WINTER FISHING TRIP

So late in May, James, Simon and I hit the road on an awesome winter fishing trip with the aim of making pop-up studios to print all along the way. Well that was my mission, they were just into the fishing! Our first stop was Koensrust Sea Farm just outside Vermaaklikheid, near Puntjie, on the southern cape coast.

 Not for the faint-hearted! We stayed right on the ocean and the weather was pretty hectic, luckily we could make a fire every night and I caught my first "'Dassie" Blacktail.  (Diplodus sargus) The fish with the blue eye is locally called a "Jan Bruin" (Gymnocrotaphus curvidens) I was thinking of using a bit of colour in the eye of the print of this one.
Then we travelled up the coast past Cintza towards the wild coast and the old Transkei.By now the water is a lot warmer, no longer the cold Benguela influence but the warm Mozambique current with a whole lot of new species for printing. We headed past Port St. John's to Msikaba and a friends house with crazy sculptures in the garden.

 The bronze bream  (Pachymetopon grande),was the first specie of the day and after that the guys caught Kob (Argyrosomus hololepidotus), Queenfish  (Scomberoides commersonianus), Yellow-belly rock-cod (Epinephelus guaza), River snapper (Lutjanus argentimaculatus). There were some that were also released such as Stone bream (Neoscorpis lithophilus) and a Cave Bass (Dinoperca petersi). An awesome 4 days of wild coast fishing!

THE PRINTS

Cape stumpnose

OCTOPUSES

 This was a great learning curve, doing creatures that are at the same time so long but also so delicate. The detail on each of the suckers is incredible and when they print it looks like little flowers. The most interesting thing is that it seems that close to the "neck"of the creature, there is a blotch of ink that is darker and more purple than the ink I use, leading me to believe that it was a little of the octopus'own ink.

Angelfish or Atlantic Pomfret

It's winter and the weather has been too miserable to go fishing so I tried a frozen fish from our local food market. It worked really well and was delicious too. I had ordered a whole lot of really lovely hand-made Japanese papers and found that the kiruku koro, usu kuchi light and gozen really work well. They are all unsized and a natural colour. The shoji screen paper (70% kozo, 30% wood pulp) is very strong and flexible when wet, probably good for very large fish. This angelfish was just over 30 cm. The Latin name is Brama brama.

With the multiple prints I have started to play around with two prints ontop of eachother with the bottom print showing through faintly, giving the impression of fish further away.

February 2013, THE BIG ONES !!

Its a new year and with that I made a really cool new contact with a fresh fish deli in the city, Julie's dad has his own boat and he supplies all her super-fresh fish. The great thing about this is I now had access to fish that are not caught from the beach or the rocks but deeper waters and she could also ask them to preserve the integral beauty of the fish, getting to me undamaged and intact. 

Julie chose one of my printed kabeljou and for that I bartered a large yellowtail and a longfin tuna. The tuna is the biggest i've printed at over a metre!

New Fish-prints for Art Route sept. 2012

Kabeljou

cob

Galjoen

the South African national fish which is protected and can only be caught during season.

Geelstert

yellowtail , built for speed

Pinky Grunter

Abstract Steenbras

Hottentot

The Sad Glowfish (Die Hartseer Gloeilamp Vis)

Just opened my studio on artfire.com !! please folow this link for a sample of my new fish-prints all proudly south african fish!www.artfire.com. Look for my most recent japanese fish-prints under fine art, printmaking, hand-pulled. Now that everything is up and running watch this space for regular blogging about my fish-prints, my studio and my stuff.