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Vintage Art, Modern Flair: A Rainbow Fish Display Using Louis Renard Prints

Join me as I transform vintage Louis Renard fish prints into a spectacular rainbow fish wall display. Learn how you can bring the vibrancy and charm of the underwater world into your home with this creative DIY project, perfect for art enthusiasts and marine lovers alike. Includes free vintage fish clip art.

Incredibly, these beautiful tropical fish illustrations were painted in the early 18th Century. They are such bright, colourful, and fantastical paintings.

Louis painted over a hundred different fish in a fantastic array of colours. I thought it would be fun to select some of the most colourful vintage fish pictures and create a rainbow fish display.

I’ve already got a Louis Renard IKEA floor lamp hack in my living room, and these rainbow fish pictures will complement it. I also have a unique rainbow upcycled gallery wall of vintage George Shaw bird paintings.

Free printable rainbow fish watercolor

The Free Rainbow Fish Clip Art

The create my rainbow fish gallery, I carefully went through all the vintage fish paintings of Louis Renard and picked out my favourite colourful ones.

I have a colourful home and am very fond of DIY rainbow decor. To add to it, I wanted to make a rainbow of fish. To create a rainbow fish gallery, I carefully went through all the vintage fish paintings of Louis Renard and picked out my favourite colourful ones.

I chose fish which was one of the primary colours of the rainbow. That is red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo.

With the original fish prints, the fish were swimming from right to left. I think for a gallery wall; it looks better if the fish swim the other way, left to right. So in Photoshop, I flipped the fish paintings to float that way.

These same fish clip art images were used with this under-the-sea collage porthole.

To download the rainbow fish pictures, click on the title above the colors you want.

Red Rainbow Fish Pictures

Louis Renard fish red for rainbow fish display

Orange Rainbow Fish Pictures

Orange Louis Renard Fish for rainbow fish display

Yellow Rainbow Fish Pictures

Louis Renard Yellow rainbow fish pictures

Green Rainbow Fish Pictures

Green rainbow fish picture for rainbow display

Blue Rainbow Fish Pictures

blue rainbow fish pictures

Indigo/violet Fish Pictures

violet rainbow fish display pictures

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How To Make A Rainbow Fish Display

What you need

Step 1: Print the coloured fish pictures onto the watercolour inkjet paper. Make sure you print in landscape mode and choose the best print quality option in the printer software menu options. Four fish should print onto each page.

print menu options
Printed rainbow fish pictures on watercolor paper

Step 2: Four fish pictures are on each printed watercolour page. Instead of cutting each fish printout, I tore the paper to add to the handpainted look. Fold the paper over a metal ruler where you want to tear it. Brush a small amount of water on the fold and gently pull the paper. This will give the paper a nice feathered edge.

dabbing with water
Tearing paper
Torn fish pictures

Step 3: Next, once all the fish pictures have been torn into individual prints, arrange them on your frame in a rainbow. The frame I used for this rainbow fish display was big enough for a 3×6 arrangement. I placed three fish of the same colour in each of the six rows, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet.

Rainbow fish display postcards
Playing around with fish gallery wall

Step 4: Once you are happy with the arrangement of the rainbow fish pictures, use glue dots to secure them in place.

using glue dots
using glue dots to arrange vintage fish watercolor postcards.

All that’s left to do is hang the rainbow fish display on the wall. I didn’t put any glass on my picture frame. I like pictures without glass, as I prefer not to have any glare. Images without glass are also lighter and easier to hang.

The watercolour paper makes the fish pictures look like actual paintings. The colours on the paper look fabulous and bright too.

Vintage rainbow fish display
rainbow fish display

I also printed the botanicals for my DIY Christmas wall decoration on watercolour paper.

Check out other sea life collections on Pictureboxblue, such as the fantastic colorful coral reef illustrations or the sealife posters of Adolphe Millot.

Many nature form art posters of Ernst Haeckel are also of sealife.

Rainbow fish gallery wall

Cecilia

Sunday 13th of September 2020

These are lovely, Claire! Pinned! Thanks for sharing at Vintage Charm!

claire

Tuesday 15th of September 2020

Thank you, glad you enjoyed them.

rachelle

Saturday 12th of September 2020

Beautiful diy Clair. The tip to use watercolor inkjet paper is really helpful. I agree about the decoupage - what a fun project that would be. Now what can I decoupage these cute fish to........

take care RR

claire

Tuesday 15th of September 2020

Thank you, watercolor paper really makes a difference to the prints.

angie

Thursday 10th of September 2020

love the post and how delicately you cared for each that you took. The colors of the fish are beautiful the original artist would be so happy come see us at http://shopannies.blogspot.com

claire

Friday 11th of September 2020

Thank you so much!

Teodora

Monday 7th of September 2020

This is lovely! I painted fish in my bathroom and I framed my sketches, but they are not so detailed and colourful as these. I would definately try something similar but with a different animal or birds. Thank you for sharing. :)

claire

Wednesday 9th of September 2020

Thank you, I bet the fish look great in your bathroom. I've seen some fabulous wallpaper that uses vintage fish paintings that I think would look fabulous in a bathroom.

Elena Wiggins

Saturday 5th of September 2020

This is so neat! My son loves animals and recently we visited a nearby aquarium, so fish are a new fascination. He would love something like this to stare at!

claire

Saturday 5th of September 2020

Thank you, they are beautiful fish to look at.