flyartist

Drawing Flies 52_19 Redfish Wrangler- Digital. Original status: Prints are available, email me for info. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the redfish fly! Tech Info-Went full digital with this one. This image was rendered in Adobe Illustrator CS4 and my 21" Cintique pressure sensitive pen monitor. Just grabbed my pressure sensitive pen and started drawing. Since I have never fished for Redfish let alone any saltwater species, I searched the web for some patterns. The Redfish Wrangler is a combination of a number of patterns I found. As Jason mentioned in his last post, we are dedicating this fly to the Gulf Coast fisherman and guides. I can only hope that the disastrous oil spill will be resolved quickly and this fragile ecosystem does not sustain long term damage. This disaster will not only take it's toll on the fish and wildlife, but all of the small businesses that survive on the fishing that occurs in this region. View the full article

Drawing Flies 52_18 Solomon Caddis Pupae- Sepia Ink, Watercolor and Gouache. Original status: Available, email me for info. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the Caddis Pupae! Tech Info-Tried my hand again using my new oatmeal toned paper. Started with a rough pencil sketch Then came back with gouache to build up the shapes and values. I diddled around to much with details and noticed that time was passing quickly. after the time was up, I took another long look at the results and noticed that I did not have enough darks and too many mid values. I guess that's why this image appears so flat to me. I will be experimenting with some new techniques in the upcoming weeks. I feel as if I am getting into a rut with my current approach. Stay tuned to see what happens. Larry Solomon devised this duck wing version of the caddis pupae imitation. This dressing was designed to imitate the rising pupae. Other pupae patterns rely on the impression of a bubble similar to a LaFontaine's Sparkle Pupae. This pattern imitates the wings and antenna all tucked along the body just like the natural View the full article

Drawing Flies 52_17 Hendrickson- Sepia Ink, Watercolor and Gouache. Original status: Available, email me for details Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the Hendrickson! Tech Info-I waffled a bit on how to approach this one. I knew I had the option to go either dark or light. I decided to go dark and work the background shape into the the values and shape of the fly. I also used a limited palette of burnt sienna and ultramarine blue. I did throw in a bit of orange for the wing. I started this one by lightly blocking in the shape then I lightly sprayed some water over the image. Next I used some sepia ink and my bamboo quill pen to add a bit of line work. As the pen ran over the water drops, it broke up the line to give it an overall loose effect. Both the dark and light versions of the Hendrickson are extremely versatile patterns. This fly has a long and storied history. Hope to read about some of it over at Jason's post. View the full article

Drawing Flies 52_16 Undertaker- Charcoal Pencil, Watercolor and Gouache. Original status: Available. Contact me for information. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the Undertaker! Tech Info-I just received three 13.25" x 11" Canson scrapbook pads. These books are spiral bound an contain 20 sheets of 80 lbs. oatmeal colored paper. This is a perfect mid weight mid value paper. I could not wait to give it a try. Since the fly has a lot of black in it, I went with my General's brad 4B soft charcoal pencil and drew in all the details except for the floss. I typically used a combination or colors to get black, but for this I went straight charcoal. Next I added the watercolor drop shadow and started in with the gouache work. I was not sure how the gouache and charcoal wold act, but I liked the way I could smooth out some of the charcoal with a damp brush. Last week I received an email from my good friend, fly tying master and one hell of a spey caster, Marty Howard. He suggested something steelhead for this week. I told him to name it, and he came back with the undertaker. Marty has a great pattern that has some similarities to an undertaker. It is called the undercoach. It is a great come back fly that you can throw on if you receive a strike but no hook up. Change the fly over to a come back version, take a few steps back up river and start swinging again. Most times, in the right hands, it results in a hook up. I had the opportunity to tie up and swing a few of Marty's pattern during my trip out West this past Fall. Like stated earlier, in the right hands it usually works, in my case it did not. Swing by the spey pages and look under Hooks, Feathers and Floss. You will find some great Marty Howard step by step tying. His explanations and photography is top shelf. If you would like some great instruction on tying steel head and spey flies, check out the DVD that Marty and Dec Hogan produced. This DVD has a prominent spot in my collection! View the full article

