Born in 1954 in Atlanta, Flick Ford was raised in Westchester County, New York. He fell in love with fishing at age five. His father, an accomplished fly-fisherman and talented commercial artist/copywriter, instilled in him a deep respect for nature and nurtured his early creativity. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Flick fished the Adirondacks, New England, Long Island Sound, Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, and the woodland lakes of Quebec, while pursuing two other passions: music (as lead singer in a garage rock band) and art. He took formal watercolor classes in the 1960s, figure drawing and graphic design classes between 1973 and 1976, and then studied art at Evergreen State College in Washington. Flick moved to New York City in 1978 and dove into the audio/visual scene of indie film, video, underground publishing, cartooning, illustration, and he reconnected with music. He performed in the East Village with several bands, and wrote and sang lead in The Crazy Pages for almost twenty years.. He left New York in 1993, heading for the Hudson Highlands where he quickly became obsessed with fishing the New York City watershed. The effects of over twenty years of pollution, over-development and acid rain became painfully apparent as he branched out to many of the Adirondack and Vermont brook trout places where he had previously fished.

“I felt I should start to keep a record of the fish I caught. I wanted to catch and paint these fish, and show how they appear to me in all their iridescent beauty.” These first paintings formed the core of FISH: 77 Great Fish of North America. Today, Ford makes his home in Putnam County, New York. He fishes more than one hundred days a year and ties his own flies.
 

The nineteenth-century methods used to make the popular botanical and fauna prints of the time were either hand-colored copperplate engravings or lithographs. They couldn’t make photographic prints from original paintings as we can today. As far as the process went, specimens of flora or fauna were pickled, stuffed, smoked, dried, or salted. Then the specimens, along with hasty sketches in journals, were supplied to artists who made detailed renderings, which then went to lithographers or engravers. The purpose of those prints was to bring the wonders of nineteenth-century exploration and discovery into the parlor. While those old plates have a certain charm, unparalleled accuracy is definitely not their hallmark.

With a fully modern technique that I’ve developed on my own, I can get very translucent fins and an iridescent shine on the scales of the fish I paint. My process involves catching the fish, taking digital photos, tracing the catch, and making notes on markings and the exact placement of body parts. I then print out the photos, make a detailed, free-hand ink drawing on vellum, and then transfer that to the watercolor paper with the aid of a light box. Next, I apply a liquid-frisket medium to block subsequent washes, allowing the first frisket layer to hold the white I want to show through. Repeated frisket layers over subsequent washes trap the colors I want to stay. An average painting has between three and five washes before I remove all the frisket, blend the edges by putting on a clear wash of clean water and then, after drying, paint the details in with fine sable hair brushes. I never use any gouache or opaque paints. In contrast, scientific illustrators use sharp, color pencils and a scratch-board technique to get the absolute finest detail. I make detailed illusions within the medium and limitations of fine watercolor painting.

My background as an underground cartoonist also comes into play. I instinctively feel the “personality” of each fish. Certain fish look ferocious to me, others look meek or sad, others proud. I don’t hesitate to let this come out in my painting. I figure that if I subtly render its anthropomorphism, the fish will come to life in the mind’s eye of the viewer, rather than looking like a dead-fish study. I’ve never understood why, in our culture, this is viewed as such a horrible thing to do. Native people call all manner of plants and animals “nations” or refer to them as “people” as in the “fish people.” I’d like to think I am seeing and recording these connecting threads in creation, as well as the physical aspects of my subjects. It’s the spirit of each animal that I try to portray.


Figure 1

First, I trace the specimen on a brown paper bag with a permanent marker—usually on the floor of the boat. I make anatomical notes, do a vertical and lateral scale count, and count fin rays.
Figure 2

I take a digital photo, seconds after the fish is caught, which I later print out to size. The color photo, along with the tracing, will be used to make a detailed freehand rendering on vellum.
Figure 3

The vellum rendering is then traced to the Arches 260 lb. cold press paper. This stage shows the first layer of frisket already applied to the paper, and the first wash completed.
Figure 4

Layers of frisket and color washes followed by a blending wash of clean water build up the painting. Details are painted in with fine brushes. Shading adds depth and volume to complete the process.

© Flick Ford