Fish Prints -Trigger Fish

Hey friends. Last week my man came home with a great amount of fish from his offshore fishing trip. It's been a while since I had made fish prints but I was so impressed with the size and features of this Trigger fish that I jumped into "fish print mode". I'm so excited but then I realize I don't have any large format paper and I don't have any inks that are non toxic. Wah. 

What I'm about to tell you is for my  personal use and I specifically do not recommend that you do what I do unless you can verify what I'm about to tell you. Desperate to print this fish I started looking around for something that could make this work. 

What I know about this particular fish is that it's skin is thick like a plate of armour. So much so that there are very special ways to get in and remove the fillets. Knowing this I decided I would paint the fish with chalk paint and print it from there but wait....What can I print it onto?

??????

Just the day before I had purchased a canvas painters tarp. YES! YES! that will work.  Snippety snip. I cut that baby down to use as a canvas.

Isn't this fish cool? I love it's long tail and it's big eye. He looks like a cartoon character to me.

The hardest part of getting the prints is getting the fins and tail raised up and supported from underneath.

You can see that I used folded and crunched up  paper towels to  support the fins and tail.

Even this little guy needs a bit of a lift to make his fin pop better in the print.

The fish needs to be wiped down well with a paper towel. The fish has a protective layer /film over its skin. It's slimy and it has to be removed to paint or ink the fish.

As best I can, I center this giant canvas over this tremendous fish.

He's under there.

Now, I will tell you that I did have the fore thought to iron my canvas backgrounds. However, I only cut 4 canvas', so only 4 canvas' were ironed. As you can see here this print was not ironed in advance. 

You see, I'm working against time here. I start with a very cold fish and I need to keep him cold to reserve his meat for the fillets, so after the first few prints my hubby gets all happy and excited asking me to print more he wants to send one to his buddy in NY. In all my hurrying, I forget to iron the canvas'. Wah. 

My hubby still loves the prints and assures me that they are still very good looking and frame worthy. I did iron the canvas' after the fact but there are lines in there that ruin it for me. I'm working through it . LOL . I used to teach art classes and would see the beauty in the imperfection of my students creations. . I would help them work through focusing on the imperfections. I know how this works. I'm hoping that once I mount and display these I will forget that feeling. 

Thanks for stopping by . 

With love and gratitude,

Michele

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