Step 7: Finish up with the medium green for the top of the fish, this will blend it into the pale green area. If I want a more intense appearance to the coloring I will repeat these application steps right away … while everything is still damp.
Step 8: If you are finished with the blending steps let your craving dry for a little bit, about 15 minutes or nuke it in the microwave for 15 seconds.
SECRET – 15 seconds on high in the microwave is equal to 15 minutes of air drying. Use this only on wood that has no pretreatment or water treatments and only with acrylics, acrylic craft paints, and watercolors. Do not nuke anything that has oil, turp, or chemical treatment or content … don’t spray seal it then throw it in the microwave !!!!
Step 9: The inside of the mouth gets several coats of medium green. By using a large flat shader I can lay the brush against the roof of the mouth and pull the brush straight out from the mouth to create a perfect finished edge of green along the lip area.
Step 10: Lets decorate the diamond scale pattern by adding small brush handle dots. Place a small puddle of pale rust on your palette. Dip the tip of the brush handle in the puddle then tap it on your palette to test the size of circle it makes. Don’t push the handle, just touch it to the plate. The handle will make a perfect small dot.
For my fish I did pale rust dots in the back half of the diamonds, red in the mid-section, and finished in the head area with maroon.
You can get several dots out of one color load, but each dot will be slightly smaller. So I did the center diamond dots first, then one diamond to the left or right, then one more to make the dots decrease in size.
A pencil is perfect for this easy technique. You can sharpen it to a point for a very fine dot or blunt it on a piece of paper for wide dots.
Step 11: Dry brush red along the gill edges. Pick up a small amount of red on your brush, work the brush two or three times in a clean area on your palette, this leaves just a small amount of color in the bristles. Touch the tip of the brush against the edge of each gill and pull a short, quick stroke. That will leave a ragged-edged thin trim line along the gills.