Beautiful Oops

Beautiful Oops

9 x 5 In

Sharpie and Colored Pencil

I made this piece because I was inspired by the ink drop I was given to create a koi fish, as it reminded me of the splotches of colors that koi fish have on them. I wanted to be able to make the ink drop look like it was a part of the pattern of the fish so I had to experiment in order to figure out how to best do that. The message behind the work is that you can still make a beautiful art piece out of one that has been "ruined" by a mistake such as the ink drop. I also think this piece shows that you can be inspired to make art out of anything and potential ideas can come out of anything.

For this work I began by sketching the fish with graphite, I then outlined it with fine sharpie and colored it in with colored pencil, trying to blend my colors to create shading and burnish while coloring it.

When I was creating this piece it required a lot of research because I didn't have much of an idea to begin with of the details of a koi fish. I researched first, pictures of real koi fish and then I looked at some koi fish tattoos because many of them had a more cartoonish look which I wanted to create in my piece. After looking at many photos of different styles and types of koi fish I went back to my paper and combined aspects from all the photos I found. Once I had a general idea of the style I wanted to go for, I revised the fins of the fish many times, trying to figure out the best way to make them look flowy in the way I wanted. I also experimented a lot with color. I wanted to give the fish bright and somewhat unrealistic colors to contrast with the black ink drop. I played around with the shades of each color I was using a lot and before putting them on my piece I used a scrap paper to see how the colors looked next to each other.