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Painting a Muskellunge
by Dan Rinehart

THE FOLLOWING IS A COLOR schedule I use to begin painting a muskie. I say "begin" because a painting schedule should only be used as a starting point. Fish colorations can vary from fish to fish. This muskie painting schedule, however, represents how I paint the coloration of an average natural muskie. This is not a paint schedule for a tiger muskie and should not be confused with a hybrid muskie. I will be using Lifetone paints throughout this article. Pick up an airbrush, set the air pressure at 35 psi and get painting!

Step 1: Pencil Repairing. Muskies have an epidermal skin layer covering the surface of their scales. This layer is often broken and separated from the scales during the skinning and scraping procedures, causing damaged area to dry much lighter than the undamaged skin around it. The epidermal damage is extremely visible and must be touched up to match the natural color tones surrounding the damage. This blending is simply done by using a regular pencil to darken the epidermal damage, matching it with the darker surrounding skin tone. The pencil shading tends to be a little rough. To soften the pencil shading...

...Continued in the Winter 2002 Issue of Breakthrough.

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