Koi Joy

Last Sunday I had eleven acrylic painting students at my "Koi Joy" workshop here in Sacramento, Calif. The temp outside was 104 degrees but inside, we were all cool painting two lovely and graceful koi swimming about their pond. I showed my students how to first block in the two koi in white for the one on the left and orange for the one on the right. We blocked them in over a white canvas that we pre-painted in a phthalo blue hue. On top of both koi, we spent several hours carefully layering in the various hues and tones over each fish followed by some water reflections laid down with various sizes of flat brushes ranging from two down to one half inches across. Notice how I brock away some of the colors on the two koi to mimic actual color refraction that you would see in real nature. The man in black is yours truly. The two workshop students in the foreground are just starting to put details onto their blocked in koi. By the way, the first photo was our reference photo.