A few blog posts back I mentioned we decided to finish our basement at our home here in Colorado Springs.  Our contractor, Joe McFarlane (aka Renovator Joe) understood the assignment and created a gorgeous space which is now my studio.   The whole space is bright white (which is such a temptation for everyone, no?) and beautifully textured which is visible throughout these photos.
Throughout the basement construction, Joe had seen some of my work (mostly because I kept saying "hey - check this out!") and the discussion started about painting Koi.   I knew jack-all about koi, other than I know they are beautiful, peaceful, graceful creatures and I like watching them.  But Joe is an a-fish-i-nado (see what I did there??); so obviously I had to do some research.  Part of that research is in the image here.   People, no - this is not all the research I did. It's just what i'm sharing.   GAIGL
 

The requirements:

• Big.  Really big.  Like three times bigger than whatever the biggest painting is you've done
• Full of color.  This makes complete sense, as ...
• Koi = Nishikigoi = Swimming Jewel 

Ok.  I got this.  I learned my lessons from doing a large format painting for The Evans - in that before setting too much paint to paper, check with the client.  
I decided to start small.   The lovely example to the right is 3" x 9".  When shared with Joe, I received the prompt response this is not a koi.  Me:  of course not.  I'm just playing with color for Yamabuki.  ( like ...duh ...) 
Hence the notation "Not Koi.  Grumpy Ass Fish".  I mean, you can't unsee a grumpy fish. U15GAIGL

Another small example.  3" x 9".   This one passed inspection.  Interestingly enough, this little guy was done with watercolor pencils.  The pencils didn't make their way into the actual work though. 

And another one - though this one is 9" x 12". 
Thanks to Lets Make Art for the outline on this painting. 
It helped me become more comfortable with hand drawing.  If you didn't zoom in on the notes above, there is symbolism in the placement of the fish.  Koi swimming up indicate overcoming a hardship in life; swimming down indicate overcoming the hardship AND beating the odds.  
The yin-yang pull is obvious here as well.   Other symbolism includes luck, prosperity, opulence.  Did you know Confucius accepted a sumi (black) koi upon the birth of his son?  I didn't know either but for sure that will make it into some cocktail conversation in the future.  Sumi koi represent protection, by the way. 

It's time to start.  
Pencil and beautiful paper?  Check. 
Radiohead playing in the background? Check. 
Results in the sketches here.  The fun part was extending the koi across multiple panels - which are each 22" x 30" in size.  (In this picture, you can also see a bit of the incredible flooring in the studio). 

With sketches approved by Joe, it was time to add some magic in the form of molding paste and glass bead gel.  Applied at random, the aim was to provide texture which would (hopefully) organically create more creatures in the paintings.