Blobby Blobby Blobby

I’ve been told I need to do some more fish paintings. And that fish in the posterised trippy scheme work better than fish in the posterised tundra scheme. So I’m having another go with the trippy scheme, following my usual procedure. Today’s subject is a blobfish, a creature that’s so ugly that it’s a thing of beauty.

This one’s not terrible, and is up for sale, with the price to be found here. There are three things that hold it back from being great though:

• a little bit of cauliflowering in the French ultramarine wash, although I don’t mind that too much on this occasion. I think it adds a certain watery charm.
• is the French ultramarine slightly darker on Blobby’s face than it is in the background? This is a problem I’ve had before, with some yellow on Michael Portillo and is something I need to work on.
• and, worst of all, I screwed up with the reeds. There are a couple of reeds above the fish that I painted negatively in the French ultramarine layer but that I painted over with the blue where they should have been visible under the fish. I had to wet the paint, dab it off to revel the colourful layer underneath, then paint a corrected blue layer over the top. It looks pretty obvious to me in the final painting that something went wrong there but others might not notice…?