new .. need guidance and critique

Nice work for your second fish & Welcome... It would be a pretty sweet nitch for you to guiding and taxi/paint. Keep getting them under your belt.
keep it up. AND good luck.

For me as far as the paint job goes a little to green past the latteral line. I like softer bar markings too, but I don't know what your ref. was...

 

Keep at it i think you did a great job! It never hurts to get some dvds Rick Crane's are awesome it dont matter if you are a pro you will learn something new . good luck !

 

So.....are you offering replica finishing services to your clients now? I'm surprised I didnt see anyone comment on limited blank sizes being an issue with an all replica business, (maybe I missed it), but if your focus is LMB, at least it's a more popularly replicated species. Of course if you are doing custom replicas, that isn't an issue at all.

Fish turned out very nice. Keep up the good work.

Best, Scott

 

Looks nice. Biggest thing I notice is work at hitting some of your fins (pecs, anal and pelvics at an angle to add depth. They're looking pretty "flat" right now to me. Otherwise, I think you're quite a bit ahead of the average replica out there...

 

Yep, to give fins depth look at your reference and match whatever color - usually with LM pelvics for instance they're a white-ish base with pinks or grays or sometimes ochre. Watch your overspray, but hit these color(s) at an angle looking down the fin so that the color hits only the high spots and leaves the white (eg) between (low spots) showing. That's just the way I do it, but a quick and easy way to show depth...

 

Dude we have a couple of things in common. I guided for a while and did repro's, I have never studied art in school however have been given the gift to be able to paint, painting portraits and wildlife. I also only do repro's. I don't guide any more, too stressful and I'm very ocd when it comes to my boat lol. I'd rather just fun fish or an occasional tourn but I do still do repro's and...have been doing custom baits. I think for your third (I think thats what you said five pages back) that looks great. I have found techniques I've learned on this site, good reference and actual painting has helped me improve. I only push repro's, having booths at several shows a year and word of mouth and I have all the business I can handle right now. I can't remember when the last person was that asked for a skin mount. NOTHING AGAINST THEM, just not for me, I, like you, like to paint on that white canvass.
I would suggest two things; get yourself a blank to practice on. I use water based paints and have painted a blank, washed it off with Windex and painted it over several times, trying different techniques. I've also painted a blank, sprayed over it with primer and repainted it. Of course you'll eventually lose some scale detail but it'll work for practice. And secondly, I use a paint brush and acrylic paints for a lot of my detail work, OMG this has been awsome for me. Alot easier for me to control a brush than trying to work that airbrush for tiny details. Just something to think about, good luck and keep up the great work.

 

For those just starting out I think ready to paint replicas is the way to go. Reason being is you can't ruin a customers fish. And buying a ready to paint replica doesn't take very long to learn to create an acceptable commercial paint job with practice. I think it takes years to hone one's skin mount skills at least at a level I'm comfortable with (I'm sure some would say more or less, but you get my point - learning traditional skin mount fish taxidermy is not an overnight process and far too many start "practicing" on customer's skin mounts far too soon IMO). With replicas, if you don't like it you strip it and start again. If your customer doesn't like it, you either strip it and try again or give them their money back. They've lost nothing other than some time. If you jack up their skin mount however, that's a HUGE difference. A replica (other than a custom mold) can be replaced. A badly mounted skin mount could be gone forever...

 

I agree with FishArt on that