This is our second year doing TIC at the elementary school I teach at. Up until a few days ago we had lost all of our trout except for one. Since our first batch of eggs we have been having issues. We lost a lot of eggs and fry. This week we got a new batch of about 40 fry so our tank looks a little better than what it did. Its kind of funny to look into a 50 gallon tank and only see one little brook trout less than an inch long swimming around. I can only imagine what he is thinking. Even more so when he had 40 new friends show up from out of no where.
In a week or so I plan to have our first TIC video completed. It will be on DVD and free if you would like one. I am trying to get other schools in Alexandria tobegind the program so we can spread the word about how amazing Trout in the Classroom is. I will try and post more updates as we go a long. If you have any questions about TIC just send an email. Thanks.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Nightmare on Trout Street
There are times in life where it just gets really bad. A car accident, a divorce, your house gets flooded or something of that nature. You just want it all to get better as quick as possible. But times like these can really bring the better out in all of us.
A few weeks ago I was painting a fish for a client. Know you have to understand, painting a fish is a very delicate process. The reproductions I paint are basically made of resin and plastic. This way, fish can be released back into their water habitat so they are not sacrificed in order to hang on a wall. There is a lot of preparation of a reproduction before painting. Fins need to be prepared and attached. Then they need to be heated with a hair dryer and formed to a more flowing shape so they look realistic. The eyes need to be set and the upper eye lid area needs to be formed. The teeth are tricky. Trout teeth are small but sharp. To make them I use wall spackling. It works well and when you pull a small dab up and away from the gum area, it gives a great peak which looks exactly like the tooth of a trout. The mounting of the fish is one of the most important parts of the entire process. Some reproductions I do are simply wall mounts. These are easy whether they are mounted alone or with a piece of drift wood. The tougher mounts are when the fish is done in a diorama type style on a wood base. These mounts have rocks, drift wood, grass and at times crayfish or baitfish. These items give a whole scene as to what was going on at that exact moment in time when the fish was in the river.
After coating the fish with a coat of primer, I began layering the base colors for this 20” brown trout. Things were going good and the fish was really coming together. I can tell when a reproduction is going well by two things. First, I get into this groove when I paint. It’s a mind set. It’s being able to see individual colors in the fish. The spots, the scales, the shimmer and things like that. The second way I can tell things are going well is the fish looks good when I look at it in the mirror. A mirror tells the story of how things are going. That different perspective lets me have a fresh unbiased look at the project. So with about 20 hours of work into the fish, I got to the point where the finishing touches were being done and I was planning the final gloss coats of clear. This gives the fish a wet type of look and it really brings out the details and layers of color.
With the final painting done, I wiped the fish down to take off any dust or junk that might have snuck on it and I got it ready for the first coat of clear. Having done many clear coats before this, the clear coat is the icing on the cake in regards to making a reproduction. It’s fun because it seals the deal and traps all the hard work and thought that goes into making some plastic come to life. With the first three coats of the gloss coat on, things were looking good. I was about 45 minutes into drying time and as I sat at my desk that’s when it happened.
I watched in shock and disbelief as the colors on the fish began to recess and merge. I swear this was a nightmare. This unwanted blending and mixing went on for another hour until it stopped. Or at least I thought it had stopped at the time. Thinking “Oh this isn’t too bad. I can fix the few areas that look bad and the rest of the fish has this great weathered look.” So I went to mixing and matching colors and repairing the areas that were so bad that the white primer coat was showing through. After a few hours of trial and error paint matching things were looking ok. This was at 2am. So I went to bed and went to work the next day.
The day passes and I return home after work. I throw my mail on the desk and walk over to my work area and the horror movie background music begins to play. Imagine the camera work in a horror movie as the camera zooms in the out frantically matching the erratic music. The paint on the fish resembled the bottom of a dried out pond in a drought. Cracked, pealing, continental collisions, upheaval, tectonic plate type movement of the America’s can’t even come close to what I saw. With my head literally in my hands, curse words flying, cold sweat and heart pounding I though, “What the hell am I going to do?”
I had no choice. I had to do the one and only one thing. I had to start over. I had to go all the way back to the beginning. So I did. Right then and there I drove to Home Depot. I purchased paint remover. The strongest I could find. I returned home and I began to remove the layers of paint. Not even noticing the burn that my hands were getting I labored until the fish was all the way down to the resin. The fish was clean. I was high. And my hands burned.
After some hand cream and a few hours of sanding and prepping, I was ready to paint again. Sometimes, terrible things that happen bring out the best in people. Personally I have experienced that too often in my life and I was able to add another event to that. With anger, frustration, a condo with wicked paint fumes and a ready to paint fish I knocked out the best paint job I have yet to do on a reproduction. I new the colors I needed. I knew the spot scheme. I knew I had to get this fish done and in 7 hours of painting, the fish was done was again. It was perfect. I new it before I walked it into my bathroom to look at it in the mirror. I was good. I was more than good. It was awesome. Now you may think, “OK here is the part where he uses the same clear coat and *#$&’@ it up again.” Well no. I am not that dumb. I used another type of clear coat. And as the clear coat dried, I watched. I watched for the first hour, the second and third hours too. Things were good. The second paint job was amazingly better than the first. It makes me wonder if I should just paint fish twice so they look even better. Who knows. All I know is it was over. The birds began to sing and the nice, calm background music that plays when the horror movie is over began to play. The Nightmare on Trout Street was over.
