Rainbow Trout Paining

[Jon P.]

Hey folks, recently I invested in some airbrushing and lure building equipment. But while painting blanks I've had some troubles with my trout patterns. I prefer to use all one kind of paint (I.E. Createx) to minimize the risk of chemical reactions between paints (that, and brand preference)and I can't figure out a good back color mix. I need a light olive and I need help. Also some advice for making baits look more "lively" wouldn't hurt as well.

With best regards, Jon P.

[gliders]

Hi jon, depends what shade olive your after, are you using opaque or transparent? what do mean by lively?

[rgrrbt]

This guy has a good tutorial on layering paint for a rainbow trout.  I found it interesting how he achieved the "olive green" look that you mention by layering colors.

 

[Jon P.]

Hi jon, depends what shade olive your after, are you using opaque or transparent? what do mean by lively?

When I say "lively" I just mean techniques that can be applied to the painting of any fish species to make it more realistic, like tipping scales with white or things like that.

[Jon P.]

I'm just going for a translucent light olive so that the pearlized flash will show through. That and so I can paint it carefully.

[gliders]

For your olive take say 10 drops transparent yellow, add 2 drops transparent blue, now you have light green so depending how green you want your olive, you will vary amount of blue .I.e , a greener olive=more blue. Now add a drop of transparent red.this will give you an olive shade,these amounts are a very loose approximation and you will find it more towards a brown olive than you might want, so cut back on the red. You will find you only need tiny amount of red to achieve nice gold olive shade, maybe only a quarter of a drop ! Hope this helps.

[aulrich]

There are a couple of ways to get olive one I have just recently tried was yellow and black, when I first ran into that combo I was just a bit skeptical. So much so I just mixed up a decent batch (using blue yellow red IIRC) that has lasted me a few years. But I have been in an experimental mood lately and gave it a try on a pike lure. It worked, it’s not as green as the other way but surprisingly good.

So something like this could work.

Black base

Perl Silver (Add netting for scale, optional)

Pink to taste

Remove net

Shade the back with transparent black go lighter than you think add a layer of transparent yellow to taste. Repeat as required.

Sharpie the spots on

Acrylic clear coat (pledge) Some top coats can run sharpie

A less natural trout I have done I used a blue/red color shifting pearl that I had made from Art Store pearl powder and transparent base. With that I use a white base I shade the back with transparent black. When I spray the color shifting paint The paint reads pearl blue over the black and pearl red over the white. But depending on the angle of light the whole lure can flash blue. Finish with a white belly. Not a really natural look but effective in a local clear water lake where pike feed on trout.

[Jon P.]

Both of your replies have been extremely helpful, as soon as my paints arrive (only have of my order from janns netcraft arrived earlier this month) I'll be sure to test out your recipes.

[Jon P.]

Another cool idea I had was to paint a bait with matte colors, apply a scale netting, and repaint the same pattern with pearlized colors. Createx makes most of their paints in translucent, opaque, and pearlized versions so it shouldn't be hard to replicate the same pattern twice with different paints.

[gliders]

Another way to pain a rainbow trout is belt it with a priest. (Sorry!)

[gliders]

Jon, if you paint first with pearlescent base colour then transparent colours, you can get nice deep effects.