The Story of a Fish

A friend of our's is a retired firefighter and now an avid fisherman.  He enjoyed seeing all of my bird drawings, and kept telling me I should draw a Chinook Salmon, which is a fish that is near and dear to the Pacific Northwest.

So he sent me a picture and I got to drawing.  I'll tell the rest of the story mostly through pictures . . .

I like to fill in the eye first thing so it starts looking alive right away.

At this point I could have been done and had a perfectly fine salmon drawing, but I wasn't quite satisfied.  It needed a little something extra.  I felt inspired by this image that I found on Pinterest.

And landed with this.

I still can't decide if the interior swirls are pretty or just messy, I might work with them some more....  or maybe I don't need to decide.  Maybe I just need to move on.

Or maybe the next step is to bring it onto my iPad and add some digital watercolor.  I did that with my iguana this past weekend.

I do like salmon better now though, with the pattern added.  It made it more mine.