Another assignment for the Laura McKendry course on Domestika . This time, we were to paint fish and drop lots of colours in the initial wash that defined the shape. Well, I wasn't going to pass the chance to paint some of my favourites from snorkelling in the Maldives! I even had a book, called Fishes of the Indian Ocean, that we used to bring with us on holidays (this is pre-Internet days over there, when it was truly no shoes no news) to identify the fish we saw while snorkelling. My personal favourite from this collection is the Oriental Sweetlips, at the top here. They are quite hard to photograph, I remember, as they always float near a coral overhang and if you get too close, they drift back under the shadow of the coral. Now that I think of it, my actual all-time favourite fish of the Maldives is the blue triggerfish, but I didn't think about them when I was preparing this page. I will have to remedy that! I remember dozens of them swimming in the strong current, they were so elegant and active! They always brought a smile to my face!
This is all painted wet in wet, with no preliminary drawing. I did add a bit of black marker in places to increase the contrast. And I'm really happy with how they all turned out! PS: this is not to scale - the oriental sweetlips is much bigger than the rest of them!
