Lately for some of my digital works, I began to draw koi fish. Instead of just keeping these fish in digital form, I decided to draw them with water and ink. As much as I've drawn land animals like cats, elephants, and birds in ink, you'd think by now I would have had the thought already to draw a water-based animal with water. Well, finally :)

I had fun painting these small koi fish. There was something peaceful about it, yet, it was exciting to see how each of the fish's scales would turn out. The uncontrollable nature of ink continues to be oddly comforting. I've found that ink will do what it wants, and you might as well allow it to do so.

While researching koi fish and trying to find good source photos to draw and paint from, I ended up on a strange koi-dedicated island of the internet, deep into the arbitrated world of show koi.

It seems that fish that are special appear almost by pure chance, with human meanings such as stepping stones garnering the most value. (Stepping stone-like patterns = good, lipstick-like patterns = bad)

All of the above specifications apply toward just one koi species. The nearest cultural behavior I could map to this is dog breeding (why is a short tail 'better' than long? Why are pink noses considered 'bad'?)

I couldn't keep reading about show koi though, as I suddenly began to feel a need to adopt all of the 'ugly' koi of the world. The 'reject' koi began to remind me of my poodle, Geddy, who has the unfavored long tail and pink nose but is an undeniably perfect best friend.

To round out the last couple days of work in ink, I started a small abstract. The colorful inks that I use have reached the point where they are mixed with each other quite a bit. Exacting artists would probably hate this, but I see it as a way for those Bob Rossian happy surprises to happen.

The green ink in my palette is turning towards a gentle sea-green, and the orange and purple seem to be taking on different personalities as well. I hope I get to keep using these inks for a while, they are about halfway out.