I visited family in Bozeman Montana a few years ago. I came home with a refreshed outlook on life, a five gallon bucket of rocks and fossils, and this gorgeous wood plank that I fished out of a creek. My husband didn't bat an eye as this is not unusual for me. I knew I could use that plank somehow, and until recently, has been taking up space in the garage. I decided to make a fish for the plank, backwards, but it needed a big fish. I haven't done a Whitefish before, so I started. Creating a big fish from copper sheeting can be an interesting process, always with unexpected findings. I drew out the fish and got to work.
The hardest part has always been flame painting- I love every second of it! It is really difficult to get colors that you want, working with metal and fire you have a really short window. You can't undo or go backwards. When heated you go from raw copper to gold, orange, red, purple, blue, silver, and then mud. This can all happen in seconds. I wanted to the the silver look of the whitefish without erasing the beauty of copper. Depending on the light, you can see the blues in the fish and I really like it.
I try to make all the fish as close to how you would find them in nature, while keeping the copper color in it. When I am happy with the color, I cover it in India ink to preserve the patina and highlight the textures. I will occasionally hand paint, but only the eyes and specific markings of the fish. I am really happy with how this turned out, and as always, I learned a lot along the way.
