It’s my son-in-law’s birthday this week, and last year I painted him a carp on instructions from my daughter. For Christmas, she asked if I could paint him another fish as she had decorated the downstairs rooms, and wanted another painting for the entryway. I painted a salmon, and here they are in situ:
Fast-forward to this September, and Amber asked if her husband could have another fish painting because she had a a really good space for one…I did ask if Damien had been remotely involved in the choosing of his birthday present, but my concerns were waved away airily on the grounds that he likes anything to do with fish. Hmm.
I decided to paint them a pair of Windermere Char as the males have a beautiful vermilion flush along their belly, and this website (which seems to call them Charr) had a nice photo of a pair which I thought might be fitting given the newly-married status of my daughter and her best friend.
It has been so long since I did a gouache painting and to be doing a pair of fish – hurrah! and using vermillion, my favourite colour – double hurrah! was really fun. I love using Khadi paper as the paper itself does a lot of the heavy lifting in making the painting so effective. I used my granulating watercolours for the background and then gouache for the fish themselves and everything was so lovely to work with. I really enjoyed myself and I think that shows in the finished painting.
I now have to wrap my head around painting my other daughter’s latest arrival, a little kitten called Mr Tumnus.
