Gail Arts: Pond Rendition #1 Koi Fish

For the past few days, I was planning to create a ten pieces set of pond rendition, or more than that depending on my mood using the least amount of money. I also wanted to provide very easy techniques so that beginners could make their own as well. I believe that art should be inexpensive and doable for people to enjoy it.

I made two giant koi arts for the past two years and I realized I wanted to add more and have a simple art exhibit for kids. I will also create other types of fishes and other marine species found in water ponds.

The materials used are (1) soft or chalk pastel (2) 1/2 piece of brown cartolina. You can opt for oil pastel but it will be harder to blend since you either need cotton or oil to easily spread it around your plate. You can also use an entire piece of cartolina. I used brown to give a dainty and mundane effect.

Process:

I cut a piece of cartolina into half and since I find my working area messy, I decided to put it on my wall for an easy maneuver.

I drew an oblong shape using a white soft pastel for the body of our koi fish. You can never go wrong with color white since you could just wipe it off if you are not satisfied with your work. I then added four triangle shapes for the fins of the koi fish. The last one is a long fin or tail of the fish.

It does not really need to look perfect because we are trying to make an impressionistic work instead of a realistic one.

To make it look like the fish is on the pond, I decided to add water lilies on the corner of the plate using the yellow green soft pastel. The shape is a bit round, but not a perfect one.

A water pond would not be a water pond without the water right? So I spread the color light blue around the fish. I also blended purple and dark blue to add more impressionistic effect on the artwork.

Dark green has also been added for the water little and shades of yellow and orange for the body of the koi fish.

I was very careful then of adding shadow using grey and black soft pastel. I added green near the left fin of the fish because waters are not perfectly blue.

For the koi fish, I used the tones of yellow and red to make the koi fish lovely. Make sure that even when you use colors which are beside the color wheel, blend the colors well.

It is all up to you then how you wish to improve your work. You can actually have more fishes on your plate.

The soft or chalk pastel is actually a nice art material that you could play with. To add accents, you can use the lighter colore just like how I used the color white.

^{@gailbelga or Johanna Gail is a free-spirited freelance artist. She took up Bachelor of Arts in International Studies in one of the Ateneo universities in the Philippines. She is currently a candidate for Masters in Public Administrations. She volunteers in various non-profit/nongovernmental organization which aims for human rights through political education. She draws and writes about the country to provide awareness and promote the Philippines to foreign tourists.}