Progress on Confirmation

I am attempting to complete a second piece to ship to Claremont and Square-i Gallery for the December 11 x 11 show.

Here is an in progress shot for the work. I have placed a salmon on the work to give me an idea of what it will look like completed, even though it will have a blue rockfish instead.

The distressing of the work is nearly complete. You can see that I have created a gauge that fits into the piece as well.

Here is a detail of the gauge. I think it came out quite convincing.

The rockfish starts out as an engraving file that was completed on Adobe Illustrator. This is engraved into 1/8" birch plywood on my K40 laser.

This file is used to cut out the pieces for the work on the K40 as well.

After sanding and assembling the fins to the fish, I fill the seams with wood filler. Next I finish sand it apply a few coats of white gesso. After sanding the gesso smooth, I mask off the fins and paint a coat of black to the body. This will be the outlines of the scales. I use a nylon mesh as the mask for the scales. I sprayed down a coat of light blue. Next I progressive added coats of varying blue paint to create the mottled spots on the fish. which take me to the above picture. I took some artistic license here, as blue rockfish are not this brilliant of blue.

Here's and idea of what the final piece will look like.

Black and gray details were added before applying the white highlights. A bit more weathering the body of the work and I can attach this blue rockfish to it before packing it up to ship. Pics to come soon of the completed work.