Drawn after a trip to the Melbourne Aquarium. These two fish, were startled by a nearby camera flash and for the moments afterwards, they were frozen in place, long enough for me to get a rough outline in. The moment was bittersweet, and I tried to convey the feeling in the expressions of the fish as well as the short story that accompanies it. Often, the smallest of moments can trigger the strongest of ideas and thoughts, thoughts so strong that I turned them and this drawing into a much larger painting.
This drawing was the start of that story and painting, but it is in itself, a memory of my trip to that aquarium and the feelings I was sorting through at the time. The drawing is predominantly rendered with detail in mind, however this particular one has a slightly experimental addition in the sea floor. Instead of shading in the creases on the floor below the rock border, I tried to create that tone and texture by creasing the lower part of the page so that the shaded area took on those creased textures. Trickier to do than I expected, so there are two tiny tears in the paper where the crease edge tore a little. If you look on the signature closeup image, you can see there's one slight tear near the signature and one on the opposite side edge of the page, it's very tricky to see, but those two tiny tears are there. Creasing a page apparently is not my specialty, still, the effect was pretty cool, and I like the randomness of the creased texture over my pencil shading. It was also an excellent way to release a little careful frustration on that paper.
After familiarizing myself with these two startled fish, I've become quite attached to them after spending so much time drawing and painting them.