Wood Carving a Rainbow Trout Part 5 Tipping Scales 

Thank you. And thanks for watching

I appreciate that! Thank you for watching!

Thank you so much 😀

Thank ya sir

Thank you. This has been one of my favorite projects so far. We went trout fishing a few weeks ago and caught close to 60 with a few 20 inchers on our trout fishing trip on the white river. I had one that may have been pushing 23 inches and probably close to 4 pounds . My PB Ive caught was 6 pounds that was about 26 inches about 30 years ago.

Once the mineral spirits dry it’s back to powder. I clear coat it after every couple of inches of scale rows so I don’t accidentally rub it off, ask me how I learned that😜🤣 The clear coat will dull it slightly but not bad enough to have to do a second layer of the powder. I did do a second layer in a couple spots around the head. But overall it was still fairly bright. In fact I did do a very light wash of the warm olive green on top of the back because the gold was a little too intense for my liking.

@@Danny_Harris-Arts I really liked the combo of putting it on and then dry brushing some color on top. Really natural look in the end. Thanks for sharing. I am learning a ton

Yeah I used some thin color washes tone down the brightness of the tipping and to shift the color slightly. The trout here in the white river and red river have a bronze hue on the back with a gold hue below the pink stripes before fading to white to the belly so I changed the initial typical rainbow trout color I had already painted to match what we catch here. For me the scales for trout are harder to replicate compared to warm water fish scales. This is only the second rainbow I’ve done I’m sure I’ll do more in the future. Not certain yet but I’m thinking I may do a brown trout after this bluegill project.

I'm not in any way being critical of your color choices. I can tell from your mixing of paints that you have an art background, and you certainly have the artist's "eye" that I wish I had. I thought your coloration was spot on. What I was referring to, was mixing that same color you used with transparent paint. And for the record, I live on the Kenai River here in Alaska, and you can not believe the variation in color and spot patterns of rainbow trout on this river. They are all wild, of course. Unless the White River is all stocked, I'm betting there is a lot of variation in your rainbows also. Your next fish may be very different. Or, it could be the same.@@Danny_Harris-Arts

@@danreed2189 oh I didn’t take it as being critical at all! I welcome critique but I am my own worst critic 😜 The trout here in Arkansas are stocked for the most part but there is successful spawning also. We have one natural trout steam in the state. But the stocking started back in the 40s when several rivers were dammed for lakes. Several were deep mountain lakes and the discharge was too cold for a lot of the warm water native fish to thrive down stream so they started a trout stocking program and it’s been a huge success. We have 6 trout rivers now. They’re stocked in some of the deep water mountain lakes also. We have rainbow, browns, brook, cutthroat, lake trout that thrive up to a 100 miles downstream from the dams. The browns spawn so it’s a renewable resource. The rainbows went through the motions of spawning but it was thought for a long time the eggs didn’t have enough flow and stream distance to hatch but they’ve determined the last 20 years or so there is successful rainbow spawning now. There’s a little variation in the wild vs the stocked but not much. You can usually spot a stocker because some of them have a damaged dorsal or missing pectoral fin from where they rub the concrete vats they’re raised in before release. But three of our rivers, the White, Norfolk and Little Red are world renowned for their trout fishing. We held the world record for brown trout with a 40 pound 4 oz monster caught on the Little Red for years. Also had one a few oz heavier that was not recognized because it was foul hooked and there’s been multiple caught in the 30lbs class and 20 pounders are not uncommon. Our state record rainbow was 19. My personal best was 6 pounds. I used to go regularly but hadn’t been in 20+ years until a friend of mine invited me a few months ago on a 2 day trip to the white. We didn’t catch any giants but we probably caught and released 50+ in two days. I made a video and posted here on my channel. I won’t be waiting another 20 years to go again😜 I’m going to try to get back to doing a couple trips a year.

Sounds like a plan Danny. Those are some BIG fish you have down there!@@Danny_Harris-Arts

Ummm… it’s not yellow it’s olive green 😜 It does lighten to a lighter green at the edge of the tail.

Good question. I do have a block with a round brass rod that holds it while I’m painting that way I can spin it around. On this particular piece I used the same hole for the point where I mounted it to the habit base. If I end up mounting one to the side of a branch I fill the round working hole with sawdust and give it a soak with thin superglue and sand it blending it in to scales and touch it up with paint and then drill a new hole for the mounting tube. I use 1/8th” square brass tubing in the body and solid key stock in the habit base that fits inside the brass tube. Being square it keeps it from wanting to spin.

Thanks, I use tueplo almost exclusively. It’s a fairly fine grain wood that’s not too hard or soft and holds very fine detail.

There is a technique called dry brushing. You can paint the base colors on with a paintbrush like normal then start layering very fine light layers or glazes of color to blend the colors from light to dark. There is very little paint on the brush for this technique and you have to build up multiple layers to get the effect your looking for. You barely dip the brush in the paint then wipe most of it off on another section of the palette. You can practice on something white. It works best with a semi stiff brush you want to see very little color come off almost like a fine transparent stain of the color you’re using. I do sone dry brushing at the end of this video after the scale tipping and you can kinda see how very little paint is applied with each layer. I basically only use the air brush because it’s quicker. Most of my airbrush work gets covered up by hand painted details. I just started a special project where I’ll be painting a carving of a Atlantic salmon. After i finish that one I plan on doing a bluegill and if I can remember I’ll do some dry brushing on it. Or at least some of it.

@@Danny_Harris-Artsthank you so much this will really help me, great channel!

Here is a link that shows a dry brush technique. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Kop-MVOl2sU.html

Here’s another link to one of my videos where I’m dry brushing carved rocks for a habitat base. It’s the same technique you can use to paint fish ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-y4C61q3gyA8.html

Danny I havnt watched the entire thing yet but I just wanted to say thank you for responding it really is going to be helpful in my journey as a carver to get me started keep posting great content

Mr Art at Mr Art.com m.misterart.com/painting/pigments/gold-leaf-metallic-co-metallic-and-mica-powders.html I use the Super Bright Aluminum And Extra Brilliant Rich Gold

The main reference photo I used was a live trout that I caught and released.