April 13th, 2010
Bubbles!!!
In my last post I told you about Dorothy, our goldfish who just passed away recently, and the first painting I did of her also called Dorothy. What I didn’t tell you was the crazy metamorphosis she went through in her life.
One Fish, Red Fish
This is Dorothy about a year after we had gotten her. She lived all alone in her ten gallon tank. The black moor, SoulFish, didn’t take the transfer from pet shop to house very well and like a lot of fish he only lasted about a week. Dorothy on the other hand seemed happy here. She was small and pure red…
Soon the ten gallon was obviously too small for even just this one fish. Then the filter died. Kaput. Luckily it was just about my birthday and my hubby, our friend Aaron, and I put together the 100 gallon tank Aaron had given me. Not only that but Dorothy had begun to change…
Dorothy began losing her red...
Now I can’t seem to find the name for it but it seems that there is a something in some goldfish (especially the ornamental ones) that causes them to lose their color. Black fish turn orange or red, red fish turn palest pink or white. I think it’s a rarity as I can’t find a ton of information about it and we here we are living in the age of TMI. You can read more about it here on my favorite goldfish board.
So yes, Dorothy ended up losing all of her color and was that rare fantasy color of pink reserved for angels and luck dragons named Falcor…
Dorothy weeks before her passing...
She would take food from my hand and while in the ten gallon she’d come and peck the side of the tank when called which is how I got her to “pose” for the sketch I did. One painting is not enough for this fish.
In this one I really wanted to paint two things: Dorothy with her pond cow spots and bubbles which she had loved to swim through. I hadn’t tried to paint with straight glue as of yet so with fingers once again crossed until straightening them felt odd I started…
I started with the red-orange completely dried then added the white.
I normally dilute the glue with a little tiny bit of water so it’s not so thick and hard to spread but with the white I just went straight from the bottle.
Dry fish, wet bubbles...
I had expected the thicker glue to take longer to dry but it really didn’t. Dorothy dried clear, of course, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I was sure that I liked the shape of the spots and if I didn’t like the finished piece someone out there would. It wasn’t like I couldn’t do another one. So I started adding bubbles…
Two more layers of bubbles..
You know, sometimes I don’t know what I’m thinking. I know it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference nor can you really see it here but I added two layers of blue. For the coloring I started with the lightest shade of blue that I wanted, made a bunch of it, than added blue, red, or green to get the shades I felt were the best.
Four layers of blue and now we're nearly through.
Now that I think about it, if I had shown you every layer of blue that would be boring as all hell. I’m glad I forgot to take pictures. I will have to remember to forget more often. I should probably mention that in between layers I allowed some time to lapse. How much time? Who knows! I didn’t bother tracking this one. And there was fan usage as well. I’ll probably get more scientific eventually. But then again maybe not.
And now we wait...
After adding a very purple final layer of water all I had to do was keep busy and wait for it all to dry.
Bubbles in the morning sun
And she was done, again, and it was how I had pictured it in my head. This one was more of a focus on her favorite thing to swim through, the bubbles from the wand under the gravel. Bubbles is how I will always remember her…