Scientific Illustrator?

While I was working at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, in my free time I had been experimenting with scientific-style illustration of fishes. In particular, I had drawn a bluespotted sunfish and a satinfin shiner on Procreate, a digital drawing app I use with my iPad.

Just for kicks, I decided to post them in some of the online fish enthusiast communities I am a part of, and one of my fish-related acquaintances noticed it. This particular acquaintance of mine is a graduate student working on his dissertation. We discussed matters for a little while, but soon enough I found myself commissioned for a project that would involve the digital illustration of 6 salmonids for a research manuscript. 

I have attached finished versions below, but for a detailed account of my process, click here.

Spawning male kunimasu (Oncorhynchus kawamurae)

Spawning male stream-spawning sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka)

Spawning male lake-spawning sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka)

Ferox trout (Salmo trutta)

Gillaroo (Salmo stomachicus)

Sonaghan (Salmo nigripinnis)

This project was my first foray into extensive digital painting, and I feel that throughout the process I made notable improvements in technique and understanding of salmonid anatomy. 

Shortly after the six salmonids, another opportunity for me to scientifically illustrate fishes popped up, and this one required work of a significantly simplified style, which was in hindsight very good, as school was just about to begin.

I was commissioned to draw simplified illustrations of 10 Senegalese fish species that have a potential to control the disease schistosomiasis by eating the host snails which carry the disease at one of its life stages. 

The paper: 

Arostegui MC, Wood CL, Jones IJ, Chamberlin A, Jouanard N, Faye DS, Kuris AM, Riveau G, De Leo GA, Sokolow SH. In

         press. Potential biological control of schistosomiasis by fishes in the lower Senegal River basin. American Journal of

         Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Synodontis ocellifer                                        Synodontis schall

Synodontis nigrita                                        Clarias gariepinus

       Malapterurus electricus                              Chrysichthys nigrodigitatus

 

      Labeo senegalensis                                    Hemichromus bimaculatus

 Citharinus citharus                                         Protopterus annectens

Custom Painted Lures

With the local water levels insanely high (my backyard creek is suitable for chocolate-milk white water rafting), I had some time to paint and fix up a few old lures.

Most of the lures I do are old and in need of repair. I actually never paint new ones.

I finished this one a couple weeks ago. I found a really beat up crankbait by a pond in the Central Park. I replenished its hooks, gave it a paint job it desperately needed, and put on a new coat of gloss.

The next one is a Rebel Crickhopper I found by my favorite golf course pond (I think one of my friends left it there). I gave it a new coat of paint and gloss, and the results, I think, were pretty good.

This one I did today, from a Rebel Minnow I found floating at Mooney Lake in Minnesota. I'm calling it it "super shad," for some reason I can't imagine it being called anything else.

This last one is pretty cool. I don't remember where I got the lure, but it's a walk-the-dog style topwater. I modeled the paint job after a Westslope Cutthroat Trout. It took a while, but the results was worth it.

That's all for now. I realized I should have taken some before-pictures for comparison purpose.

Temperatures are on the rise fast now, and all I have to do is wait for the water levels to go down before I'm back on the water.

More Paintings

I've finished some larger scale paintings this past couple of weeks. One is an acrylic painting of a shad I caught on the Raritan River, my header pic, and another more contemporary oil painting of mackerel at a fish market. 
I actually started the shad painting in early July, but never got around to finishing it until recently. 

You can see in this painting the gold rooster tail I caught it on, as well as the sunset and the dam I caught it under.

Not as related to fishing, but I thought I'd post it up because it was fish.

The pictures don't really match

I hope to finish by this spring a sucker painting and a new pickerel painting ( I already have one from a year or so back). I'm heading for Vermont for winter break, so maybe I'll get some ice fishing in? Until then, happy holidays!

Rainbow Trout Art

Happy Thanksgiving! I've recently been drawing a lot, mostly because of all the cold weather, rain and snow we have been getting in Central NJ. I decided to share a set of rainbow trout paintings I just finished. I thought they were pretty cool.

As you may recall, I caught this fish by Abrams Falls in Tennessee.

This one was from the Queets River in Washington 

This Beardslee was from Crescent Lake, Washington.

All of them next to each other.

One thing I realized about rainbow trout, the variation between the strains can be amazing. All these fish are oncorhynchus mykiss, yet are so different. I just thought that a matching trio might be quite beautiful and interesting to the eye.