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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Keys-style tarpon fly. Old-school, with a bit of flash thrown into the wing. Nothing fancy, but it would work…
Tech info: 8-1/2″ x 11″ recycled inkjet paper, inked with an Office Max fine-point roller ball pen (only 79-cents!), and colored with watercolor pencil, watercolor crayon, and a dash of Prismacolor marker. Decided to [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Humpy done in charcoal. Drawing time was about five minutes. One of the cool things about Humpys: they catch 8-inch brook trout and 8-pound browns just fine, thanks.
Tech info: 9″ x 12″ charcoal on Strathmore coldpress watercolor paper. Decided to go about 180-degrees from 01_Mickey Finn. Grabbed my pad of paper and [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Mickey Finn done pure old school: pencil, paper, ink. Man does that 30 minutes go fast!
Tech info: 9″ x 12″ pencil (under-drawing) and ink on Pentalic paper. Decided to go old school with the first drawing. Set the timer for 30 minutes. Dropped in a rendition in pencil, which I could have [...]