Difficult Fish Mounts

How's it going, guys and girls? Here's some photos of my more difficult mounts. Unless noted, these were all painted with oil paints with a brush.


Cheers,
Terry Doyle




These are called nenui in Hawaii. The yellow one is called the Queen's fish and can't be eaten. You have to bury it on the beach if you kill one (what the Hawaiian guy who brought it to me to mount, told me.) The yellow phase is about 1 in a 1000. These were rejects from castings. I decided to put them together and see what it would look like. Fiberglass and spring steel wire, 16ga. Around 2001.

Then I decided to try something similar with a mahi mahi I casted 3 times.




Sheet steel and rods are the skeletal structure. Around 2001.

A marine gunnery Sargent from a base on Oahu brought me a 38", 47Lb. Giant Trevally (Ulua)
he wanted mounted. I mentioned to him how when I lived in New Zealand, I always wanted to mount a 15 to 20 pound brown trout swimming with a 24" eel in it's mouth, with the eel holding up the trout. The next day, the Sargent, who looked like Sargent Rock, brought over this 42" white eel (Tohei), alive in a 40 gallon container and said "Mount it like you said about the brown"!
So I did.



This was in 2001. The base is a piece of the coral he was standing on when he caught the GT. I used an airbrush on this.

In 2001, The Waikiki Aquarium hired me to mount up some scorpion fish. With the left over moulds and a new one, I did this piece:




Besides about 20 spines sticking out of their heads and the fleshy appendages around
the mouths, the paint job was very difficult. Just figuring out the bottom layer of camo and then putting the other 2 layers of different patterns and colors was challenging.

 

Sorry about the double posting of the GT. (I didn't know how to erase them).


Around 2007 I decide to do these trout sculptures.








Once the 3 reproductions are made, they have to be cut into pieces, then steel rods and sheet steel are welded together and then the pieces have to be reassembled, fixed and painted.

These sculptures go with these paintings I did:





This photo was taken before I made the nicer bases. From what an art history professor at the U. of Hawaii and dozens of gallery directors and salespeople, this is the first time an artist combines sculptures and paintings. Crazy, eh?

A closer shot:



Around 2010, I did some more scorpion fish for the Waikiki Aquarium. So I did another triple mount. One old mould and 2 new ones:







Well, that's it for now. More to come soon.
Cheers,
Terry
PS: check out my website for hundreds of photos: www.3dwildlifeart.com.