Commission the artist to paint an original watercolour painting

  “As an artist, I’m in pursuit of the real. I want to make paintings that show the fine structure and lines of the fly and the unique form and pattern of a particular trout”

Trout flies

I can paint a favourite trout fly or a favoured set in a group. For these commissions, I need to paint directly from life, so you would need to send the trout flies. I will send them back with the painting. You are looking at a commission price starting at $150 with postage on top of that.

“If you commission a painting from me it will be a unique picture, yours alone. I will not reproduce it as a print”

Trout

For some anglers, a photograph of the trout they have just caught and released is not enough. A painting has something extra.

The goal is a realistic picture of a particular fish, rather than a stylised form, and the only way to do this is to work from photographs or, even better, video. If you are thinking about a commission, take video or photographs of the whole length of the fish in as natural a position as possible, square to the camera, plus close-ups of its head and splayed fins and the taper to the tail. A phone camera switched to HD mode is perfect.

Commissions start at $650 for a painting up to 40 centimetres wide, with postage on top of that. As a guide, the watercolour shown here was painted at life size and required preparatory sketches and colour tests. The result was a detailed painting, 75 centimetres wide, of a 12lb trout caught in a New Zealand river. A similar commission would start at $1100.