Heres an atempt at art fly tying… Took a while to tie (aint gonna say how long it took)… I would like yolls input on the fly, positive or negative comments are all welcome… One day im gonna tie a perfect fly… YEA RIGHT !
practice practice and did i say practice
make sure when you are doing floss you have a perfectly smooth underbody and burnish the underbody and the floss.
use only good quality peacock herl. and wind it with the rachus facing the hook point. make sure you have a full section of herl between floss sections. make your spacing equal. use small thread so that you can have a small as head as possible.
when you make your head flatten the thread use tight wraps and lots of coats of polish so you have a smooth head and can’t see the thread wraps.
and did i say practice
gary
Hi,
I like your colour choices. The feathers have a nice two tone effect. If those are 6 pairs of feathers, as it appears it might be, the two are very nicely lined up. Well done. The tail looks nice and crisp too.
The rib work could use a bit of attention to get the wraps evenly spaced and each turn at the same angle. Keeping the floss body flat will aid in that. While laying down the thread base, every few wraps let the thread hang on the bobbin and twirl counter-clockwise until the thread is opened up like floss. Wrap a bit more, untwirl, and so on. When you wrap your floss lay touching turns, make it lay flat by having it spread out, but do not let it spread out too much or it will get out of control (you’ll see what I mean).
It looks to me like your feather work is fine, and I think that is the more difficult part. Rib work and the floss work will be a snap to tidy up. Especially since you can practice both when tying regular fishing flies. The complicated feather tie ins do not come along every day.
Anyway, overall I like the impression.
- Jeff
I really liked your choice of colors and the overall idea. That is a pretty fly.
What follows is pretty persnickity stuff. It is some of the tiny things that make oh, so much difference.
Gary had some good points abpout the body. When you tie those middle and back wings in, you need to either leave enough butt on the feathers to help fill in the body up to the next wing, or fill that in with thread. I would choose the longer butt. It is easier to keep smooth. Another alternative would be to cover the tie in with herl so the lump is not visible. The smaller thread will help as well. You may have used small enough thread, just not enough flattening or finish cement like Sally Hanson’s Hard as Nails. A 70 denier thread or smaller will work fine. I like Danville as it flattens out very nicely with very little effort. Use white thread up until you get ready to do the head. It keeps your colors in the body true and does not show through the floss.
This tutorial by Eric Austin helped me a TON. He describes floss bodies and tinsel quite well.
http://traditionalflies.com/index.php?TyingtheCassard
No, the fly is not anything near the same, but the techniques are going to be very similar for the ribbing and such. Eric has another here on FAOL on tying the Ibis and White that hits on a few other things.
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/features/oldflies/oldflies20090831.php
Eric’s tutorials have helped me a LOT. The techniques translate well into my other flies, too.
I don’t know what you used for a hook, but tie big. #4-#6 for this kind of fly or bigger. I tie most of my wets on #6 Mustad 3399 hooks. You are not tying this kind of fly for a brookie, but to hook the fisherman.
Again, the colors and overall design are beautiful. What are those feathers?
When I saw it at first I thought I was looking at a large moth from above…I wonder how it would look if the feathers were tied in horizontal?
Like a large orange moth from above? 
That’s beautiful.
Just one question…
What is an ‘Art’ fly???
A art fly is just a fancy fly that is not a coppy of a traditional patern or anything, just made up in your head while going along… The dying of the feathers i did myself… Took several tries to get the 2toned firy orange efect… I had some trouble getting a smoothe body even though i used the #12 silk thread and it went on smoothe & level… Tying in the hurl gave me some minor bumps on the body but aint figured out how to stop that yet… No one to learn from here so im having to teach myself… A small fly i have no problems with but flies 2/0 and bigger seems to get slightly uneven bodies… Ill figure out how to correct this soon hopefully… Heres a different one i tied…
You like orange, don’t you? 
I like that first one the best of the two.
Check out those tutorials as they get deep into technique. Charlie Craven has some very good tutorials on his site, too. I seem to remember Eric having another tutorial that was for one of the simpler full dress salmon flies, if there is such a thing, that gave a good deal of info as well, but these two gave me several “lightbulb” moments.
If you want practice on technique, try several of the traditional wets. There are a boatload of them in the “Just Old Flies” archives and they will give you great practice at the floss bodies, ribbing, winging, etc. Besides that, they are fun to tie.
I neglected to mention it and I didn’t see anyone else mention it, but that head is nicely proportioned and just the right size on that first fly.
I believe that you should call the first one “The Raptor”
The one with all the fire orange wings is called Flaming Sun… aint made up a name fer the other one…