Four Tropical Fish

Four Tropical Fish
Small Sketchbook

Materials:
Ecoline Brush Pens
Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen
Caran d’Ache Neocolor II Aquarelles
Colored Pencils

I’ve been enjoying exploring tropical fish recently because of their beautiful colors and patterns. I drew a couple of different kinds here. I enjoyed experimenting with layering the different art supplies—trying to be a little loose with my line strokes, which I often struggle with.

I like the simplified coral I have here—it feels playful and fun. I’ve done it like this before too. But there are so many different types of coral that I’ll definitely want to try some other kinds at some point too.

One new thing that I tried in this sketch is painting with my Neocolors. I’m still really new in experimenting with them, but I’ve seen that you can just rub a wet paintbrush onto your Neocolor and paint with it directly that way. So I tried that out for my blue ocean background with my turquoise (#171) and cobalt (#160), and it was a fun way to use those Neocolors! I like the effect a lot—it was a really easy way to get quickly bold colors rather than slowly building them up with my watercolor tray.