Iwata Medea Resources How-To Articles Painting Fishing Lures Mike Bromelow








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resources | how-to articles

Lesson Two: Basic Walleye Pattern

by Mike Bromelow

Now that you have practiced the basics of lure painting, we can start to get a little more detail oriented. For the these next lessons I have already used a Dremel rotary tool to carve in the gill plates and the maxillary bones of the mouth as well as drilled out holes in which to seat plastic eyes.

In the first lesson we sprayed a simply one color base of transparent Gray. For the next one we will spray the upper half of the lure with the Gray and the lower half with Opaque White. Since we used a White primer you could just leave the lower half unsprayed but I prefer the brighter Opaque White.

Put the scale pattern mesh over the base coats and hold it in place again. Now we airbrush gold through the mesh along the top and the sides of the lure but not on the belly. This will remain White. I do not paint the heads of the lures during this step as real fish have a different covering on their heads than the larger scales on the rest of the fish.
Carefully remove the mesh and spray Gold over the head of the lure being careful not to get overspray onto the scales we rendered before. Let this coat dry for a few minutes. Now we will add some dark bars to the sides of the lure with Opaque Black. Don't spray them on too thickly, just a light coat will do. Also spray a light coat of Black along the back and the upper sides but not so it covers up the Gold completely.
I like to now add some stippling effect with the Opaque Black. There are several ways to get this effect and one way is something that I came up with by accident. On my airbrush I always use an Iwata moisture filter which has a tiny release valve. I press in this valve with the nail one of my thumbs which lowers the pressure for as long as you hold it down. Don't press it in all the way or you will lose all your pressure.
I like to now add some stippling effect with the Opaque Black. There are several ways to get this effect and one way is something that I came up with by accident. On my airbrush I always use an Iwata moisture filter which has a tiny release valve. I press in this valve with the nail one of my thumbs which lowers the pressure for as long as you hold it down. Don't press it in all the way or you will lose all your pressure. Now you will see that the Opaque Black is coming out in tiny droplets called stipple. This adds a little more realism as many fish have tiny organisms on them which look quite similar to this effect. Add a number of small dots to the head with the same Black. Also spray the inside of the mouth and the edge of the gills.
You will see that your lure is looking much more lifelike now but it still needs some eyes. I have already pre drilled out the sockets in which to seat the eyes with a ½” Forstner bit. I use 12mm plastic eyes for almost all the lures I make and when I want a certain look I will paint over the eyes with the airbrush and/or acrylic with brushes. Walleyes have a glossy white over the pupils giving their eyes "milky" appearance. To do this I simply spray a little Opaque White onto the Black centre of the plastic eyes.Your lure should now resemble the coloration of a Walleye which is often the food of choice for larger predators like Pike and musky due to their abundance and easy to swallow profile.