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A poem about fly-fishing inspired by Bela Bartok

Danish fly angler and professional photographer Søren Skarby got an idea: to photograph fish like they'd never been photographed before

Nick Mayer's watercolors are large, colorful and stunningly beautiful. Read about his journey from his childhood sketchbook to becoming a full time artist.

Brad Pitt’s New Movie Ad Astra has a Connection to Fly Fishing - and A Fly Fishing Painter’s Well Traveled and Well Lived Life

US artist Jason Bordash works as an electrical designer, but paints beautiful fishing scenes, fish and flies in his spare time. We asked him a few questions.

This is my entry from the first ever Illustrated Pattern Swap in 1996. No idea what an Illustrated Pattern Swap is? Well read on and learn.

Australian artist Trevor Hawkins works with pen and watercolor on high quality paper to produce his beautiful, mostly naturalistic - but also sometimes abstract art

American artist Casey Underwood does stunning and beautiful fish portraits using mixed techniques.

South African artist Gavin Erwin paints wonderful pictures of fish and fishing - some colorful and abstract, some very naturalistic.

David Womack signed up for as many art classes as he could, but after just one formal painting class he realized that he had found his passion.

Artists whose art is related to fly-fishing

I first noticed Travis' brilliant and colorful art on Facbook and we became online friends. It only took a very short time to realize that he was an obvious candidate for our Fishy Art series. I contacted him and asked my usual row of questions.

Taylor Garman works in a variety of mediums but prefers painting for fishing art

Mention Scrimshaw and not too many people will know what it is

Lithuanian Arturas Merkevicius makes some beautiful leather handcraft

Soren Skarby is a Danish fly-fisher and photo journalist

Italian artist Renato Rizzo draws beautiful, simple but still very complex and detailed black and white pictures of flies... with a lowly BIC ballpoint pen

I got in contact with Swiss Lukas Bammater through his fellow countryman and colleague Daniel Luther, who contributed an article. Lukas dropped me a mail saying "I would be happy to share some of my fishing pictures and experiences with other GFF-readers too".

Dutch Rudy van Duijnhoven is a well known freelance writer and photographer in the northern European fishing community delivering photos and articles to many European magazines and websites. Rudy is also very active in the fly fishing and fly tying scene and appears at shows as a fly-tyer and caster as well as a working journalist, documenting and reporting.

I asked Rudy our usual row of Fishy Photographer questions.

Nikola Novovic sent me a mail:
"Hello, I am from the small country Montenegro, at the Mediterranean in southern Europe. My country has become a very popular destination for fly fishing in the last few years, because we have a large number of very clear mountain rivers and lakes with only wild fish, just one hour from the sea and beaches.

Canadian Yves Laurent does beautiful wood carvings of fish and other animals - and flies. His work is meticulous and detailed and even the stones are carved in wood!

Finnish photographer Pasi Visakivi dropped me an e-mail. It read:
- I'm a 42 years old fly fisherman and a freelancer photographer from the southern part of Finland. I would like to share with your my fly fishing photos.

Sam MacDonalds art may at first glance look like paintings, but is actually 3D sculptures made from metal, with a very particular character that lends itself very well to fish and underwater subjects. We confronted him with our usual questions.

A mail ticked in: "One of our clients thought that Adriano Manocchia's art would be a nice addition to your art gallery section." And true enough. Manocchia's beautiful, almost photo realistic art would certainly be a nice addition to our Fishy Artists series.

I have known Michael for many years. We have been working together on the staff of a large Danish fishing magazine, and Michael is an excellent fishing writer and photographer.

Michael is a very creative person who has also written children's books and short stories and not least he's an avid rock musician who is very active in his band Wildflowers.

But this is about fishing photography, and Michael agreed to answer my usual row of Fishy Photographer questions.

UK artist David Miller has long been on our wanted list for the Fishy Artist series, and now we can feature some samples of his impressing art and some answers to a few questions.

