Drawing Flies 52 Connemara. Number 2 pencil (everyone’s fave from grade school!) with a dash of white-out pen, all served on a torn piece of craft paper, fresh from the roll.
Tech info: Went for more of a “sitting by the lough” feel with this one. Got the sense I wanted overall, maybe a bit “slick,” [...]

Drawing Flies 52 McGinty. Charcoal sketch with watercolor.
Available for purchase? No.
Tech info: 6″ x 9″ Strathmore paper, medium-soft charcoal with watercolor. I like charcoal in that it is so immediate and so spontaneous. With a toothy paper like I used here, the look and feel almost charts its own path as you go. Of course, charcoal [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Deceiver (pike/muskie/baby tarpon colors). Had to join the DF 52 digital revolution in my own way (see Jeff’s soft-hackle for more on his first DF 52 digital foray). Pen-and-ink sketch, scanned, set as paths in Adobe Photoshop, exported to Adobe Illustrator, paths adjusted, printed, partly colored, ate the whole 30 minutes like [...]

One of my favorite ways to illustrate is to rough sketch with an added story line (previous ‘bow and brown (and other brown) already posted). Those of you who own the book, Presentation, have already seen these, but expect a bunch more in the new books series.
Below is a color version of the above (from [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Soft Hackle. Almost salmon-style with those long fibers. Pen with some watercolor added with a detail brush. Couldn’t stay away from the color….
Available for purchase? No, kinda like it for myself.
Tech info: 9″ x 12″ Canson tracing paper (I’ve come to really like the gliding smoothness of this razor-thin paper for pen [...]

One of my favorite ways to illustrate is to rough sketch with an added story line. One more like this yet to come (previous ‘bow and brown already posted). Those of you who own the book, Presentation, have already seen these, but expect a bunch more in the new books series.
Below is a color version of [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Hex Dun in the Comparadun/hairwing-style (as in Hexagenia mayfly). Played with the technique that I ended up lucking into last week, and added a bit to the mix (some pen and some more color on the fly itself). Started a little late today (1:37, ended just before 2:00). Not bad; I see some [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Muddler Minnow. Almost blew it today, but saved it last second with something unexpected (and that I’ll now be using more for sure). I used the entire 30 minutes right to the *ding*, but the final drawing shown only took a few minutes.
Tech info: 9″ x 12″ Canson tracing paper. Mechanical pencil, [...]

FF&W reader and fly tyer, Leng, recently sent me an email and asked about the Cross-Dresser fly design that I had in the Modern Midges book project. Specifically, Leng wanted to know about the wing and other aspects of the fly, since the photo in the book is from only one angle and there are [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Flashback PT. Really pressed for time today, so drew in mechanical pencil (50s-style sleek), and went after it with detail brush, crayon, and some down-and-dirty washing and spattering.
Tech info: 6″ x 9″ Academie sketch pad. Mechanical pencil with watercolor crayon. Had one idea in my head all week, and I flat ran out [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Boss. We like the old-school here at the DF52 project! A classic steelhead/salmon fly, done in a rather “improper” way (but then, my illustrations are frequently tortured into existence via whatever method I can get to work).
Tech info: 9″ x 12″ tracing paper. Mechanical pencil colored with watercolor pencil and watercolor crayon. [...]

In addition to the on-going blog entries here at FF&W and over at DF365, I’ll be keeping a “photo album” of my flies on my Facebook pages (both my personal and the FF&W pages). The Facebook album will be a week behind the blog, and will only contain the core fly images, not the full [...]