This was originally posted on my now-defunct creative blog.
Or is it a ghostly flying fish?
This image was inspired by my nephew wanting to draw something with me one night, but not knowing what. He asked his Mum, and she suggested that we draw a flying fish – no, she changed her mind – a ghost fish. I had an overwhelming desire to combine the two, which instantly conjured up an image of a goldfish with wings and a halo in my head. The fat lips and sharp teeth were added to give the fish an aggressive look, to give the impression that it was violent creature, and that it was possibly killed by a human that was on the defensive. I’m not sure where the sewn up eyes came from. You may notice a lot of white on the page. This is because I very rarely draw backgrounds – I prefer to keep the focus on the main figure. Not that I feel that backgrounds are merely distraction, I’ve just never been in the habit of drawing what’s going on behind the things I draw. As this was just a quick, simple sketch with my nephew, I didn’t feel the need to add shading.
Moving on to the digitization. When I received ArtRage Studio, I had a swoosh of all the brushes but I was eager to give it a proper test-run. The undead aquatic sketch was my first thought. I’d push myself – Do a background. It’s one thing not drawing background in black and white on paper, but it would look really bad in full colour. A goldfish floating in the middle of white? So, I laid down the green background first, you can even see where I missed patches by accident. The plants at the bottom of the image were next. I added some metallic tint to them to give them a wet shimmer. As this was my first experience with a proper graphics program, it was also my first experience of using layers. I put a few different layers up there, one of the dark shadows you can see around the edge of the image, a layer consisting of rays of sun which you can also see, and a couple of other layers that I didn’t eventually use. One of these survived up until the very last minute, a kind of dirty green fog commonly seen in under-maintained fish tanks – I decided not to use it in the end. I was very pleased with the background, but admit it could use more work.
Thanks to the tracing feature of ArtRage Studio, I got the basic shape of the fish very quickly. Highlighting and making vibrant textures is very easy in ArtRage as it simulates real media – colours merge and mix into one another with ease. Using curved brush strokes that follow the shape of the fish made it look like a solid, three dimensional object. I was not happy with the edges of the fish, particularly the fin, tail and wings – I was trying to make them look ethereal, but I fear they just look bland and in need of more detail. I like the puffy red lips and swollen eyes, and the way the halo emits golden light on to the top of the fish’s head. I don’t like the spear at all, I feel I would do it totally differently if I were to create this again. Sadly, I discovered how to draw straight lines in ArtRage Studio shortly after completing this piece. I like the stray stream of blood though. Finally, I added some distortion to some areas of the image to make it look suitably underwater.
What do you think of this? Please feel free to leave a comment below. Both constructive criticism and praise are welcome.
