An Introduction to Fish Picture #7 and Some Butterflies

Hello Readers!

As promised from the title of this post, the very first photographs of Fish Picture #7 (herein after to be referred to as fp7). And as always when I start a fish picture I forget to take a picture of ALL the first steps.

I started out with a stretched canvas measuring 16.5x23.5 inches. It had the beginnings of very bad painting of a lakeside scene...might of been the beach... there sailboats floating in the air above the shoreline. It wasn't looking good! There were only a few colors of paint on the canvas, the picture was drawn out roughly with lead pencil.

I covered the floating sailboats with a layer of book pages from a paperback I bought in 2006 hoping the stars could really make something good come of life. The stars had nothing to do with life, not then, not now. So the book became art fodder. Least a few pages have thus far. 

The next layer is purple and red pages from pamphlets printed on newsprint. Half of the canvas turned red, the other half purple. 

Once those two layers dried pretty good I covered the whole thing in grass green printers ink and while the ink was still wet I sprinkled 90% alcohol all over the canvas. I didn't quite get the effect I was going for but it didn't matter cause I covered up the green printers ink with a layer of yellow acrylics. 

Man! That layer of yellow acrylics was really BRIGHT!

I toned it down a tad by watering down the last dregs of metallic blue glitter paint and sloshing it all over the seaweedy looking things after the Gorilla Glue they are made from had dried. Before that Gorilla Glue dried though, I put little blue sequins and bigger pink sequins in the glue. There are some tiny blue beads there too. They were in the little jar with the sequins so on they went!

After the sequins I put some green glitter paint along the lines of Gorilla Glue-right over the sequins.

And when I thought I was done, the muse said, "Nope. Let's add some splashes of gold" So I threw some metallic gold acrylic here and there across the whole thing!

Pretend those chunks of white styrofoam isn't there in the corner and this is what the thing looked like when I woke up.

Finally got my head about me and realized I hadn't taken any pictures!

I put those white chunks of styrofoam (aka rocks) all along the lower edge, covering up the green printer's ink. Plain old Elmer's glue holds them on tightly.

I let the rocks dry while I went to the bedroom closet and dug around in my two boxes of fabric pieces trying to find the green silk I thought was in there somewhere. It wasn't there. I found some dark green fleece and some cool lace that fit well with the color scheme I was heading for.

I'll put some more rocks on top of fleece and under and on top of the lace to build a coral reef of sorts. 

The lace is black with these pretty bright green spots all over it. I think it came off a prom dress. It worked out perfectly that the only piece of it I found was exactly the right size! 

Here's a close up of the background. Along with all the stuff I already told you was there, there is also some blobs of yellow glitter paint...it's not really yellow, but a soft gold color. The Gorilla Glue expands as it dries and makes everything stand up! 

These will be incorporated into the coral reef. They are made of folded little squares of road maps.

Painted with pva glue and dusted with blue flocking. I still need to do the other side of them with the flocking.  We will probably see these again before I call them ready to use. I think they need some puff paint on them as well. Orange perhaps?

Everything in the pink mushroom box will end up on the coral reef.

Stayed tuned!

This is the bucket of painted rocks that will be the bulk of the coral reef's foundation. I probably won't use all of these rocks on this fp. They'll keep though, for a future fp.

The timeline to get this fish picture done is the middle of August. I don't see there being a problem with it. 

Only thing that might put me off schedule is when I go visit my son for a week sometime this month. Details have to be ironed out with that before any final plans are made. It will happen though.

You all have seen these butterflies before. I put magnets on the backs of them months ago. A couple weeks ago I put the bodies on them. Black puff paint.

They look much better with bodies!

Wanna be butterflies. 

More magnets more than likely...

I leave you with my dog, Fred.

I thought I would get a picture of him looking out into the yard. I was quiet but he still heard me and turned his head toward the door just as I hit the shutter button. The wind blew the spring chicken (yellow thing) over sometime during the night. That's one of my gloves between the chicken and the dog. I'll blame one of those cats for it being there. They had to have taken it out of the sock box in the laundry room and dragged it out to the front porch. I don't know where else it would have been. I'm pretty sure the dog didn't do it. He's never stolen socks. They are out of his sight, so out of mind as well! 

Looks like a beautiful day ahead....

Be good to one another!

It matters!

Peace

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