Drawing Flies 52_15 Gold Ribbed Hares Ear- Watercolor and Gouache. Original status: Available. Contact me for information. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the Hares Ear! Tech Info-Decide to create this rendition using a very limited palette. I used ultramarine blue and burnt sienna and white gouache. I started by laying in a medium value wash using a burnt sienna and a touch of ultramarine blue to gray it down a bit. I basically painted in the silhouette of the fly first. I then came back in with a darker mixture and less water an placed the darks. To finish it off I added some white gouache to the mix to add some highlights and the gold color to the rib. The last shape I painted was the cast shadow on the ground. If I had to pick one fly that has the most casting hours it would be the hares ear. This fly is at the top of my list of the "6 must have" flies. View the full article

Drawing Flies 52_14 Bass Bug- Watercolor background, digital sketch. Original status: Available. Contact me for information. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the Bass Bug! Tech Info-Decided to dabble in the digital world this week. I rely on PhotoShop and my Cintiq drawing capable monitor for my day job. I decided early on that I would produce a watercolor background for this one. After I completed the background, I let it dry and then headed to the computer to start drawing. In PhotoShop I opened a blank document and grabbed the digital drawing stylus and started sketching. The nice thing about using the Cintiq is that the marks made on the digital canvas are pressure sensitive. This creates a more natural looking sketch. I roughed in the shape using a dark gray digital pencil brush. Once that was complete, I added colors on various layers to complete this of cartoon looking bass bug. Once the watercolor background was dry, I scanned it and dropped in into the background of the image. I scaled the background to fit and did some erasing to complete the image. It is Spring time in the Midwest and the temps have soared this week into the mid 70's! It will not belong before I am down on the Fox chasing the smallies! View the full article

I will be attending the Great Waters Show in Minnesota this weekend. You can find me in the authors booth signing my latest book. If you have previously purchased a book and would like me to sign it, drop on by and I will be glad to personalize your copy. I will also have both hard and soft cover books for sale. If I am not in the authors booth, you may find me at Bob White's booth. Drop by and say hello! View the full article

Drawing Flies 52_13 No Hackle Dun- Watercolor and Gouache Original status: Available. Contact me for information. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the No Hackle Dun! Tech Info- I do not know where to begin. Had a real rough day and it carried into the things I enjoy doing. Anyways, I will spare the gory details. Struggled with getting this one to come together. Came down to the 20 minute mark and I was close to the point of switching gears and finishing up with an ink sketch. I decided to keep at it and make the best of it. I have only fished this pattern once. It was late in the afternoon in June on the Ausable River. I was in experimentation mode on a rising trout up river. Threw a number of patterns at it with no luck. Tied a no hackle on my tippet and hookup! View the full article

MidCurrent.com is now including Drawing Flies 52 fly art in the weekly MidCurrent e-newsletter. Jason and I will add additional content that may not be included in out original posts! MidCurrent is your one stop shop for all things fly fishing. You can sign up for the weekly newsletter so that you do not miss out on all the great information. View the full article

