The koi impact the world in such beautiful ways. Their whiskers arrive first and water slides past to meet with the often open koi mouth (they seem to be constantly hungry). The sleek koi sides glide through the shifting planes of blue. Oh, and the way that the water’s surface slaps the air, continually presenting new planar surfaces to the atmosphere (as the koi unsettle it, shifting position always with swift swimming). It’s all so wonderful.
And my pencil tries to follow all these complicated agitations of water and watery beasts.
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Koi love 🙂 – what’s not to love about Koi and your descriptions are magical – woudn’t it be great to have a Koi or two!
I’m glad to be an ambassador for the koi …
Are you sketching from real life?
Oh no. I don’t think I could ever get this kind of drawing from life because the fish are always moving around. If I were drawing from life, I would have to invent the pattern because the patterns change before you can completely observe them. I find that even the information stored in a photograph can be pretty overwhelming.
In the koi paintings and drawings its the relationships between the fish that I have particularly sought to portray.
I could draw the fish from life — their anatomy, but these patterns they form as they move are something I didn’t even know about until I began photographing them. Their interactions with each other as they swim are really complicated and beautiful — like choreography.