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 River. It’s a fish that weighed somewhere between five and six pounds. Not exactly a typical modern-day brookie for the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, but let’s just pretend.

Thinking about the secretive valleys of the Driftless, and Southwestern Wisconsin in general, really gets me missing that area. When I lived on the edge of that region (in Madison), people in other parts of the country would ask me if I was crazy—why would I live in Wisconsin where there is no good trout fishing? I would only smile and say, “No good trout fishing? Right! Yes, it is too bad….” No good musky, pike, bass, panfish, carp, salmon, steelhead or giant lake-run brown fishing, either. Stay away.

Notes: This was done in the same way as last week’s (and the week before’s (and the week before that’s)) fish/fly. Had to follow the same steps as before to keep things on-track. Used all 30 minutes to add a bit more color detail this time, but no major “peeled paint” deviations like last week.

Like the last three 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 B&X-C image can be found here.