Posting from my phone so I’ll keep it short. Mother’s Day DF&F 52 Caddis. Moleskine sketchbook, pencil and watercolor with water from the Great Smoky Mountains. This is last week’s fly and I owe a brook trout—that’s coming up…

Drawing Fish & Flies 52 Steelhead Fly. Generic steelhead fly form, following whatever popped into my head as I drew. Notes: After burning much of my 30 minutes on what I felt was garbage, I had to come up with *something* that was interesting. I ended up with a drawing that is part pencil sketch, [...]

Drawing Fish & Flies 52 Flashback Hare’s Ear. Went fly-only again this week with another classic pattern (that has a slightly modern update with the “flash” part). Notes: Wanted something to act as a nymph match for last week’s dry Adams, so went for a simple, clean profile in liquid charcoal. This was painted even faster than [...]

Update: Flashback Hare’s Ear Nymph is on deck for this coming Saturday (April 7). Drawing Fish & Flies 52 Adams. Went for fly-only this week, at Jeff’s suggestion. The Adams is one of those classic flies that will always work somewhere, sometime. I have often threatened to tie one in tarpon-size, just to chase some [...]

Drawing Fish & Flies 52 Bluegill. Loved catching ‘gills as a kid. Still love it. Perhaps I’m known more as a “trout and salmon guy,” but if it swims and will take a fly, I’ll cast to it. That includes panfish of all kinds, as well as carp, gar, and other “rough” fish. Little bluegills on [...]

I was looking for an image to fill a spot in the upcoming Long Flies book, so I fired up Photoshop’s built-in file viewer and started digging. As I navigated past the old DF52 2010 folder, I suddenly realized that I could see all the flies from the year at once. I liked the collage [...]

Update: Next Saturday’s DF52 combo is lake trout and bunny leech (artist’s choice on leech color/style). As usual it is either or both. Join in if you like (leave Jeff and me a link if you do). Remember that it is 30 minutes maximum start-to-finish (that includes scan time if your image requires scanning for [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Below is the first page (not yet proofed) in the color section of GB’s soon-to-be printed Long Flies book. To keep book prices in the “Fly Fishing” series consistent, we are printing color in single, large sections like this, versus scattered throughout the text. This can make things a bit tricky in terms of book [...]