smrth:

About 1-3 hours each. Watercolor and white gouache. I painted these from photos and sketches taken at a local tropical fish shop. The owners have been running the shop for 35 years, and one of them has a private aquarium of 145 tanks in his house. The captions on these images include quotes and information from them. 

Thanks for looking!

EDIT: I went back to the shop this morning and got some corrections on those numbers from earlier. Also fun fact: the shop is actually a registered aquarium, and the building used to house a fish market run by a different person. The aquarium was next door. Even before that, the building was a church, and there’s a granite stairstep out front that reaches 5 feet down into the basement, where you can find catacombs.

The owner also ran a radio show called “Fish Talk” for five years and set up an aquarium and mural in a local children’s hospital! Way too cool. Hearing him talk about the past made me nostalgic for a time period I wasn’t even a part of.