Headed in the Wrong Direction?
A client couple recently asked for an original hand-colored striped bass done with the head pointing to the right. Seemed a simple enough request, and frankly one that I knew was coming. Sadly it wasn’t one I was prepared for. Several months ago my wife pointed out that the overwhelming majority of my fish drawings have the heads pointing to the left (I believe she said that the walls of my studio “looked like a damn school of fish swimming in the same direction”). As a right-handed artist working in a smudge-able medium, this all seemed an obvious artifact that I’d never given much thought. I generally tent to work from left to right. When I draw fish my preference is to draw the head first. To me, the eye conveys the soul of an animal and I find having the head features well defined early on in a drawing helps give the drawing life and allows me to better envision the rest of the animal. And also, if I mess up the head, the drawing is pretty much lost, so I’d rather make the big mistakes early on!
My wife warned me that there would be a demand for right-pointing fish. She was right. And when the demand materialized I found myself flatfooted with no options for potential customers! And with this blog post, the online gallery now offers right and left facing options for gicleee color reproductions of most species. To select which direction your print faces, please select either left or right under the ‘Head Direction’ option when ordering your print. I will slowly add both right and left pointing pictures to the gallery displays.
There are some species where this option may not be available. For a few animal species, the external morphology is asymmetrical (right and left sides are not identical). Some whale species like sperm whales and narwhals have distinguishing characteristics found only on one side of the animal or the other. Flounders are generally either right-eye or left-eye, varying from species to species - summer flounder is a left-eye flounder and winter flounder are a right-eye flounder. The keen observer will note that to date, my portfolio doesn't include a lot of right-eyed flounders!
In the meantime, I’ll keep working on my right-facing fish drawing skills. I’ve got a few local right-eyed flounder species in the queue, so stay tuned!
Stay kind,
Mike
