more from the Fish Board sketchbook

The outcome of this fun, mixed media project was to produce a wall mounted board with protrusions. I chose the sea for my inspiration, representing it by a 'close up snapshot' of a fish swimming through weeds with other sea creatures 'floating' amidst the weed. Here is the outcome and just a few of the samples and explorations from my Fish Board Sketchbook.

This is the finished piece, I think my photography/lighting could do with more improvement to do it justice. This was a piece of MDF with the shape cut out with a jigsaw, then sanded to create a slightly raised texture.

I always like to make a small model of what I'm thinking about doing, often in miniature because of the everpresent storage problem! Here it is with pins on cardboard showing possible positions for the other floating creatures, with crocheted wire representing the seaweed.

The inspiration for the base boards finish came from this photo (bottom right corner) of this amzing chocolate coloured fish. I just loved the wonderful colours of chocolate and turquoise and reproduced it with pastels on paper, then acrylic on leather, choosing to replicate this sample out of several for my board.

As usual with most subjects in my sketchbooks I further explored with other media, in this case; gouache on paper.

I painted the board with acrylic, using bubble wrap as a stamp for the bubbles.

With much of my work being very free and often having the 'handmade' aspect exaggerated, I like to include a slightly more traditional drawn piece in all of my sketchbooks, usually at the outset. I made a trip to the Sealife Centre in Blackpool and was able to take quite a few photos for source but the fish photos shown on this blog, for this project, all came from the Aquarium magazine.

 

I was drawn to the ridges in this tail and made a couple of fabric samples as in the 2 following pics;

Pinching the fabric and machine stitching.

As often happens with much sampling I chose not to use this in my final piece.

Other pictures of coral had me thinking about the tendrils leading from the arms.....

My version of the coral's tendrils are on the the tall 'post' in the middle.

This little red fella was another version of a sea anemone, made from angora wool.

More 'coral', from wire mesh and horsehair.

'Coral' created from heat gunned kunin felt and wire.

This was my favourite creature feature, a small segment of 'starfish'-embroidered felt.

A vintage crocheted covered button which I further embroidered produced this piece of 'coral'.

I've always been fascinated by kelp and for my board, shrunk it down by heatgunning a small piece of red acrylic painted foam to create the rubbery effect.

Can you see the crab? another acrylic painted piece of kunin felt which has be heatgunned.

the side of Mr Crabbie.

The seaweed was made from chicken wire, with heatgunned, spray painted, packaging polystyrene fabric