The koi fish is found abundandly in Japanese water gardens. They come in many different varieties of color, among them the white, orange, black or any mix of the above. As koi and carp generally look pretty much the same (save size and color- carp grow to be enormous and are generally muddy to pink in color) I used reference pictures of both fish, including a totally cool picture of a little japanese man holding a carp as big as he was. It was so cool.

The borders were taken from a reference book of... well... japanese border designs. It was drawn with rapidographs of the red, yellow and pink colors. I'm too lazy to check sizes right now.

This really looks a lot better in real life. I'm sorry. It took at least half a day's worth of work, counting all the hours I put in.