Drawing Flies 52_12 Bomber- Gouache on chip board 8.5" x 11" Original status: Available. Contact me for information. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the Bomber! Tech Info- I really enjoy drawing and painting on chip board. It is inexpensive and creates a great textured neutral value background. Chip board is the stuff you will find on the back of note and paper pads. Threw down a quick pencil sketch to rough out the shape, then I followed up with applications of gouache. I started with darker values and worked to the lightest to define the form. Creating the illusion of deer hair is always an interesting challenge. The spun deer hair for this fly was created by dabbing the end of a stiff bristle brush on the surface. This was the most time consuming task and I had to layer the paint carefully as to not overdue the effect or blow the 30 minute rule. I have not swung a waking or skating fly like this for steelhead yet. Since the steelhead season here in the Midwest is unpredictable and the times I get to my home river I am usually fishing my confidence patterns. I should take a day to experiment with this style of fly. I know steelhead on my home river have been caught on a waking fly. Catching steelhead swinging a fly is an incredible experience, but catching one rising for a dry fly has to be the ultimate experience! This fly is modeled off of Dec Hogan's bomber pattern. I really like the shape and the way the orange band breaks up the body. Bomber patterns are available in numerous colors and shapes. After I finished it and stepped back I realized that I should have fattened up the body a bit more. Almost exaggerate the shape a bit. But hey, when you only have 30 minutes, you do what you can and hope for the best. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_AGPzJaa9WGk/S6If...0-h/Bomber1.jpg Above is a quick fun sketch that I did yesterday while sitting on the tail gate of my truck enjoying the Spring weather. View the full article

Drawing Flies 52_11 Connemara-Watercolor and Gouache Original status: Available. Contact me for information. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the Connemara! Tech Info- This is the start of a series that I have been wanting to work on titled, "Reflections". I ran this one right to the last tick of 30 minutes. There are some more tweaks that I would like to have done, but this is a good start. I added the jungle cock to the fly to help define a center of interest, plus I just think that jungle cock looks looks great on both actual flies and paintings. View the full article

A Happy Intruder Birthday shout to my best buddy Corey! View the full article

Drawing Flies 52_10 McGinty-Watercolor, Sharpie and Gouache Original status: Available. Contact me for information. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the McGinty! Tech Info- And now for something totally different! Boy this ended up totally different than what my intentions were. I will not tell you what I had originally planned because I will attempt to create it again. This was definately a more colorful approach. Not sure I am pleased with the results, but I will say that it is very different. A bit more graphical in nature almost cartoon like. Started by drawing with a Sharpie, then applying the watercolor layers. Finished up with a bit of gouache. View the full article

Drawing Flies 52_09 Deceiver-Watercolor and Gouache Original status: Available. Contact me for information. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the Deceiver! Tech Info- Pretty straight forward watercolor base then punching it up with some gouache. I always start with the same struggle, dark background or light background. The shape of the fly and the general color usually dictates which way I would go. I could have gone either way so I decided to go light. I aways figure that I can aways go darker if I change my mind mid stream. This one took 26 minutes to complete. View the full article

My local newspaper ran an article on my Drawing Flies 365 project. You can read the article here. View the full article

Drawing Flies 52_08 Partridge and Orange Soft Hackle-Digital and watercolor Original status: Prints Available. Contact me for information. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the Soft Hackle! Tech Info- Went digital on this one. I produced a series of flies in this method for Fly Fusion Magazine. Recently, I completed a fly for a soon to be announced Patagonia program using this same method. The software used to create this image was primarily Adobe Illustrator with some support help from Adobe Photoshop. I started the process by sketching the fly, working on proportions and experimenting with shapes. I then scanned my sketch and placed it in a background layer in Illustrator. Although the final image was created digitally, the background was created by throwing down some watercolor on a sheet, scanning it and compositing it with the Illustrator image. Just cannot get away from using a brush and paints! I like the look of the results achieved by the fusion of traditional and digital media. No matter what media I use, I follow the same process and always start with hand sketches of the fly. I could have rendered the fly in Photoshop, but I chose Illustrator because I like the way I can uses blocks of colors instead of gradients to get the shapes to read. I ran right to the 30 minute mark with this one! I could have easily added more detail in the hackle, but would have run out of time. The 30 minute limit really forces you to think loose and use economy of marks to get your image down quickly. The Partridge and Orange is one of my favorite soft hackle wet flies that I go to when dries are not producing strikes. I really enjoy swinging this fly down and across to pools that I know are holding fish. View the full article

