Illustrations as background surfaces

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All of Friday we faced numerous periods of heavy rainfall with intermittent showers, but in the late afternoon the sky broke open, revealing a low setting sun and with ones back to her, the hillside before me became alive. Bathed in a pale soft golden light, the new years growth drenched from the rain sparkled, while off in the distance the sky was a dark turbulence of grey, a dramatic contrast and I wish I had stopped and taken a few pictures. Yet some things are best remembered, treasured in our memory as an experience randomly recalled when something irrelevantly triggers the past.


With the day mostly gone by now, I am sitting back in my favorite chair, drinking a new tea that I have not had since my early twenties and contemplating about what to write, even though I am also yearning to get started with my first artist trading card (ATC). However I have been struggling with not only style and subject matter, but also my personal demon, fear. The fear of not being able to draw as I did years ago, when I last held a pencil or a fine tipped Hunt’s pen in my hand.

Rainbow Trout

Pencil, watercolour on illustration board — 1998-99

At the time I had worked for more than a decade photographing fishing flies for various books and calendars after the success of my first book in 1988, The Art of The Trout Fly, a collaborative effort with author Judith Dunham. Since these flies were tied by master fly-tiers and placed into very small elaborate sets and not a tying vice, I was always looking for another way to interpret their art with my creative vision.

California Golden Trout

Pencil, coloured pencil, and watercolour on Bristol — 1998-99

Previously the sets were recreations of scenes found in nature or on a fly tiers bench, in which the very books, tools and materials that created the fly, now surrounded them. Though I was content with the method I had established, I began to explore the idea of developing illustrations as background surfaces on which a fishing fly would be placed and then photographed.

Only a number of drawings were made and I do not think that even a single frame was ever shot. A combination of economic shifts and my own needs, these drawings lay hidden in envelops that are tucked away in artists carrying cases and though not forgotten, I now look upon them with a sense of pride and an unwavering apprehension. Maybe once I get started with my first miniature drawing, fear will no longer seem insurmountable.

The Art of The Trout Fly

Second edition, Chronicle Books 2003