Albert the Dog-Nosed Fish

I was deleting photos off my computer the other day and found one of my fish lapel pin. "Wow" I thought to myself, "That's a really great design!"
(Maybe that's why I bought it in the first place, duh!)

I guess the fish theme got stuck in my head because pretty soon I had a little nagging voice in my brain saying, "The Adventures of Albert the Dog-Nosed Fish." Arrggghh! Last time that little voice nagged me I drew a bunch of hotdogs.

The more I tried to draw something else, the louder the naggy little voice became. So with a big sigh I picked up the doodle sketchbook in an attempt to draw the mess out of my head.

I started sketching, trying to figure out how to turn the pin shape into a cartoon fish that was cute, plus quick and easy to draw.

You can see the exact fish in the pin, then my creative process working down the right-hand side of the page and across the bottom, then up the left side a bit as I tried to perfect it.



A lot of the tries made the bottom tail separation look like a mouth. Even when I drew a cartoon mouth, it still looked like a mouth...a fish with two mouths.

I couldn't get him quite "jowl-y" enough so I decided to go digital before I drew 1,000 not-quite-right fishes. I colored in the ones that were closest to my vision, and let the boo-boo fish be in the blue background.

I liked the little guy in the lower right-hand corner the best. I really liked how his tailfin looked, so he was my model when I started the digital drawing.

Worked on the shape and colors, and the fin separation on the back tailfin. Here's the final Albert, all ready for an adventure.



Done in Microsoft Paint using a Wacom drawing tablet