wanted to make him a card, and fresh off the back of my carp painting, which has now been framed:

I decided to paint a trout. I used Khadi paper again, and did the background using my granulating watercolours, which I think worked really well. I painted the fish in gouache.

I used the illustration from my Water Life book, and added a fly for effect, then realised it looks more like a distant helicopter. Hmm.

---

Sticking with a watery theme, I joined a Wild Life Drawing session yesterday evening all about otters. We listened about the work of the International Otter Survival Fund from Ben, son of the organisation’s founders, and his role as the Education Officer of the IOSF, based on the Isle of Skye. Although much of their work is done with the Eurasian Otter here in the UK and Europe, they also carry out research and provide outreach in African countries and Asia where human-wildlife conflict and the pet trade respectively are causing significant pressure on the local otter populations. There are 14 species of otter worldwide, and I didn’t realise that our otters are all the same species, whether they are swimming in Welsh and English rivers and canals, or catching crabs off the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. We had some reference images but I decided to use my Reader’s Digest book as I wanted to practise painting our native ones. As usual, it was fascinating to hear all the details Ben shared about otters generally as well as his experiences of growing up as part of a family at the frontline of conservation.

Here is my sketchbook page from the session: