different media & variations on a theme

Bach made thirty variations

of his aria for his Goldberg Variations. I haven’t made that many variations on any of my koi motifs yet. That’s an awful lot of fish to draw. But I do redo the same fishes again and again because I’m Degas’s dutiful student and he told me, “il faut refaire la même chose dix fois, cents fois.”  Okay, maybe he wasn’t talking to me.  But still I take these things to heart. So, I redo my koi — maybe ten times — not yet thirty — and goodness knows, Monsieur Degas, not one hundred times!

Watercolor at the top, then colored pencil, then dry pastel (a detail, below), and crayon (also a detail, below that).

What can I say?  I need one of these:

In my own way …