Mostly made from cutting vinyl sticker paper to complete the 100 fish project.

100 Vinyl Sticker Paper Fish - image 1 - student project I started with some basic drawing and got most excited about the fish lips for #10. I moved onto my recent favorite medium of hand cutting sticker paper to create designs. I am writing this having done 46.

100 Vinyl Sticker Paper Fish - image 2 - student project

I used both completely new cuts and also some other stickers I had done for other projects. #16 is gold sticker paper (that you can't really tell is gold here), but the back fin with a circle is actually part of the word "plenty" in shorthand that I did for another project. #18 is circles from parts of a viking ship I did for another project. #17, the fins are the interior sticker from a horse line drawing I did for the Derby one year.

100 Vinyl Sticker Paper Fish - image 3 - student project

I made this big head for #15 and quickly realized that it wouldn't work to put it on the page in order so I went to the next page.

100 Vinyl Sticker Paper Fish - image 4 - student project #20 was inspired by an art show I attended several weeks ago where the artist did a lot of intense layering. I was actually in a rush to complete one more so I layered a bunch of stickers and decided to somewhat continue that strategy for the entire page. NONE of them were as easy as the first. I found layering really difficult and sometimes it felt contrived to me. I pretty much abandoned layering for #24, but then went back to it. I don't think any turned out as well as #20. I immediately started overthinking the process and therefore ruined the magic of layers.

100 Vinyl Sticker Paper Fish - image 5 - student project

I focused on some monochrome simple variations. It doesn't come through on this image very well, but the iridescent paper is at the center and then the outline on the top and bottom is slightly different in color. I ended up taking off the lighter sticker strips for #27 and #28 because I like this page without them. I like the shape of #31 the best, but feel VERY careful to stay away from the Christian fish design and that is a little dangerously close to that.

100 Vinyl Sticker Paper Fish - image 6 - student project I thought it was time to go back to some line drawings. I wanted to make them from dots or smaller shapes instead of exact lines. I have been toying with how to represent a fish shape with the negative space (#22 is an example of my first experiment with that, but I never figured out what that external shape should be so I ended up making it a fish shape and basically abandoned the attempt at negative space drawing).

100 Vinyl Sticker Paper Fish - image 7 - student project Back to the stickers, but this time with a big focus on the lips. I played around with teeth, but find those little squares hard to work with and I really want the teeth to be smaller than they are. Maybe I'll put them down first and the lips over top so I can get some better purchase on those things.

100 Vinyl Sticker Paper Fish - image 8 - student project

100 Vinyl Sticker Paper Fish - image 9 - student project Instead of moving right onto a series of fish with a focus on their eyes and eyelids (I mean, a fish giving a good side-eye is the image I see every time i close my eyes). This is all via wikipedia and some of the stuff that felt remarkable to me was the difference between aggregation, shoals and schools. I also liked the drawing of fish parts and definitely notice my inclination to just include the caudal fin and on rare occasion, the pelvic fins. I haven't done gills, only tiny lines that would give the fish an anthropomorphic expression. I also went down a bit of a click fest on cleaner fish and fake cleaner fish (who I sort of think are understudied and misunderstood).

100 Vinyl Sticker Paper Fish - image 10 - student project In my brainstorm, I went down several paths, but decided to focus my typography on other words that are both plural and singular. This is something I didn't realize I love about the word fish until I did this project. Each fish above is related in some way to the word. The fish eating the word pliers is a tusk fish that is one of the first fish we know to use a tool. You is really just a couple of fish that are sweet on each other, but they turned out looking a little sad on each other with that extra line under the eye. The wood fish is actually a fish that eats wood. They have little sucker mouths and spoon shaped teeth. The fruit fish is a massive fish that eats fruit and helps distribute seeds in the Amazon.

100 Vinyl Sticker Paper Fish - image 11 - student project I used my swirl art toy and food coloring to make these fish. If I were working on them more, I would add something to make them better, but I've already lost interest. I just downloaded the adobe suite because I've always wanted to learn how to use photoshop, etc. I'm going to take an animated gif class and learn how to make an animated fish!

100 Vinyl Sticker Paper Fish - image 14 - student project

MY FIRST PHOTOSHOP PROJECT! It took forever to learn even how to upload a scan into photoshop. (the screen was just black), but I spent some time with google and, well. Here it is. I basically traced the 10th fish I made 5 times and did about 25 steps in photoshop that will become easier the more I practice and then made a little gif! It's really exciting. Thinking I will try this with sticker paper layering....

Coming in at #56, here is the sticker paper fish.

100 Vinyl Sticker Paper Fish - image 15 - student project

And #s 57, 58 and 59, a small aggregation. This is my focus on changing colors and trying to be a better tracer. I sort of like the more organic effect of less good tracing.

100 Vinyl Sticker Paper Fish - image 16 - student project

Jessica George

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