Bela Bacalhau (Mock-Up)

This drawing is a mock-up of my design for the codfish I am going to decorate for the Marblehead Art Association. I am among a group of local artists who are decorating wooden codfish, to be displayed in Marblehead and then auctioned off to benefit Marblehead Festival of the Arts. I also participated in this event last year, and you can see what I made if you follow this link: www.flickr.com/photos/randiart/17469011928/ This year, I am going to decorate my codfish with a Portuguese theme. When I visit Portugal, I see bacalhau (codfish) on every menu. So this year, I am calling my codfish "Bela Bacalhau" and I am taking my inspiration for the decoration from blue and white Portuguese tiles (azulejos). My idea is to use square tiles that with diamond-shaped patterns on them. The idea is to suggest fish scales. I had already created an original pattern for the 'tiles' and drawn a rough sketch (see my post for April 7) but today I wanted to work out the placement and size of the pattern to scale (no pun intended.) So I decided to do a drawing, actual size, before I start painting the wooden version. To get a piece of paper that was long enough, I cut two grocery sacks and taped them together. Then I traced my wooden fish cutout and went to work measuring equal squares to represent the tiles. When the placement was correct, I did a rough sketch of the design in each square, using pencil. Where I had taped the two pieces of brown paper together, the pencil wouldn't work, so I used blue marker just in on the taped area. I was really pleased with the design, but it was hard to get the pencil design to show up in a photo. So I decided to go over all the lines with blue marker. I am glad I did because it gave me a better idea of how the design will look. In fact, I like the drawing for its own sake, and now regret not using better paper!