Inspiration month continues here at Unruley Articles … and today I’d like to talk fish.
I like fish — they’re probably my favorite subject for painting (well, I like woods as well, but it’s hard to combine the two).
I particularly like Koi carp. I love the serene and mysterious way that they glide through dark water. Silent torpedoes of colour against the blackness.
I can tell you the point at which I realised just how beautiful they are: it was a couple of days before I got married.
I was in Portland, Oregon with my wife-to-be. We were at the Portland Japanese Garden - it’s an amazing place: if you ever get a chance to visit, you should. Set in a pine forest, the garden is a beautiful series of vistas, linked by a winding path. Misha and I walked around it amazed: here was a bamboo grove, here a Japanese gate, here a zen garden, here a stone pagoda. And here a reflecting pool filled with Koi.
We took lots of photos (see our flickr set for more) — it’s actually pretty difficult to get a decent picture of them. The water makes focusing difficult, and has a tendency to reflect the sky and hide the fish. Plus the little blighters don’t stay still for very long — you line up a shot then with a whisk of their tail they’re out of the frame.
We visited the garden again after our wedding: a bittersweet visit, as I was leaving that afternoon to return to the UK, leaving my wife behind until we could get her visa sorted*. So that visit, and that time in Portland generally, made a strong impression upon me.
Little wonder then that when I was looking for something to paint, the image of bright, streamlined shapes against a dark background returned to me. I produced several pictures of fish — some of which hang in our home, others hanging in other people’s homes. There’s even one in a pub!
*My wife’s visa did get sorted, by the way, and she joined me in the UK a few months later. 🙂

Buy UnRuley
UnRuley Miscellany
Tags
3D art birds buttons cards christmas colour craft craftmas crochet digital art etsy felt food handmade homemade christmas illustration inspiration jade lego links lino lino cut marine life nautilus octopus origami painting paper paper cut photography portfolio postcards printing prints robots sculpture squid tech tools treasury unruley articles valentine vector art work in progressARTicles on Etsy