Fish, Flies & Water

Drawing Fish & Flies 52 – 05_Bonefish

JB — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:35:05 +0000

Drawing Fish & Flies 52 Bonefish (Hawaiian). This is an image based on a photo sent to me by my friend and Hawaiian bonefishing guide Coach Duff. Coach has access to some of the consistently biggest bones on the planet, and he sent me a few dozen megabytes worth of fish pix last year for the [...]

Pour a Sip for Sage…

JB — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:05:07 +0000

This little post is in honor of Sage (seen above, peering over my shoulder with his well-practiced—and very effective—”sad eyes look”). He passed away over the weekend. Sage was the beloved dog of a very close friend in Montana, and he has appeared before on this blog as part of various angling adventures. Sage, in all of [...]

DF&F 52 Heads-Up – Feb 4, 2012

JB — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:53:32 +0000

If you’re following along with the DF&F 52 project this year, next up is a bonefish/Crazy Charlie combo. Actually, it’s an artist’s choice this week: Do one or the other or both. Haven’t made my own mind up just yet, but I may do one or the other this time, and not push it quite [...]

Drawing Fish & Flies 52 – 04_Brookie & X-Caddis

JB — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 21:47:55 +0000

Drawing Fish & Flies 52 Driftless Brookie & X-Caddis. This is the fourth in a series of four fish and flies in the same style (and may end up on a set of greeting cards). Next week, I’ll be moving on to another approach to drawing/painting. The brookie that I used here is from Canada’s Sutton [...]

Drawing Fish & Flies 52 – 03_Cutthroat & Chernobyl

JB — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:30:27 +0000

Apologies for the lateness. More later, but for now this is the third in a series of four fish and flies in the same style. Got “peeling paint” this time, as well as eroded plaster (frustratingly, the third rinse I did to get that peeled paint cost me too much time elsewhere). May not look [...]

Pre-Kapaa Redside Exercise

JB — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:00:04 +0000

When stating the Kapaa Redside piece seen in the previous post, I had a certain color palette and background approach in mind. After I got a little ways into the painting, I realized it wasn’t really what I wanted to express, so I used the first Kapaa set-up as an experimental piece, trying a few [...]

Kapaa Redside

JB — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:30:54 +0000

Here are a couple of quick looks at a recent watercolor I did for a client who lives in Kapaa, Hawaii (thus the title of the post and the piece). It’s a more detailed version of a quicker Deschutes River redside study I did a few months back. I like some of the things that [...]

DF&F 52 for January 21, 2012: Cutthroat Trout

JB — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:54:04 +0000

Running down to Eugene, Oregon to give a talk tonight, but wanted to get this up before I left. (And seeing that is about to snow for real here, who knows what time I’ll be back?) As discussed previously, Jeff and I are pre-announcing each week’s DF&F 52 fish and/or fly ahead of time. We [...]

Drawing Fish & Flies 52 – 02_Brown & Stonefly

JB — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:12:56 +0000

Drawing Fish & Flies 52 brown trout & stonefly nymph (two-tone, rubber legs). Like last week’s two-for-one, a brown-and-stonefly combo is a classic one in fishing (at least to me—and to Jeff, since this was his pick). The first truly big brown I ever caught, I did *not* catch on a stonefly nymph, but black [...]

More About DF&F 52

JB — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 16:22:42 +0000

A few more notes about the DF&F 52 project: Update: Check out the interview with Jeff over at The Fiberglass Manifesto. There’s a nice slideshow of all of Jeff’s work from the 2011 project year there, too. As discussed previously, Jeff and I are pre-announcing each week’s fish and/or fly ahead of time. We are [...]

Drawing Fish & Flies 52 – 01_Rainbow & Royal Wulff

JB — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 06:51:34 +0000

Drawing Fish & Flies 52 rainbow trout & Royal Wulff. It’s late…more later. For now, think tattoos and corroded plaster. Hardly the stuff of trout streams, but this is DF& 52 and anything goes! Well, now it’s early, but I’m up, so I might as well flesh this out. The ‘bow and RW combo is a [...]

Poly Caddis (v2.0)

JB — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:00:14 +0000

GB’s early 1970s synthetic take-off of the Elk Hair Caddis is one of my own go-to patterns. It not only looks right and fishes right, but the synthetic aspect allows enormous color/texture variation. And as any red-blooded fly-tying geek knows, being able to mess around with colors and textures is one of the best things about [...]

Introducing the DF&F 52 Project

JB — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 20:11:21 +0000

Whether abbreviated as “DF&F 52″ or just “DFF 52,” the 2012 art project that I’ll be working on with Jeff Kennedy will encompass the subject of our two previous years. Yes, 2012 is the year of Drawing Fish & Flies 52. In other words, we’ll be doing both fish and flies this year, alternating between [...]

Drawing Fish 52 – 52_Silver Trout

JB — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 20:01:50 +0000

Drawing Fish 52 silver trout (extinct). Wanted to end the year with a fish that exists now only in literature and in the eye of angling artists. I went with a fish that has some of the shape and color that I might imagine in a fine specimen, but also went with enough additional “olde tyme” [...]