sumi ryukin

Drawing the fish under pressure from video sources forced me to be reliant on visual memory, this immediately made me consider sumi-e practice as a visual approach for the fish brief. we were asked to produce a print which could also work as a pattern. Patterns in my opinion work better when they are simply rendered, the repetition of busy and complex images can lead to an image which is almost offensive to the eye. Keen to avoid this i took to my pure squirrel brush and a pot of indian ink, working fast to simply visualise the fish as best i could form memory, hoping to outline the character rich features i had become aware of.

the idea of the shopping trolley came about through having to impose a surprise in our prints, i thought the juxtaposition of traditional media, subject, and technique, contrasted with a modern blight to many ponds would be quite funny.