Rainbow Trout

Over the last week or so I have been playing with a negative space technique and have used it on this piece.  What it means is that I didn't paint the fish, I painted the space between the fish.  If that makes any sense.

The fish I didn't paint!

This is an A5 piece painted on high quality card stock.  I covered the entire substrate with various colours of translucent Golden Fluid paints.  I chose bright colours and, because the paints are translucent, they show the colour underneath when you paint over them.  (let them dry before you paint over)

As you can see below, it was really an exercise in covering the paper without creating muddy colours

Once it was dry I used a French handwriting stamp across the whole of the page in Archival French Ultramarine blue.  Using a pencil to draw the outline of the fish, I then outlined again in white paint before applying lots of Gesso to fill in the space between the fish.  I built up lots of texture but it's hard to see from the photo's.  In real life the white seems to have the texture of water swirling around the fish.

I then outlined the fish with a black permanent marker and applied some white dots using the end of my paintbrush.  

Most of my art is bound into books, but I really like this one so I framed it for a while. 

Credit to Andy Skinner for a video that got me playing with this technique.