Doing Swimmingly!

I have this great collection of antique copper fish.  So I set them up on top of this blue striped fabric.
As I played around with the composition I noticed that it looked a little like fish swimming upstream.
Ok, maybe that's a stretch but I went with it.  I did this outside on a bright, sunny day.  You know I love those shadows.

First glazes of shadows over the fabric.  

This demonstrates the slow build up of copper with a sample of the color charts I mentioned in a previous post.

I don't make charts for every painting but find them very helpful for surfaces or combinations new to me.  Adding various blues to the warm colors make beautiful darker areas on the fish molds.

"Fabricated Swim",  Watercolor, 12" x 30"

©Carmella Tuliszewski 2011

I just love the way the fabric turned out here but the fish were quite challenging.  I have been keeping this one up on my board to play with later.  I'm pretty satisfied with the one on the far right.  The color is good and if you look closely you will see my house reflected in the fish head.  Love that! The other two were not as "shiny" but still held some nice reflections along the sides.  I do love working with metal surfaces and may try this again.  You may notice fabric in more of my still life set ups because I just love working with the folds.