More progress. The painting should be completed today. Lots of distractions including adding on to the house and a customer flying in from Alaska to pick up his 44 inch 40 lb. lake trout (skin mount). Several thousand spots to repaint and make them not look painted. Probably the most difficult fish I paint. And of course delivering tilapia to four high schools and holding their hands on set up. LOL
Anyway here is the fish all whited out over the epoxied areas and then sealed in a lacquer sealer.
Next a dark brown is painted on the scaled areas and fins that have some color to them.
After that the brown is buffed with fine steel wool to take paint off the high areas of the scale to add detail and realism to the blank. In the industry we call this "antiquing." Otherwise even with the right colors the fish would look like some fake plastic fish.
Next I use five minute epoxy and put the pec fins on and fill in the pec fin base with a two part epoxy I use to model in things on fish.
