The Artistic Process for a Fish Portrait by Jim Roszel

Fish Portraits are life size and feature brilliant colors and textures not possible with photography or taxidermy. These portraits are also catch-and-release friendly so you can feel good about letting your fish back into the water while retaining your spectacular trophy.

Process:
Each painting is carefully rendered using photos as a reference for capturing individual details of the specific fish. If you anticipate having something done there are a few guidelines to remember about how to get me the best possible reference for the painting. If your photos are not the best, don’t worry! I am an artist and can usually compensate.

Features:

• Life-Size
• Brilliant colors and textures not possible with watercolors paintings, photography or taxidermy
• These portraits are also catch-and-release friendly so you can feel good about letting your fish back into the water while still retaining a spectacular trophy.

List of Options.

• Underline fish with rod and reel with the fish glancing at your fly or lure.
• An inscription that states the length, the weight, the date, the location, and the name of the angler.
• Anything else you may like depicted.

Content of the portrait
A typical painting features the fish underlined with the rod and reel. The reel finds a natural fit in the space by the tail fin. The mechanical lines of the rod and reel are a great juxtaposition to the organic forms of the fish. The fishing line is a playful flourish that leads from the reel to the fly. A glance from the fish at the bait completes the composition. The backgrounds are generally a neutral tone on which the fish is simply stated. Each Fish Portrait is carefully rendered using photographs as a reference for capturing individual details of the specific fish. To get the best possible reference for your painting, here are a few guidelines to remember. (If your photos are not the best, don’t worry! Jim Roszel is a true artist and can work with what you have).

Fish Art - Brown Trout, Madison River Montana. Watercolor on paper, 28 x 20.

TIPS ON PREPARING FOR YOUR FISH PORTRAIT:
With a little preparation you can capture the reference materials needed to complete the portrait. Each fish has unique colors and physical characteristics that will be included in the portrait, so your fish look like the fish you caught and not a stamped out example of the species. Sometimes carefully laid plans can be forgotten in the excitement of the moment but here are a few simple guidelines:

1. Have your camera ready and set to the highest resolution.
2. Handle the fish carefully and support it in such a way that the fish can be stretched out with little distortion to the length of the body and point the camera squarely at the fish. If it is a large fish, support the belly a bit on your knee.
3. If the fish is very large take pictures in sections
4. Rest the fish a while if needed to get more pictures.
5. Try and take close up pictures of sections of the fish: head, tail, fins, scales, eye. Snap as many pictures as possible. This helps me get a good idea of the colors of the fish and how the different parts of the body attach to each other.

Examples of the process:
Once in a while I will keep a fish. Here are examples of the photos I took to complete the painting, the preliminary sketch and the different stages of the painting.

sketch of the fish

fish painting in progress

the finalilzed painting of the fish, framed and ready to hang