Digital Painting: Catch of the Day
Common fish has darker top and lighter bottom. With that in mind I started painting brown on top with yellow ochre in the mid-section and dirty white in the bottom. And painted the large bulging eyes yellow and eye bugs dark brown.
One of the satisfying things while painting is detailing. Adding small detail completes the entire painting. As per my sketch I did a tiger stripes on the fish. I dabbed the brush gently on the canvas with low opacity of 10% until I get on the tip of the stripes with low pressure. I added some scales on the fish and specular highlight so it look as if wet. Finally, I added the razor teeth to give it a little ferocious look but the contrasting eyes still retains a touch of gentleness.
With the fins added it's almost done.
I finished off the first part of the painting with details on the tail and antenae. Soft shadow enhances the depth of the image and knowing where to put it will increase the paintings believability.
Second phase of the painting is the fish bowl. Originally I had a small bowl placed on the floor with small gold fish but I think it's just more humorous to have a large bowl with the small frightened gold fish inside and it'll just fit the title-- catch of the day. Hence below is a modification from the concept. I used light blue for the bowl and dark marine blue for the glass. The image below is quick color dabbing so I know just where to place the refraction of the glass, gloss, gold fish and other accents.