Drawing Flies 52_07 Hex Dun-Sepia ink and Watercolor in my Moleskine sketchbook. Original status: Available. Contact me for information. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the Hex Dun! Tech Info- My day job has me on the road today, so I am posting this one early. Laid down some sepia using my bamboo quill pen. Added in some watercolor to draw attention to that signature extended body and moose hair tail. More info when I return. View the full article

Drawing Flies 52_06 Muddler Minnow-Compressed Charcoal on Pastel Paper. Original status: Available. Contact me for information. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the Muddler Minnow! Tech Info- Now for something completely different! My buddy Corey and I were having a beer after the GreatWater show this past weekend and he mentioned how he liked a past graphite version I did of the muddler. I created this muddler sketch about 4 years ago. I wanted to do something a little bit different from the original muddler and to break away from the watercolors and gouache, so I decided to used some compressed charcoal on a cream colored pastel paper. I started with a very quick sketch of the basic shapes. I used my 6B pencil for this. I then started to block in the dark areas around the outside edges of the shape. This resulted in a nice negative shape of the muddler. I then added some details and dark marks to the interior to help describe the forms. I used my hand to smudge the charcoal to create some values. My finger tips and palm of my hand were black with charcoal. I had to make sure that I did not dry my hands on the light colored towels in the bathroom or else! If I do another in this style again, I will use a different paper. Although I like the tooth of the pastel paper, This brand of paper has very distinct horizontal lines that are part of the graining of the paper. The lines are a bit distracting and take a lot of work to fill in. Below is an in progress shot. You can see my quick warm up sketch off to the left. Below is a picture of the Muddler Minnow I did over 4 years ago. View the full article

Drawing Flies 52_05 Flashback PT Nymph-Watercolor and Gouache in Moleskine sketchbook. Original status: Available. Contact me for information. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the Flashback PT Nymph! Tech Info- I have to admit that I really struggled with this one. I barely made it within the time limit. I was shooting for a dramatically top lit image of the fly. I am not thrilled with the composition, it is off balance. I also used small brushes instead of my larger ones. Using larger brushes forces me to loosen up and avoid getting to detail oriented too quick. I was too tight too quick and it was a time eater. It was just an off day and I struggled with the small size. There is always next week. I also feel the need to mix it up and try a different style. We will see what happens as next week comes around. As an experiment, I may try to rescue this image and will repost the results. Below are the three minute warm up sketches I did before I started painting. Final shot from the drawing board. View the full article

Stop on over to ArtCreel.com to check out the 8 new Limited edition prints Also check out the 90 prints in 90 seconds ArtCreel promotional below. View the full article

I was invited by the Gary Borger Chapter of Trout Unlimited to talk about my new book and to give a painting demonstration. It is always a fun challenge to work on a painting in front of a group of individuals. There were many questions and we ended up with a decent painting at the end of the demo. I decided to do a generic hackle tip wing dry fly. The finish painting was donated to the chapter for their annual auction which raises funds for their many conservation efforts. Thanks to all who attended and to my buddy Corey for taking the great pictures. View the full article

Drawing Flies 52_04 Boss-Gouache on chipboard Original status: Available. Contact me for information. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the Boss! Tech Info- My original intent was to quickly sketch out the shape of the fly on some chip board, then come back and paint it with gouache. Typically I will do some quick sketches to loosen up and warm up. Instead I spattered some gouache on a piece of chip board grabbed a brush and just started painting. No pencils lines just a piece of board with some odd spatters on it. I started by applying dark gray qouache to block out the form. To get the gray I mixed a bit of black into white gouache. Next came the whites and blacks to make the form come to life. Added the Orange schlappen collar and a few tweaks to the bead chain eyes and tinsel to make it read. The boss is a traditional West coast steelhead pattern that comes in many forms and colors. I landed my first West coast steelhead on this orange and black Boss. This was an extremely effective pattern during our Idaho steelhead trip. Below is a picture of an orange and black Boss firmly planted in the maw of this beauty my buddy Corey landed. The boss was extracted and this magnificent fish was sent on her way so that she could continue on her journey and attempt to complete the task her biology was begging her to do.http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_AGPzJaa9WGk/S1eu...600-h/boss2.jpg View the full article

