Idea for Bela Bacalhau (Pencil Sketch Apr 3 2016)

This is a pencil sketch for my decorated wooden codfish. For the second year, 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 plan to decorate my codfish with a Portuguese theme. (Codfish always reminds me of visits to Portugal, where bacalhau (codfish) is on every menu.) I am going to call this fish "Bela Bacalhau" and I am going to use blue and white Portuguese tiles (azulejos) as inspiration for the decoration. This is the sketch I made to see if the idea would work. I wanted to use square tiles but still create a pattern of diamond shapes to suggest fish scales. I looked at images of Portuguese tile and saw a number of designs that create a diamond shape inside a square. So I drew a quick sketch of a codfish and sketched out my idea. Even though the proportions of the drawing are not accurate, I think the idea is going to work. In the squares below the fish, I was designing the pattern for the tiles, using on ocean waves and fish. Now I am really excited about this year's codfish. I also participated in this event last year, and you can see what I made last year if you follow this link: www.flickr.com/photos/randiart/17469011928/