Polar Bears

Photo by Linda Besse, Mom and cubs, 2016

Just returned from a great trip to remote northern Manitoba along Hudson Bay. One morning I saw six adult polar bears before 8 am!
In addition to the bears, the migrating birds gave me plenty of exciting reference.
There are a few paintings I want to complete before starting on tundra paintings but I already have several ideas from the trip.

My thanks to Mike and Jeannie Reimer at Seal River Heritage Lodge (www.churchillwild.com) and a very special thank you to Doug and Helen Webber at Dymond Lake Lodge.

Happy Autumnal Equinox, September 22nd, 10:21 am, Eastern Daylight Time

Birds in Art postcards revealed

Now that the secret postcards have been revealed at the Birds in Art Opening weekend, I can show you the two I donated to the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum.
(for back story, see my post on August 13th)

Postcard #1, 2016

4" X 6"

Original Oil

Common Terns

Postcard #2, 2016

4" X 6"

Original Oil

Black Skimmers, Common Tern

Vulturine Guineafowl

For the Birds

8.25" X 13"

Original Oil 

Also known as the Royal Guineafowl, the Vulturine Guineafowl is the largest species of guinea fowl currently in existence. And they are impressive. From their red eyes to their striped feathers to their cobalt blue breast, they certainly stand out from the warm tans and brown of the Kenyan landscape.

Movement

Movement

10" X 32"

Original Oil

My favorite part of this piece was adding the highlights. All the shadowed parts of the horse were painted first so the piece didn't come alive for me until I added the bright whites (titanium white and cadmium yellow deep.)

The legs

Usually when I begin an animal, I start with the eyes and then finish the head before moving on to the body. With the shadow already painted and it being a lighter horse, I wanted to establish the dark legs first.

The Horse

For this next piece, I wanted to paint a horse. But, I wanted a modern feel to the painting. My neighbor has more than a dozen horses and one really caught my eye several years ago.
What if the painting focused on the horse and gave a sense of its movement?
How would I do that?

My first thought was to have an elongated format. Then it came to me that if I had the horse in three positions, I might get a feeling of the horse moving, like consecutive frames of a moving picture.

How can I create the dividing line between the different frames? Rather than experimenting on my gessoed board, I played around in Paint Shop Pro to see how several effects and widths would look. I finally decided to paint a border which would incorporate colors of the background at an angle to give an updated look.

New painting

While my niece Audrey was working on her tiger painting (see previous post), I was also painting stripes.

Nakuru Stripes

Original Oil

7.25" X 14.5"

This piece is inspired by my trip to Lake Nakuru, Kenya. If you look closely, you can see a line of pink flamingos in the background. We saw more than 100,000 flamingos there.

Note: I have done a number of paintings with flamingos but don't think I have painted each one ...yet.