Saturday, August 31, 2013

Ray Bergman Collection - Watercolor

After a rather long week of work I settled down yesterday to paint a few flies... Okay - actually 24 flies.  Hearkening back to the days of posting a a fly a day for the entire year in 2010, I set to work sketching out flies with the idea of  making this piece similar to the presentation flies made so famous by Ray Bergman.
That's right - thee Ray Bergman - author of the timeless trout anglers bible simply titled TROUT.
Taking the suggestion brought up by Mark - author and sportsman of some of the best brook trout fishing on the net - Small Stream Reflections - I decided to pick out some Ray's flies for this piece.
Searching the net and with a little help from Mark I keyed up on HatchesMag and Don Bastian masterfully tied flies.
Painted on Acrid Free Bristol paper with bright watercolors and inked out with an archival pen, I wanted to give this collection a more artistic feel instead of trying to duplicate in every detail the image of the original fly.  I wanted to focus on the piece as a whole so I will save you the time reading through each fly.  Rest assured though, I do have a master list of every fly I used as a model for this piece.  Maybe the discerning Ray Bergman fan can name a few?

  I have begun to love this style of painting and although it may seem a bit haphazard and frantic, the process is actually a delicate balancing act of deciding when to add and when to let it be.

"The Bergman Collection"
Ink and Watercolor on Bristol
9in  X 11in
For Sale


5 comments:

cofisher said...

A worthy project Joel. Beautiful!

Anonymous said...

Loved the result and the balance of color.

Josh said...

NICE! I would put that one the wall of my man cave.

MarkW said...

Not that's what I've talking about! Nice job adding your own creative flair! Are you going to do all of them ?

TexWisGirl said...

that's really beautiful.