Lion-Fish Logo

The Internet is a strange place. Put something up and maybe a handful of people find it, or then again, maybe it goes viral, at which point it takes on a life of its own and millions see it. You just never know. Sometimes, the right person finds just what they were looking for. Last week I got an email from a swim team coach in Florida who stumbled on a little demo I did for students a couple of years back. I spent a couple of hours quickly painting a little character of a lion fish. As with many of my fish characters, I took the features of a real lion and morphed them with the fish version to get at something that was a little bit funny, menacing and strange all rolled in one. Well, the swim coach was looking for a mascot logo to go on shirts for their team and thought this was just the ticket. We agreed on a little bit of a budget and I did a black and white line version for him for the logo. It's always strange when something like that happens, but you never know who is looking when you toss something into the ether that is the Internet. Keep doing work just for fun and keep casting your lines into the water. Sometimes you get an unexpected bite.

Lion-Fish Demo

Lion-Fish; in class demo- Holbein Acryla gouache on board- 6"x6"

Today in my Illustration 1 class at BYU I did a painting demo to get the students started. They all have a good basis in drawing, but many of them have little or no experience with paint. I remember feeling the same way as an undergrad student. I had never painted much with acrylic in high school art class, preferring to work in Prismacolor pencil or watercolor. It was inspiring to watch Robert Barrett (whom I now have the pleasure of calling my friend and colleague) create a simple acrylic portrait in around two hours. I now enjoy this demo process from the opposite side of the coin as I try to pass on some of the things I have learned to my students. This fish represents about 2.5 to 3 hours of work. About an hour was used in research, sketching and transferring the drawing and then two hour in class painting. It is not finished, but I thought I'd post it anyway. It goes along with my previous posts the Dog-Fish and the Cat-Fish.