Charles contacted me as a result of having seen our long-running series on fishy artists, and after having seen his fish carvings I found him more than worthy as a participant. Charles also paints and draws - cartoons and caricatures in particular.

When Canadian Nick Laferriere is not on the water, he's blogging, tying flies, and drawing fish. Recently he started combining the manual drawings and digital processes to create a new expression.

I first noticed Jason's neat pencil drawings when watching a video on YouTube where he shows the process from blank paper to a finished and stunningly beautiful drawing of a blue marlin in a 4 minute sped up video. The real time for doing the drawing was 5 hours! It's really amazing to watch how the fish appears on the paper as details get added.

Juan Jose Serra will be a familiar name to the regular visitors here on GFF.

"She's a Ducati riding, Wyoming roaming, fly fishing girl born in Tennessee... "
This is how fly fishing artist AD Maddox is introduced on her web site, and an introduction that has exactly the effect that I suppose was intended: I gotta know more about her!

Robin Armstrong is a British painter based in Devon in the UK, whose lifelike watercolors have been featured in magazine articles as well as in books by himself as well as other authors.

Become a better fly fishing photographer. Tips, examples and our best articles on shooting anglers.

Craig handed in his resignation and began a life-long dream career as an artist

"I have been an artist and fisherman my entire life. I realized a few years ago after catching a giant striped bass that I wanted a way to remember the fish so I painted the fish life-size with all of the details of the catch." says painter Jim Roszel.

Fishy artist Derek DeYoung is all over the place

"I really can't pin down exactly when I started doing artwork. I've always done it." These are the words of Sean Seal when presented with the question "how did it start?". Based in Bay City, Michigan, which is not exactly "a fly fishing paradise" as he says, he has still taken on fly fishing as a subject for his art.

Thomas is known from the Danish magazine Sportsfiskeren. At a recent editorial meeting, Thomas brought a bunch of framed reproductions of his drawings, and GFF partner Martin Joergensen immediately grabbed him and lured him into participating in our Fishy Art series.

Hand painted Abel reels. Whoa! Derek DeYoungs work. Whoa! Combined? Double whoa!

Bob White is probably best known for his illustrations for John Gierach's long running column in the printed magazine Fly Rod and Reel. Here he tells a bit about how it all started, how he works - and that he also guides and has done so through 27 seasons from south to north, home and abroad.

Artwork by Jeff Kennedy

Read about Florida artist, guide and store owner Vaughn Cochran's history and see samples of his beautiful art, which stretches from pop art over impressionsitic scenes to sculptures. Cochran paints and sculpts fish and scenes from his home waters as well as other tropical waters.

Ever since GFF partner Martin Joergensen first discovered Yoshikazu Fujioka's Japanese web site, which was amongst the first fishing related pages he ever found on the web, he was fascinated with Fujioka's art. Now GFF can present images from "Trouts and Seasons of the Mountain Streams".

Matt makes carvings, signs, furniture and other painted wooden objects

"As a young kid developing my skills and vision as an artist, I found that I could find no better subject to paint then the big northern pike and largemouth bass that I would often observe cruising the weed lines out in the bayou."

When I started rounding up artists for this series, Ad was on my absolutely top priority list, and he agreed on participating.

Rod Sutterby gave us a taste of his beautiful paintings in the book Atlantic Salmon done in cooperation with Malcolm Greenhalgh. In connection with a new series of articles about "Fishy artists" here on GFF we contacted the artist.

Diane Michelin's paintings show anglers, scenery, landscapes, still life and other motifs, which most of us will recognize from our everyday fishing

As a reaction on the Illustrated Pattern Swap 1996 participant Joe Cronley posted this message to the FF@ fly fishing mailing list: I must confess: When this swap was first proposed, I thought it was a bit odd and too complicated to work. My procrastination in submitting my materials was in part a reaction to that feeling.

There are a couple of new pictures in this section. I have once again experimented with the unknown and hidden beauty in the flies and materials that we use - aspects that can be brought out through computer manipulation.