A little Stretching

While painting wildlife is my passion, it is good for me to branch out and stretch my brushes. This is something completely new for me and I'll be showing you the piece in progress.
Unlike most of my pieces where I work background to foreground, top to bottom, I decided to start on the left side instead. I think establishing this area with the most contrast will help me throughout the painting.

Painting during shows

Moonlight Paint

15" X 23"

Original Oil

I like to paint during shows if I have the space. There are usually a couple shows a year where I can set-up my easel and a small desk area for my paints and brushes and a director's chair. Often I choose a busy-work painting, one whose subject matter has a lot feathers and where the constant interruptions (for questions and sales) are most welcome.

Poor choices would be any painting with a lot of water. While I love to paint water, I need large steady blocks of time for the critical blending. Without it, water passages can look flat and dry. Once I sprained my ankle coming down my studio stairs for a quick break about 10pm. I was working on water. Hobbling (hopping) to the house and putting ice on my foot and resting was not an option. So, I crawled back upstairs to the studio, hopped over to the freezer and found what I needed. A hunk of frozen elk meat. I wrapped it in a towel, propped up my leg and began blending the oils on my board to make it look like water. I don't remember which painting it was, but I do know the water came out well.

Obviously, another poor choice for a subject matter to paint at a show is one that requires a lot of concentration or planning. Ooops. I brought this piece to Safari Club International. While this piece may not look like it needs studied attention, I was using reference I had taken during the day. All the colors had to be transposed in my head to night time. And making a painting feel like night, or with moonlight, isn't just putting a blue filter on it. Contrast has to be reduced, whites still have to glow but with more color. The last thing I want is my painting to look like a 1950's TV western that you know was filmed in the middle of the day but they are trying to convince you it is night.

Well, I sit at my easel the first day of the show (surrounded it seems by spotlights everywhere) and have to "think night." What does rust brown look like at night? Not really, but how would it look in a painting for the brain to think it was night? What "color" is black or white? I started with the angled horizon line and by the end of the 4-day show, the top third was almost finished, except for the far left and far right horses. Back in its transport box for the trip home.

Fortunately, when I was back in my studio and opened the box, the colors seemed to be going in the right direction. The center horse is the main focus and the colors have to be "on" to make the painting read well. Ultramarine blue, veridian, and cerulean blue help pull the colors together. (they may be hard to see in the above image as they are subtle notes in the coat.)

Show Season

For many artists, this time of year begins a busy show season. I am no exception. My first show of 2012 is my biggest one of the year - Safari Club International.

At SCI I have a 10' X 40' booth and we set it up so I have 75 linear feet of wall space. A lot to fill! I usually have two show-stoppers (large pieces to grab attendees attention) and a variety of other sizes. There are about 70 artist exhibitors out of the approximately 1200 exhibitors. Estimates of 18,000 - 20,000 attendees make for four busy show days. You can understand why I prepare all year for this event.

My framer, Holly at Pacific Flyway works for weeks to have my pieces ready to go. (Thanks Holly!!!) My husband packs our Suburban with all the show panels, the lights, the paintings, the prints, the tables, the easel, the desk shelves, 2 boxes of supplies and paperwork, light bars, a dolly, and our suitcases. ( have no idea how he fits it all in!) Fellow Artist Terry Lee from Coeur d'Alene, ID takes some additional donation artwork and some large painting boxes for me in his trailer to ease our weight.

A 16.5 hour drive to the show, set-up (my husband and I have 3 days to put the final touches on the booth), 4 show days, and take-down. There were eight of us for take-down and thanks to Greg, Jim, Greg and Jan, Dean and Denise for their help. Then a 16.5 hour drive home and we unpack all the panels, paintings, etc. Next, days of writing thank you notes to my collectors (old and new) and packing and mailing their original oil paintings. (Just about all the attendees are out of town and need to have their purchases shipped.)

And the result? I had a good show. Quite good. Though it started off slowly on Wednesday with only one original sold, by Friday I had people waiting to purchase while I was writing up other sales. It's exciting when someone is moved by your work. I paint to share my experiences. When someone wants to take that story home, I feel I did justice to the moment I tried to capture.

Stay tuned for my next blog. I started a painting at SCI which I am just finishing.

A New Miniature

Horns of Plenty

6.75" X 4.25"

Original Oil

Even though small paintings take me longer per square inch to complete, I still like to do them. First I try and find a subject and composition which can carry such a limited size.

When I started painting this piece, I had mountains in the background and they weren't working. The mountains were muddy-ing the focus. I grabbed my blending brush and away they went. What I was left with was this mottled background. Next I worked on the darks of the Bighorns moving then to their bodies and saving the horns for last.

You are actually seeing more of the painting than will be seen when it is in its frame. About 1/4" from the top and left side will be covered. I plan for that when I am working out the composition.

Last minute changes

Beneath the White Mountain

Original Oil

11.5" x 28"

This is one of those paintings I thought was done when an idea burst into my head. I had painted all the trees, the cattle, the Masai, the sky and the clouds. When I stood back, the slight change of colors I had painted in the sky suggested something back there. That is when it hit me. What if I painted Kilimanjaro in the background?  I had been in the vicinity of the mountain when I saw the cattle but I didn't see the mountain until the next day.

