Illustration Friday - 'Under the Sea'

Now, gentle readers, this may look like a landscape featuring some horse chestnut leaves in the foreground, but if you look carefully, you will see that the air (if you can call it that) is actually populated by mackerel. They live under the sea, so I thought that other people from Illustration Friday might like to see them. The original of this is an oil painting, which took ages to do. I also like to work from direct observation, which poses problems when you're working from things like fish which get smellier and smellier the longer you keep them. You can't photograph these things - you just lose all those shimmering colours. In the end I compromised by doing a very careful drawing from observation, and then painting from the drawing.

I bought the mackerel from Sainsbury's, in the absence of any proper fishmongers in the area. I asked for just one, and said that I'd be drawing it rather than eating it, so could I have a pretty one. The girl behind the counter was really helpful, but my other half was trying to pretend he wasn't with me.

In the end we had it grilled for breakfast the following morning.

P xxx