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 like it, but I used all 30 minutes right to the last second. Brook trout and X-Caddis is next….

Update: Okay, back again. Here’s the standard run-down of the image:

Notes: This was done in the same way as last week’s (and the week before’s) fish/fly. Had to follow the same steps as before, but I made one fatal departure, unfortunately. I used a third rinse to soften the paper enough to get that “peeled paint” look on the body of the fish. Tried to do more than I should have and I got cut short on time with the final image processing. Didn’t get quite what I had wanted overall, but that’s just the way this DF stuff goes.

What did come out okay was the black touches on the Chernobyl Ant. I fretted a bit about how to approach the fly since I figured that I might lose it totally against the saturated oranges/reds of the trout. I also didn’t want to go with a full black foam version since it would weigh things down far too heavily. The three very quick streaks of black did the job. The fly is now an attention-getter, but doesn’t overwhelm. At least that worked!

Like the last two weeks, though the end result is still like a cross between a tattoo and a corroded plaster wall (I just like that feel, it has nothing specific to do with trout fishing, other than perhaps reflecting the look of certain buildings in some places that I have been over the years).

Process: Pencil and watercolor on 140lb Canson stock. Washed and wiped, then re-painted and scanned into Photoshop. Image levels and saturation adjusted in Photoshop.

Available? No, this is an analog/digital hybrid, thus no true “original” exists.

JK’s Image: Jeff’s C&C image with an unexpected—and I think cool—viewpoint can be found here.

Update 2: Here’s what I had intended to get had I not tried for that peeling paint look. This is giving myself back the extra few minutes of time that I burned on peel when I should have been focusing on post-processing. This is the cutthroat that may show up in the greeting card set. Consider it a DF&F 52+5 (+5 minutes, that is) image.