Here comes the tricky part. I was happy with what I had already painted. Do I risk painting in the mountain, something which was not part of the plan? Will it make a difference to the painting? The photos I took of the mountain had that faint (and maybe mystical) feel. Could I pull off a subtle mountain for the highest peak on the continent?

I decided to go for it and am glad I did. For me it gives the painting the extra flavor it needed.

Brrrrrrr

Tom Tom

12" X 16"

Original Oil

The temperature here is in the teens during the day so it seems appropriate that I have finished this piece. The inspiration for the painting is from my backyard.

After a particularly big snow storm several years ago I wanted to take photos of the heavy snow-laden branches. In my traipsing around the property I ran into a flock of turkeys. There were hens but it was the toms in which I was most interested. They seemed to have a certain swagger to their walks as if to say, "Yeah, snow, so what. Nothing we can't handle."

I first drew this painting in August. One of the questions we artists often are asked is, "How long did it take you to paint this?"  The answer is difficult. From when do you want me to count? This painting is a good illustration of that difficult answer. I have been taking photos of snow and turkeys around my property for years. The reference I used for this piece were from 2008. I've been thinking about this concept in particular since then. Once I worked out the composition this summer, I set the board aside. The end of November I painted the background and some of the left turkey. At the Grand Opening week of Pacific Flyway Gallery in December, I demonstrated how I paint by finishing the breast of the left turkey. Now I have finished the right turkey and the foreground sticks to complete the painting.

Did I start this piece in August? yes. Did I start it in 2008? yes.  Did I start it before then when I spent hours watching turkeys around our place? yes.

My time holding the brush and applying paint is a small percentage of the time I spend to create a piece.

A number of years ago, a photographer asked me how long it took me to paint a piece. When I asked her did she mean putting the brush on the canvas, she said yes. My answer surprised her. She must have thought (after dividing my price by my hours) that my "price per hour" was high. I did not point out to her that her professional photographs took less than 1 second to shoot. I know the time investment required to get that perfect shot.

I know I will continue to get asked this question at shows. That's OK. People are curious how this process works. Maybe some who ask have started painting themselves and think if I can paint something like this in that amount of time, they can too. Maybe they can. Maybe they can paint a better piece. Or, maybe the person asking has never lifted a brush but wants a peak into how my day unfolds. I figure if someone asks, they like what they see. (If they didn't they wouldn't care how long it took me!) I may not have a definitive answer, but I thank them for their interest.

By the way, in case you are wondering where the title for the turkey painting came from, not me. I was struggling with what to call the painting and throwing around ideas with my husband, when he threw out Tom Tom. He says he meant it as a joke, but once I heard it, that was it. Tom Tom it was!

A Special Treat

For three years I have given my nephew and 3 oldest nieces (visiting from Texas and Colorado) a paint-by-number for Christmas as one of their presents. Over Christmas, they would work on their paint-by-numbers in my studio while I painted. This year my 11-year old niece from Texas asked for something harder and more challenging. She wanted to do her own painting and get some painting lessons. As soon as her 11-year old cousin in Colorado heard about this, she wanted to do it too. And once she was going to do a "from scratch" painting, her 12-year old sister signed on.

So, I had 3 girls ready to learn.

My niece Audrey from Texas arrived here with her family on Dec 20th. The next day we were in Michael's picking out her brushes, palette knife, and extra turpentine. I also bought duplicates for her cousins set to arrive on the 23rd.

Now to decide what to paint. Weeks earlier I thought encouraging them to do an animal portrait focusing on the eye would prove to be the most satisfying for them. Audrey and I spent time going through hundreds of my reference and she selected a cougar cub. We worked together to decide on the cropping and Audrey decided to paint it on a 6" X 6" gessobord I had. Her cousins followed suit a few days later.

Each of the girls worked from a grid system to free-hand draw their animal. They had a 1" grid on their board using 2B graphite pencil. Once they finished their drawings with the 2B pencil (and they were marvelous), the girls went over the outlines with a 4H pencil and then erased the 2B grid. Just like I use a raw sienna-burnt sienna wash to make a sepia study, they did also.

On to painting! Each of the girls used my Rembrandt oil paints. Knowing mixing can be a challenge, I helped them see and create the colors they would use. Once they started, they were often mixing on their own.

When each girl felt their animal was finished, she chose her background color.


Audrey's cougar cub in progress

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Katie's blue jay in progress

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Amanda's kestrel in progress

Finished paintings!!!

Cougar Cub

Original oil painting by Audrey Besse (age 11)

Blue Jay

Original oil painting by Katie Susman (age 12)

 

Kestrel

Original oil painting by Amanda Susman (age 11)

Not only do I think they did a wonderful job, but I am proud of the dedication each showed in working on their paintings. They could have taken short cuts but they didn't. They carefully selected their subject (rather than have me pick it for them), they hand drew it and spent many hours carefully painting the details.
Thank you Audrey, Katie, and Amanda for making my Christmas very special this year.