Fantasy Fish

Many influences feed into my art work, whether it's sculpting or sketching, and amongst those are television programmes and movies. I particularly like the Discovery Channel and so with this influence today's subject is fish. My end goal is to create a fantasy fish so to feed my imagination I take several images of fish that I find interesting, even if some are more than just a little peculiar, and sketch the parts that created the interest. For example, I started with the Handfish, so called because it looks like it has hands...

 

I'm not concerned with the rest of the fish, just the 'hands' but the patterning is striking and I may incorporate it so I put that into the sketch as well...

 

 Next is a fish I don't know the name of but it's fierceness in its appearance attracts me...

 

Already I'm starting to conceive a deep water creature looming menacingly out of the dark and although no ideas are set in stone yet I'm probably leaning towards reference material that will support that type of fantasy creature.

I love the name of this one, Sea Dragon, which sends my imagination off on another idea! I'm sticking with the prehistoric looking fish and just by observing and sketching them it helps create images that my imagination can use to create a new and weird creature.

There's definitely something gothic or macabre about my choice of fish to sketch but I think they are a rich starting point for hopefully developing a strong fantastical image. I will keep sketching and building my own reference of images in my imagination until I have a strong sense of the drawing I want to create.