Scroll down to see details of "Brightness Through Water click to return to Gallery Four page one

This painting is done with a combination of brush work and an atomizer which is a low tech "airbrush" that looks like a metal straw broken in the middle and is powered by my breath alone.

Knowing that their recent purchase of a house by the lake was one of their dreams come true, I felt that combining the theme of a fish with areas of abstraction, I could create a painting that uniquely suited them.

Some of the speckled areas of this painting are done with the atomizer, but many areas are done with a brush. For instance, the purple area featured in this detail consists of hundreds upon hundreds of dots applied with a brush. However, this close-up only gives a hint of what it looks like in real life.

Preparation for this painting included visiting the local pet store to do drawings of the fish in their tanks.  Although I wasn't intent on having the fish look like one species in particular; I did want to examine scales, fins, and tails for interesting detail to weave into the painting.