Trout

Here'e the full image of one of the pieces for the "One Hour of TV a Week" Show coming down this week.  I've wanted to have an excuse to do a big trout for a long time.  I'm one of those kids who wanted to be a marine biologist, and did a fish dissection for my second grade science project.  I remember catching trout with my father and thinking the outside of trout was beautiful, and then (because I had to after I was 6 or 7) cleaning them and finding all this great stuff inside.  It was a little gross and lest I sound like a serial killer, I want to convey the tragic aspect I felt for the fish.  But - the mechanisms of what fuels this beautiful little animal machine were astounding from the tiny heart, to the contents of it's stomach, to the bladder it uses to regulate buoyancy.

"Magic 2",  22" x 22",  Gouache and pencil on BFK

If you've never been trout fishing, get a liscence, go find a small, cold, spring fed stream after it rains, wear a heavy pair of jeans and long sleeves, a pair of old sneakers you don't mind getting soaked in the stream, lots of bug spray, a creel with a frozen bottle of water in it, a three dollar pack of 18 trout worms, extra hooks, and an old rod and reel.  The worst that will happen is that you spend a nice summer afternoon walking a pretty stream.  The best case is you walk a pretty stream, fool a few wily trout, and have a nice breakfast/lunch/dinner.  They are damn good eating - especially after working up an appetite crashing through underbrush to get to a steam and back:).