Drawing Flies 52_08 Partridge and Orange Soft Hackle

Drawing Flies 52_08 Partridge and Orange Soft Hackle-Digital and watercolor

Original status: Prints Available. Contact me for information.

Swing by Jason's blog to check out his rendition of the of the Soft Hackle!

Tech Info- Went digital on this one. I produced a series of flies in this method for Fly Fusion Magazine. Recently, I completed a fly for a soon to be announced Patagonia program using this same method. The software used to create this image was primarily Adobe Illustrator with some support help from Adobe Photoshop. I started the process by sketching the fly, working on proportions and experimenting with shapes. I then scanned my sketch and placed it in a background layer in Illustrator. Although the final image was created digitally, the background was created by throwing down some watercolor on a sheet, scanning it and compositing it with the Illustrator image. Just cannot get away from using a brush and paints! I like the look of the results achieved by the fusion of traditional and digital media. No matter what media I use, I follow the same process and always start with hand sketches of the fly. I could have rendered the fly in Photoshop, but I chose Illustrator because I like the way I can uses blocks of colors instead of gradients to get the shapes to read. I ran right to the 30 minute mark with this one! I could have easily added more detail in the hackle, but would have run out of time. The 30 minute limit really forces you to think loose and use economy of marks to get your image down quickly.

The Partridge and Orange is one of my favorite soft hackle wet flies that I go to when dries are not producing strikes. I really enjoy swinging this fly down and across to pools that I know are holding fish.

Update: Just had the opportunity to check out Jason's excellent rendition of the Soft Hackle! Really dig the long flowing spey style hackles.

Next week: Deceiver streamer