Large Mouth Bass Paint Schedule

Hi Taxilady! WASCO, a McKenzie company, has individual paint schedules for sale if you don't want to purchase a whole book right now. They have several Largemouth Bass ones to choose from.

 

It’s a pain to say as most of them I do come in array of greens, yellows , dark blue black to light charcoal.
Following a schedule is going to make every fish you do look almost the same.
So let’s start with your references.
Then go by that:
Is your fish dark, medium or light green
Does it have yellows in it and what color yellow. From bright to amber colors they can be
Generally the belly is more off white
Are the marking dark green or a black green?
You may have reds in the fins ( sienna mars red gill red) or browns
Enjoy take your time.
what metallic do you see in those scales as it’ll have from golds to reds , blues and greens.
Ok what I’m trying to do here is give you the artistic ability to look at a pic and break down colors as a paint schedule doesn’t do that but look at one and change the colors as if it said medium green you might want light or dark green etc etc.
Plus you have transparent paints , which are bleeders and come through just about any color . So be careful using them but their great for us fish folks.
Play around on a white paper plate and get used to your brush and layering colors before you just jump into painting the fish.

 

Google "largemouth bass paint schedule" and you get....

- https://www.taxidermy.net/ken/?p=804
- https://jimallred.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/largemouth-bass.pdf
-

And more!

Though, I wouldn't follow any of them.

 

I use 5 colors:

All Polytranspar Laquer

Bass Belly White
Silver pearl on top of the BBW
Medium Bass Green on the back
Dark Brown for the markings
Gill Red for the gills, and lightly misted at the base of each fin.

Enviro-Tex as a brush on gloss

That's it.

You can get as elaborate as you wish, but I only do commercial fish as a means of producing income. I have 4 hours total time in each, and I do a lot of them!

 

If you must have a visual
Don’t use the video posted here of that’s what you will get turtle shite green fish
Order rick Krane’s bass video
I strongly suggest
Get some really good reference photos and paint what you see
I have a 60” tv in my shop and blow up scales to see the real colors
As the saying goes
You can’t see the forest for the trees
Until you look at individual scales

 

I would suggest you buy the individual paint schedules from WASCO or McKenzie. They are reasonably priced and they are a fast way to get you going in the right direction. In my opinion if you try to go it alone it will take a lot of needless trial and error and wasted paint before you achieve success. They will get you close and then you can begin to tweak them to your satisfaction.

 

I have only mounted 50 fish or so mostly as a hobby. I like to use paint schedules on a species I haven't painted before for the first few times but I'm at the stage where I'm experimenting with more transparent and candy colors. Also, I'm looking more at my references and trying to get good pics before skinning of the actual fish.

 

At some point you have to go it on your own, put some work in. It's great that folks on this forum are so willing to help and generous with their time.

There have been lots of good suggestions on getting to a jumping off point, but, I'd differ on this one point:

To me trial and error and "wasted" paint is only needless if one has nothing to more learn. Not that you can't "paint by the numbers" as they say; it is one way to get some experience, but you really limit yourself in the long run imo.

I frankly think that following paint schedules often ends up more expensive than necessary as they are made to sell exclusive paints and target folks who don't understand color theory. A better use of resources, again, imo, is to commit to learning about color and properties of paint....which also can be googled as a start.

 

I just don't see how anybody without any experience can look at a fish and be able to find the proper colors and techniques to match those colors without a lot of trial and error. The paint schedules are by award winning Taxidermists and can be a tremendous help.

 

No not all paint schedules are from award winning taxidermist. Archie P has no idea on how to paint a fish but made money like Barnum and Bailey circus did. A fool is just around the corner.
A color wheel and good reference is all you need. It’s how most top notch taxidermist get where there at by reading references not looking how joe blow paints his fish.
I’ve done plenty of schedules and I have yet seen it done properly as to my schedule. This is one reason I say there a waste but helpful in picking some colors out that’s all
JMO

 

Frank I would agree with you if I wasn't red/green colorblind. Schedules help mr get the fish started in the right direction.

 

Ok slab bandi

Ok slab bandit
You’ve done 50 fish
It’s time to take the training wheels off
The good thing Rick k has in his videos is how colors change with other colors applied over others
But get some reference GOOD reference and paint what you see
Or your going to be like 70% of the guys out there painting a monochrome paint job
Forget how joe blow paints do your job and make it look life like

 

Clew, I understand now what you and Frank are trying to get me to do. And, you are right. Up to this point everyone of my crappie look the same. I just got in all my new paints and am ready to try to some new things. Actually, this evening I had good results with rubbing some different Pearl Ex powders on the backs of my crappie. Can't wait to gloss them tomorrow.

 

Somewhere on here (if the porn bandit over Labor Day didn't get it deleted) Cole Cruickshank did one with a #2 lead pencil. There are many ways to skin a cat. I hate the catsuit green "pond trout" of most schedules. The last one I did. I used 18-20 colors. As Frank said, you need to use your references if you have them. Most of the fish I get, are slate gray and white with a bit of iridescents (from quarries and colder water). You could use the Al Holmes method of spray paint from Walmart.

 

As many have said, using reference and color theory goes a long way! If you are looking for paint schedules or video's go with taxidermists that are award winning or won major awards. As far as videos Rick Krane and Jimmy Lawrence have very thorough videos that are a great! Once you get them down, you can alter them to paint many different versions of the same species.

 

Matt Thompson has a nice beginners video from decades ago.

 

If you use Matt's schedule you can substitute paint ,he has his own line of colors