DF52 03_Tarpon Fly - Watercolor, gouache and graphite pencil 5" x 8". Original status: Available. Contact me for information. Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the Tarpon Fly! Tech Info- I started this one by sketching in my Moleskine sketchbook with my favorite 6B graphite pencil. To get the saltwater feel, I used a blue green mixture for the background water color. A very "Miami" color in my mind. This image took 24 minutes and 32 seconds to complete. Quick and simple fly that has a fun and dynamic shape to it. Above is quick graphite sketch I did on a piece of bond paper. I do a number of these sketches before starting so I can get a feel for the proportions and shape. I humped the wing a bit to give it a more dynamic and flowing shape. I felt the image would needed some more dark shapes to liven it up a bit. To achieve this, I added the grizzly pattern to the wing. Jason, how about a bit of chrome action for this next one? Let's try one that I had good luck with out in Idaho. Let's try a BOSS. View the full article

DF52 02_Humpy - Watercolor, gouache and graphite pencil 5" x 8". Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the Humpy! Tech Info- I started out sketching this one in my Moleskine sketchbook with my trusty 6B graphite pencil. I like to quickly block out the proportions and shapes with my pencil first. I do not get into too much detail at this stage, just some quick lines. I prefer to have the freedom to adjust my shapes when I start using my brush to lay in color and volume. After the pencil work is done, I throw down some quick washes to define the shape with watercolor. I use the biggest brush I can so that I deal with broad interesting shapes without any detail. I then start to add some qouache to help define the forms. These typically are the darks and shadows. At this stage the image basically looks like a fly in a dark room. Next comes the punch and sparkle, the highlights. During the entire process I always step back and take a look at the image. I also squint at the image to block out the details so I get a better view of the shapes and values. I adjust the image as necessary and call it done. I try to stop early enough so that I do not go back in and fiddle and overwork the painting. This image took 23 minutes and 10 seconds to complete. The Humpy has a long and storied past. This article is an interesting read on the history. One of the activities I really enjoy to do along with painting and drawing flies is researching their history. I have discovered many a debate on the origin of certain flies. The other joy is discovering the numerous variations that have been created from various flies. I am sure that Jason has more information on the history of the Humpy. Above is an image of the finished product on my drawing board. You can see my old analog stop watch on the top left hand corner. I will try to post some in process images on future flies so that you can see the image as it progresses. Update 1: Check out the simplicity of lines that Jason used to that create a beautiful fly shape with charcoal. Sweet work Jason! I really dig the initial sketches Jason did before diving into his illustration. Using Charcoal is just like riding a bike! Stu Apt Tarpon is fly is up next for numero threeo. View the full article

Mickey Finn - 12" x 10" - Gouache on black Canson paper. This is the first in the "Drawing Flies 52" weekly collaboration series with Jason Borger at Fish Flies and Water (FF&W) . The one rule we have is that the image must be completed in 30 minutes or less. I was not sure if I could do this style of image in under 30 minutes. That became the challenge for me. I grabbed my sheet of black paper, stared at it for a moment, took a deep breath and clicked my stopwatch. I quickly prioritized the order of what needed to be painted first. Tinsel body and hook, glance at the stopwatch, then drop in the head while the body was drying, glance at the stopwatch, paint the yellow bucktail winging then let that dry, glance at the stopwatch... I think you get the idea. I completed the image in 25 minutes and 23 seconds. I knew in my mind that in order to pull this image off, I had to use a minimal number of brush strokes and had to strategically paint in a specific order so that the paint would have a chance to dry. Be sure to stop by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the Mickey Finn. I am sure that you will not be disappointed with his artistry! Jason and I will have the next fly in the series posted on Thursday. I am going to go out on a limb and throw down our next fly, the humpy. View the full article