Sea Turtle tank at the Maritime Aquarium

This was my last sketch of the day. I was all out of black background pages, so I went to this page. The surface was prepared with sprayed blue and gold iridescent diluted acrylic paint with a slight pattern, created by putting a stencil over the page before spraying it. The painting was done with watercolor and gouache, and the writing with a Sakura Gelly Roll pen. The iridescent surface is beautifully shimmery in a subtle way, but I don't know if you can see that in the photo. The turtles stayed more to the background this trip. Last time they were nearly in my face the whole time I was sketching their tank!

Sea Ravens and Wolfish from the Maritime Aquarium

Stillman & Birn 5.5x8.5" hardbound sketchbook

Golden Black Gesso

Golden Interference Fluid Acrylics

Gouache

Sakura Gelly Roll pens

This sketch was done on another spread with a background prepared in the studio in advance. The sketch itself was done on location at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, CT. The gouache stood out pretty well against the black and iridescent surface, and the metallic Gelly Roll pens were the perfect defining touch for these eerie creatures of the deep!

Golden Black Gesso and Sakura Gelly Roll Pens

This was so much fun! (Image can be clicked for a larger, clearer view.) I used Golden Black Gesso to coat a few page spreads in my Stillman & Birn 5.5x8..5" Epsilon hardbound sketchbook, drying each with a hair dryer before going on to the next. One coat of the Golden Black Gesso perfectly coated the paper. I did try a couple of different dilutions of it also, but it was best right out of the jar the way it came. It applied a thin, totally opaque covering of the paper with a single coat. I used an inexpensive foam brush.

Then I diluted some Golden Fluid Acrylic Interference paints in spray bottles, using a little airbrush medium, flow release and water, and spritzed each page spread with a couple of different colors, drying them again with the hairdryer. I did this in preparation for a sketching trip to the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk. They have a few very dark rooms with extremely interesting things and flourescent lighting, like jellyfish! This page in the book almost exactly mimics the dark, flourescent tank they were in. I grabbed a handful of Sakura Gelly Roll pens, purchased at a Jerrys store on my way to the Aquarium, and went to town with them.

The Gelly Roll pens worked fabulously on the gesso and the paper. They are very opaque, bright and smooth. I am going to get more!

Here's what the Sakura Gelly Roll pens that I got look like on black and on white. On the white paper, I brushed over the crosshatched sections with a waterbrush to see which ones will wash and which are waterproof.

That first sketch was fun, but it didn't give me exactly what I wanted. I turned to another black/interference page spread, and this time used gouache with some Gelly Roll pens over the top. I was much happier with this one!

This is something that I definitely want to spend more time exploring in the weeks to come!

Butterfly Fish, Flame Angel, and Painted Glass Fish --- and happy new year!

Watercolor on acrylic-prepared surface in my 5.5x8.5" 

Stillman & Birn Alpha hardbound book.

Happy New Year to all my visitors. I hope that 2012 brings you all joy, good health, prosperity, and let's not forget.....creativity. Of course I'm also wishing for world peace and tolerance, the end of famine and natural disasters, health care for all, and a better economy!

This was my last sketch of the day at Animal Kingdom. When I do these on location, I leave the writing for after I get home. That enables me to get as many sketches done on location as I can, without being slowed down by the journaling part of it. Sometimes it takes me a few days to get that done and get the images photographed, adjusted, and loaded up here.

The sign on the tank identified that yellow and white fish as a Spotted Butterfly, but when I looked online yesterday, the "Spotted Butterfly Fish" I saw didn't look anything like this one! So, I'm not quite sure what this one is, but he does look like some kind of Butterfly fish. The little glass fish were highly florescent --- gorgeous little creatures! They weren't in the same tank, but I didn't want to miss the opportunity to sketch them, so I put them in here.

Discus Fish at Animal Kingdom

Noodler's Apache Sunset ink, Private Reserve Naples Blue ink, watercolor

in a Stillman & Birn Alpha hardbound sketchbook.

Discus fish are among the most beautiful of the freshwater species. They had some wonderful specimens at Animal Kingdom. They must be very shy because no matter which one I was sketching, that one would become aware of the fact I was staring, and would try to find a place in the tank to hide. They come from the Brazilian Amazon River and often are caught live there and transported to pet stores. I was feeling like I  needed florescent paints to capture their colors! I pulled out the most brillian cyans I had on hand --- Private Reserve Naples Blue ink and Winsor Blue watercolor.

Meercat Haven Gesture Sketching

You can click the image above for a larger, clearer view. I think the text is clear enough on the clicked image to be legible, so I'm not going to retype it here unless somebody complains! ;)

When I did my page preparations, I painted this border with sepia colored acrylic paint. Then I painted the entire page with diluted Golden Fluid Acrylic Interference Blue. When the Interference colors are painted on a dark background, there is a color shift when the light hits. That's why you can see bits of blue on the border, which is much more obvious when looking at the pages in person. The white portion of the page has a beautiful satiny sheen from the Interference Blue, though the color shift is most obvious against a dark background. This was a very interesting experiment using a dark background and corresponding color complement in interference paint. I definitely plan to explore more of this!