A few weeks ago I was painting a fish for a client. Know you have to understand, painting a fish is a very delicate process. The reproductions I paint are basically made of resin and plastic. This way, fish can be released back into their water habitat so they are not sacrificed in order to hang on a wall. There is a lot of preparation of a reproduction before painting. Fins need to be prepared and attached. Then they need to be heated with a hair dryer and formed to a more flowing shape so they look realistic. The eyes need to be set and the upper eye lid area needs to be formed. The teeth are tricky. Trout teeth are small but sharp. To make them I use wall spackling. It works well and when you pull a small dab up and away from the gum area, it gives a great peak which looks exactly like the tooth of a trout. The mounting of the fish is one of the most important parts of the entire process. Some reproductions I do are simply wall mounts. These are easy whether they are mounted alone or with a piece of drift wood. The tougher mounts are when the fish is done in a diorama type style on a wood base. These mounts have rocks, drift wood, grass and at times crayfish or baitfish. These items give a whole scene as to what was going on at that exact moment in time when the fish was in the river.
After coating the fish with a coat of primer, I began layering the base colors for this 20” brown trout. Things were going good and the fish was really coming together. I can tell when a reproduction is going well by two things. First, I get into this groove when I paint. It’s a mind set. It’s being able to see individual colors in the fish. The spots, the scales, the shimmer and things like that. The second way I can tell things are going well is the fish looks good when I look at it in the mirror. A mirror tells the story of how things are going. That different perspective lets me have a fresh unbiased look at the project. So with about 20 hours of work into the fish, I got to the point where the finishing touches were being done and I was planning the final gloss coats of clear. This gives the fish a wet type of look and it really brings out the details and layers of color.
With the final painting done, I wiped the fish down to take off any dust or junk that might have snuck on it and I got it ready for the first coat of clear. Having done many clear coats before this, the clear coat is the icing on the cake in regards to making a reproduction. It’s fun because it seals the deal and traps all the hard work and thought that goes into making some plastic come to life. With the first three coats of the gloss coat on, things were looking good. I was about 45 minutes into drying time and as I sat at my desk that’s when it happened.
I watched in shock and disbelief as the colors on the fish began to recess and merge. I swear this was a nightmare. This unwanted blending and mixing went on for another hour until it stopped. Or at least I thought it had stopped at the time. Thinking “Oh this isn’t too bad. I can fix the few areas that look bad and the rest of the fish has this great weathered look.” So I went to mixing and matching colors and repairing the areas that were so bad that the white primer coat was showing through. After a few hours of trial and error paint matching things were looking ok. This was at 2am. So I went to bed and went to work the next day.
The day passes and I return home after work. I throw my mail on the desk and walk over to my work area and the horror movie background music begins to play. Imagine the camera work in a horror movie as the camera zooms in the out frantically matching the erratic music. The paint on the fish resembled the bottom of a dried out pond in a drought. Cracked, pealing, continental collisions, upheaval, tectonic plate type movement of the America’s can’t even come close to what I saw. With my head literally in my hands, curse words flying, cold sweat and heart pounding I though, “What the hell am I going to do?”
I had no choice. I had to do the one and only one thing. I had to start over. I had to go all the way back to the beginning. So I did. Right then and there I drove to Home Depot. I purchased paint remover. The strongest I could find. I returned home and I began to remove the layers of paint. Not even noticing the burn that my hands were getting I labored until the fish was all the way down to the resin. The fish was clean. I was high. And my hands burned.
After some hand cream and a few hours of sanding and prepping, I was ready to paint again. Sometimes, terrible things that happen bring out the best in people. Personally I have experienced that too often in my life and I was able to add another event to that. With anger, frustration, a condo with wicked paint fumes and a ready to paint fish I knocked out the best paint job I have yet to do on a reproduction. I new the colors I needed. I knew the spot scheme. I knew I had to get this fish done and in 7 hours of painting, the fish was done was again. It was perfect. I new it before I walked it into my bathroom to look at it in the mirror. I was good. I was more than good. It was awesome. Now you may think, “OK here is the part where he uses the same clear coat and *#$&’@ it up again.” Well no. I am not that dumb. I used another type of clear coat. And as the clear coat dried, I watched. I watched for the first hour, the second and third hours too. Things were good. The second paint job was amazingly better than the first. It makes me wonder if I should just paint fish twice so they look even better. Who knows. All I know is it was over. The birds began to sing and the nice, calm background music that plays when the horror movie is over began to play. The Nightmare on Trout Street was over.
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