My blue gill

no telling how good you could get on fish if you would stay out of the woods coonhunting and work on fish. Just kidding from an old coonhunter, nice job and good looking dog.

 

Hey coonhunter, nice lookin fish. I've got a similar project planned for a fishing resort. If I might ask, did you order the piece of driftwood from somewhere or is it one you found. Thats similar to what I want to use. If you ordered it from somewhere could you tell me. I usually go out and find my own, just haven't had a chance to yet. Thanks alot. Tom

 

JUst a Constructive Criticism , you need to work on shading in more contrast to the fish, going lighter from the belly to darker on top, bluegills are very colorfull when they are alive.
Notice this live one as the colors go up in shades ? I use a Translucent yellow over a silver pearl base and then real light blue along the top aand under the translucent yellow then I use a back black to shade in a darker top.

 

When they die is when they get darker

 

What makes a good Fish artist is note all the details in shading and contrast and able to mix colors translucently on the skin of the fish you're painting.
But you did a pretty good job.

 

Thanks for the response. I'm goin out driftwood hunting this weekend. I like your setup, gives me a good idea of what to look for.

 

They get darker during the spawn. (males)

 

Besides the spawning it also depends on the subspecies. right now north America has 6 subspecies.

 

True, I was mainly referring the ref. pic, which to me appeared to be a spawning male bluegill, not a dead one.

 

Exactly
to me that pic looks like a spawning male and seems rather unfaded by death.
I may be seeing it funky though.

 

That guy holding the gill above is the co-founder of bigbluegill.com. His name is Bruce and he has his own ponds stocked with nice ones and he lets them go. That website has some great reference pictures of sunfish of all kinds.

 

http://bigbluegill.com/

check it out.

 

Down here we do have about 8 differnt breams but they are all light color, except the ones you get in canals which is darker water.
But The standard Blue gill here is the one laying in the water.

 

I use them all the Time for reference, I do 89% fish down here, and it took me a good 2 years to learn to paint with thin paints, mixing the colors within the fish skin, I was taught by Charles Sanchez ofTheo's Taxidermy in Homestead Fla, R.I.P.
He was the best Fish Painter all around, he painted oil Paintings as well ,today they sell for a lot $$$.
I wasn't trying to criticize but to give some pointers to better the Fish painting.

 

Here's two that I caught last week, Hope this helps.