A Brown Trout Essay

[Rick Krane]

I want to share an Anglers Artistry student Photo essay on Lt II. Nick Borowski USAF. Nick spent a week with me to learn how to skin, carve a body from foam hand paint eyes, learn to rebuild and last paint a mounted a fish to completion. Nick also painted a Reproduction Steelhead which was provided by Dave Campbell of Tacoma WA which was shown early on the forum...

First Nick purchased a great Brown Trout from Cecil Baird of IN who raised some truly exceptional fish. Here is a glance in to Nick’s time learning how to do fish taxidermy. At the end I will give the paint schedule we used to achieve Nicks Great fish.

It all begins with a good template of a fish. We covered the identification of anatomy and body shape. Nick learned that a good fish starts with accurate drawings.

The nest step is in cutting out and shaping the body of the fish using foam. Once the foam is cut out the roughing out of the body is next followed by the sanding and shaping to size.

[Rick Krane]

Once the body is properly shaped it is matched to the template for accuracy. We cast the head after we drew the template for the body and put it aside until it was time to fit the body to the head. Once the head is fit to the body the tanned fish skin is mounted to the carved body with the head in place as it dries.

[Rick Krane]

Once the Brown Trout is dry the rebuilding for the fish takes place. This is where the head is accurate re-attached and all skin and anatomical details are put back in to place using epoxies and lots of reference.

[Rick Krane]

Once the head and fins are properly put back into place and all the rebuilding of the removed or shunkin tissue is completed the fish will be ready to paint.

[Rick Krane]

This paint shedual is basic and can be adapted to fit your Brown trout with more or less colors. Use reference!

When ever you use powder or charcoal's remember to seal them in before moving to the next steps.

[Rick Krane]

1. White out the head / mist the center line of the belly area fading up to the lower side.
2. Mist a Tie in brown over the top of the head
3. Sierra Tan mist over the top of the back blending over the top of the head and on the lower check area.
4. lightly spray Transparent Amber oxide over the top of the fish as well as the lower belly area. Mist over the lower fins and the lower area of the dorsal fin.
5. Mist chrome Pearl and a combination of Micro Pearl powder's to the check are and the center 1/3 of the fish.
6. Detail the lower section of the belly area and the lower jaw with charcoal until you achieve the desired effect.
7. Using the combination of powered paint pigments of blues golds and greens you can soften in the check and the rear gill cover areas to accept the spotting pre color.
8. next the show case spotting center 1/3 3 colors.
A. First frame the hallos in a white/ chrome Pearl mix. Wht 5 parts / CHR P 1 part. Do not go much above the lateral line . Use your reference.
B. Next a charcoal brown or a Sienna depending on the fish. Note that not all spots are all the same you may use both colors in different areas.
C. Apply the rich brown to the upper spots and to the dorsal fin and the caudal fin spots. Refer back to your reference.
D. Black Umber to finish the spot halos in the center of the body and remember that no all spots have to be the same. Also apply to the upper spotting on the upper 1/3 of the fish as well including the fin spots as mentioned in the previous step.

[Rick Krane]

9.   Using green yellow and brown powder pigments apply to the top of the head to achieve a modled or splotchy look to the head. Seal the powder work before moving on to the next step.
10.   Black umber spots will be applied to the head area.
11.   Light bass green is then carfully applied around the upper back spots to achieve the framing of the spots. Carry this color down to the top of the white halo line.
12.   Using a Dark Bass green repeat the step above only to the upper 1/8 of the fish including the top of the head.
13.   Touch up any over spray and use your powered paints to accent the fish at this point.
14.   Gloss!




I hope you got to see some of how a Brown comes together through the work shop of Lt Nick Borowski and Anglers Artistry. The fish is your greatest teacher so use as much reference as you can when carving, mounting, rebuilding and painting! You can do it with time and proper direction! Let the fish be your greatest teacher!

My Best!

Rick Krane
Anglers Artistry

[JP a.k.a Taxi-lover]

Thanks Rick!! Awesome lesson!! I really enjoyed reading this and hope that I got some new ideas about trout mounting! Fins were obviously reprofins,am I right? Anyway the trout looks more than nice,congrats to Nick!!

[Frank E. Kotula]

Great job  Lt II. Nick Borowski, that's a good looking brown. Thanks for the sharing part Rick. Many folks will learn from that schedule.

[Jon S]

Could you explain a little about the cast head? Is the same bondo cast head shown used on the final fish? How did you get it looking so good?

[Rick Krane]

I hoped that this would help some and be fun to read and see! Cool!


Hey John Great Question John!  To answer your question when I teach the workshops we cast in many diffrent mediums from Alginate, silicone, Polly-resin, etc... In this case we cast the head in Alginate. Some times when things don't come out perfect and that is some times the case it is not a bad thing necessarily in some cases it provides opportunity to learn how to fix a problem which was the case. The alginate was bad or something it never seemed to harden up that way it typically would. I think the batch Nick bought may have been bad however it gave us an opportunity to work the head a bit. Regardless if I or a student casts a head in even silicone which in my opinion has tremendous up side ( cost not being one of them) you will almost 99 out of a 1000 times still need to give the head some attention in the rebuilding department.

Fist you must start off with a good head. As I teach folks when ever you freeze any thing be it a fish As a whole or just parts of the fish primarily a fish cellular or tissue make up is water. Water when it sustains a temperature below 32 degrees it will freeze. When water freezes it expands hence creating anatomical anomalies. Once a fish goes through the expantion of freezing upon being thawed the now expanded parts will now deplete past the point of origin leaving you with unnatural shrinkage even in a fresh fish head that may be frozen. So it is your obligation as the craftsperson to reconstruct the compromised anatomical features back to the proper anatomy.

I can't emphasise the use of reference any more then I offten do when I teach! We use so much of it and as offten as possible to do as many aspects of the taxidermy process possible! The fish is the greatest teacher and I know I probably bore folks to death with that statement however I believe it all comes down to accurate reference and the ability to interpret. Yet I digress! LOL!

John we rebuilt any and all areas of the head giving us the proper look so that we could proceed with the Brown. In some cases as I said above it is the Little hickups or troubles that some times provides the opportunity to learn new things. After all it is about learn and getting better each and every time we do something. I try very hard to teach good habits as if you learn improperways of doing anything you will eventually master bad habits too!

I hope this shed a bit of light on your question!

Thanks Evey one for reading and having fun with this essay!

My Best!

Rick

[Bill Willis]

  Great Fish Lt. Borowski it brought back some great memories of fish boot camp when I saw the picture of you rasping the foam Ha Ha.In my opinion we chose the best teacher we could have. Thanks alot Rick Krane for all you do for your students. Once again Nick your fish looks great keep up the good work. And Thanks for all you do for our country.

[GBRUCH]

Wow!!!!    Now this is a reason to view the forums.   Great, Great, learning information.   I haven't been on here in weeks but it sure is nice to see a post like this.   Great Job Nick and even greater job Rick!   You truly are an asset to the industry and deserve an ovation for this post.

[joe simmons]

i agrre , wish i could paint a fish that good. guess i'll have to get some lessons

[Nick2021]

Thanks Rick!! Awesome lesson!! I really enjoyed reading this and hope that I got some new ideas about trout mounting! Fins were obviously reprofins,am I right? Anyway the trout looks more than nice,congrats to Nick!!

No, fins were original   We just mount them differently than the traditional way of leaving them on the skin while skinning the fish

Nick