Because of that color shift, it was difficult to select a color to sketch with, but the combination seemed to unify into a muted reddish-brownish-violet tone, which suited my favorite mix of Private Reserve Velvet Black Ink and Private Reserve Chocolat. I used a waterbrush to wash some of the lines.

Shark Tank at the Maritime Aquarium

You can click the image above to see a larger, clearer image. I'm sorry about the glare on these pages, but due especially to the iridescent and interference paint used, the sparkly surfaces of the pages in my sketchbook reflect a lot of light.

This was another really dark room where a book light would have come in handy. I sketched in brown ink and then added a little watercolor. Even though the scene was quite neutral in color, I felt it needed a bit more than the ink alone would give me. The glittery blue border and background were done in advance. In preparation for my aquarium visit, I got several pages ready in blues, though I ended up using just two of them, and used previously prepared spreads for the rest. This particular one turned out to be ideal for the shark tank.

While I was sitting there sketching, a woman walked in with her toddler son. He walked wide-eyed up to the tank, pointed to a large fish with a chunk of flesh taken out of him, and said, "Oh, look! That fish got bit REALLY BAD, Mommy! Those sharks are mean!"

Mom seemed pretty horrified, but I'm sure she didn't want her son having nightmares about shark attacks. She picked him up and said, "Oh no, Sweetie, they were just playing! It was an accident....Just a little rough play!"

She looked at me and I looked at her and we both giggled.

Sea Life from the Coral Reefs

(Click image if you'd like to see a larger version.)

This two page spread in my Stillman and Birn Alpha Hardbound sketchbook was prepared in advance using Fluid and Iridescent Fluid Acrylics. It was exactly what I was looking for to capture some small sketches of different tanks as I passed by. There was quite a bit of acrylic on the surface here. I didn't think watercolor would take well enough to it, nor provide enough variation in terms of light colors, so I used a tiny gouache set that I made out of a mini Altoids tin and Sculpey clay.

I came upon a huge tank of jellyfish lit from above in a very dark room. I was almost hypnotized by their beautiful floating, changing shapes and subtle coloring as they glowed in the light. I used white gouache against a dark golden-colored background, but felt it wasn't quite dark enough. When I got home, I darkened around the painted shapes with more gouache, letting some of the iridescent gold peek through.

The coral was behind glass, and I sketched it with a Kaweco Extra Fine nib fountain pen, filled with Noodler's Midnight Blue. I didn't think it would take to this surface, but it surprised me and did just fine! I used a waterbrush a little to spread some of the color for shadow areas.

Next up were some of the brilliantly-colored fish from the coral reefs. They were truly in perpetual motion, but I did the best I could. The blue fish in the top right box was such a bright color that I don't think he could be duplicated in paint, but I tried!

Sea Turtles and Fish at the Maritime Aquarium

This sketch was done in an 8.5x5.5" Stillman and Birn Alpha sketchbook. The page border and background were prepared in advance, using diluted acrylic paints, including some iridescent and interference colors, giving the page some shimmer. The sketch itself was then done on location, using a Kaweco EF fountain pen filled with Noodler's Midnight Blue ink, and washed a bit in areas with a waterbrush. Then I pulled out my little pan watercolor set to add a bit of warm color to the turtles. The color on the small text is Iroshizuku Kon-Peki, written with a Platinum Preppy 0.5 (medium) pen. It's a gorgeous turquoise that displays fabulous shading variations in the lines. I got a sample of it, and now that I've tried it, if it weren't $28, I'd get a bottle of it for sure! The page title was written with a Sharpie Calligraphy marker. I bought a couple of multi-color packs of those on an errand to an office supply store with my husband. They come in really handy for those times when I need a special color that I don't have inked up in a wide-nibbed pen. The turquoise seemed perfect for this page spread.

Well, let me tell ya, these turtles are just fascinated by sketching materials! There were three of them in the huge tank, and they swam back and forth and back and forth in front of me the entire time I was sketching. That doesn't make them good models however; they weren't still for even an instant. In fact, every photo I took at the aquarium is blurry from the motion of the creatures, except for the ones that were dead and stuffed!

So, I did the best I could. I decided to make one turtle going in each direction. That way, I could try to add a line to one or the other whenever one swam by me. It was a great challenge! They were so personable that I probably would have been very happy just staying there and sketching the turtles and fish in that one tank all day. As usual, I got the sketching/color done on location, then filled in the text after I got home.

I really love the way the scumbled background turned out on this page. I want to set up more pages like this one!