Pretty Little Fish: The Underground Loves Watercolors

I like artwork sketched fast, watercolors done bold. In fact, I’m more interested in my artist friend’s sketchbooks than their finished work.

That’s why Mark Liu’s Web site(s) caught my eye. His work offers a fun, spontaneous immediacy that avoids even a hint of the formal or stilted.

Sadly, what you miss when someone posts artwork online is the eyeballs-on-the-glass perspective that really allows watercolors to shine.

That’s why I’ve included a shrunken image of the full-size pic (which you can click for a much bigger version) along with a real-life-sized excerpt right beneath it.

Polish those eyeglasses and give it a look. You’ll see why I love the fast and loose world of water colors, and why Mark Liu’s Web sites (he has several) are worth a visit:

Below is a brown trout (click on it to see the full-size image), that illustrates what I love about watercolors: at a distance it’s pretty, but up close, the work becomes compelling.

The shading and gradations from one color to the next are wonderfully “real” and rough, and the transparency of a watercolor gives it a vibrancy and spontaneity that other media just can’t match (admittedly, that’s an opinion).

Of course, man does not live by watercolors alone, so here’s a charcoal sketch of a cutthroat:

And the closeup:

There’s plenty more on Mark’s blogs, which include:

His Illustration Blog (the above images came from here).

His Photography Blog

His FlyinTropic Blog (elements of all the others)

And yes, his “BeTrout” Blog that focuses on fisheries, people and ecology

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

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