Copper Fish

©Carmella Tuliszewski

"The Catch"

Watercolor, 15" x 28"

I am so happy that I stuck this one out.  There were many mornings when I came down to my work table and wanted to put it aside.  It was so much more difficult than anything I've done before.

What was so hard about this?

Getting the coloring on the copper correct and dealing with the light bouncing off the molds at all different angles was my major challenge.

I always love to work in contrasts on my paintings.

Here the cool blue shadows next to the warm earthy colors of the molds in combination with

the realistic objects on top of the flat color and simple lines of the comics accomplished that for me.

As I started this piece I began to wonder about wether I might run into a copyright 

infringement issue here.

Is it ok to outright copy the comic page as it is?

My son is a lawyer, so who better to ask?

His opinion is that the subject is not transformative enough for my protection againist a lawsuit.

Even if I could argue that it was, it does not prevent the comic authors from bringing the suit.

And I also thought the authors are fellow artists and in the end I did not think it right to outright copy their work onto mine.

Although it looks like a page from the Sunday paper, it is all made up by me.

Now, I know my limits, I am no comic writer.

So the cartoons are all my own invention but if you look closely at the writing I have pluged in some of my favorite art quotes and made up little senarios with my family.

The dates on the paper is actually the start and finish dates of this painting and the 

authors names are family members.

Craziness, right? Yes, it took forever, but was fun and I feel more comfortable doing it this way.

I will be submitting this for competition so wish me luck!