Final Steps

The next step was to complete the left zebra.
Before playing with the foreground, I wanted to darken both main zebra. The shadowed "whites" were too light.

The foreground did not need much. Some rocks with shadows helps the illusion of the sun from the left side.

 Challenger

20" high X 36" long

Original Oil

Note: more accurate color and lighting by using my Canon EOS rather than my phone for the photo.

This was an interesting experiment with the shape. I have no idea how well it will be received by potential collectors, but I am glad I painted it. The framer now knows that a double frame will be on the piece and I think her fainting spell was temporary. 

Stripes and more stripes

The painting started out simply enough. A light morning sky with soft peach clouds. By the time I was done with the sky and the trees, I knew it was all wrong. The sky was sickly sweet and the trees were too vibrantly green.
Time to start over.
I scraped off the sky and added a soft dull yellow to the area. The trees were also too detailed so I mixed a dull green and painted over them.
After painting in a background color for the grass I began on the stripes for the two distant zebra. Using darker colors I finished the stripes on the two featured zebra.

At this stage, the three right hand zebra have their "whites" painted and it is on to the rearing zebra.

Playing the Angles

It was time. I have been thinking about this painting for quite a few years. While the subject matter would be important, it was the shape which drew me.
I wanted to paint a piece on a trapezoid-shaped gessoed board. To be more specific, I wanted the board to be an isosceles trapezoid.

The first was a practical consideration. Could my framer frame it? Could my husband cut the board the shape I wanted? When both said yes, it was time for designing. Whole number angles would be easier for both. Having the obtuse angle at 103.258 with the acute angle at 76.742 degrees would unnecessarily complicate the entire process.

For some reason, I always pictured the painting with zebra. Running through my thousands of recent zebra reference, I came up with quite a number of photos from which to build the painting. This was a fun idea, but the composition needed to be enhanced by the shape of painting. There had to be a reason why the piece was this shape.

Using a rearing zebra with its back line a different angle than the board seemed to make the whole concept more dynamic. I played with the composition and was able to work out the obtuse angle at 105 degrees with the acute angle at 75.

The painting is finished but if you'd like to see it in progress, the next few posts will show you how I painted it. Sorry, no photo of my framer pulling out her hair. She doesn't know yet that I think I want a double frame!

Richeson Contest Winner

Richeson75  Animals, Birds, & Wildlife 2019 International Competition has just announced their winners.

 Ice Bear

My painting Ice Bear won 2nd place! Even more heartwarming was the comment from the Awards Juror, Terry Stanley.

"This piece is a master class in 'how to depict white'. The textures and subtle color variations are wonderful. Not to mention being a conversation statement piece memorializing that which may not be around much longer."

 Awards Juror

Terry Stanley

Terry Stanley was the Founding Director of Richeson School of Art and Gallery. She is a professional artist who has studied with Masters like Everett Raymond Kinstler, Michael Shane Neal, Stephen Quiller, Mort Solberg, Robert Bateman, David Cheifetz and David Kassan, among others.

She specializes in commissioned animal portraiture. Terry has curated and acted as juror for exhibits and competitions across the country and teaches workshops frequently. She is currently the Executive Director of Wisconsin Visual Artists and the Museum Tour Director for the Susan Kathleen Black Foundation.

 

 

My paintings One Step Away and West Wind were awarded Meritorious Status.  

Elephant Finished

It has been a while since I posted the elephant in progress. I've completed it and the painting was dry enough to scan this afternoon (gives a much better representation of the painting than quickie photos with my phone.)

Tusker

15" X 20"

Original Oil

Mountain Oyster Club Show and Sale

The Mountain Oyster Club is presenting its 50th Contemporary Western Art Show and Sale!
Opening November 24, the show runs through January 11, 2020.

You can see all the art at
https://mountainoysterclub.com/show/2019-art-show-gallery/

I have two pieces in the show.

Fox Run
7" X 13"
Original Oil

Summer Gold
24" X 17"
Original Oil

Mountain Oyster Club

6400 E. El Dorado Circle

Tucson, Arizona

(520) 623-3417

Oil Painters of America Western Regional Show

If you haven't had a chance to check out the 2019 Oil Painters of America Western Regional Show,
now is the time.
The show continues through November 30 at the Sorrel Sky Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
You can also see the show online at
https://sorrelsky.com/collections/oil-painters-of-america-regional-exhibition

My painting Stealth - Amur Tiger is included in the show.

Changing up the order

Almost always, I start my wildlife paintings with the background. Top to bottom, distant background to foreground. Next I'll work on the animal's eyes and then the rest of the head.

In this piece, I really wanted to work on the dust/elephant intersection on the left side of the painting. It is this area which tells a lot of the story - that moment when the elephant emerges from the brush.

A warmer clime

After spending time in the arctic in the last painting, I thought "moving" to a warmer area would be a nice change.

I am amazed how elephants can disappear in the brush.
One time near Victoria Falls I walked right past a large elephant - without seeing him. Someone watching down the road was surprised I showed no fear. Well, if I had seen him I might have at least walked on the other side of the road!
When a big bull makes his presence known, it is overwhelming.

Finished

Ice Bear

22" X 36"

Original Oil

Thanks for following along. Next up, a warmer clime.

The Main Attraction

Now that the stage is set, time for the main attraction.

I've found a curious thing about spending time in polar bear country. I'll spend hours in a small willow blind scanning the horizons for polar bears. Just when I know I've spotted one, a quick look through the binoculars will reveal a large shiny....... boulder. Twenty minutes later and the sun reflecting off another boulder looks just like a polar bear.
But, when a polar bear comes in to view it is so obvious. Their white hollow fur almost glows and there is nothing quite like it. Then I wonder how I could have ever mistaken a glacial erratic for this magnificent creature.

It is that glow which the background is designed to enhance.

My fully adjustable hand rest helps me work in the middle of the painting when the lower section is wet.

I mixed three main colors for the sunlit part of the bear. A base warm yellow-white, a bright white (titanium white and cadmium yellow deep), and a warm peach.

Some of the cool colors I mixed for the ice and snow are used for his rump and the back of his legs.

Almost done.

Frozen Salt Water

This next section I was most worried about. The top of it (starting in the lower third of the painting) needed to look further away than the very bottom of the painting.

Growing up in New England I had the chance to spend some time looking at (and occasionally walking on) frozen salt water. Adding to that some artist time in Iceland and Antarctica, could I translate those experiences into a believable chunky "bed" of frozen salt water?

There are three painting rules which could help me:
1.) distant landscapes have less contrast
2.) distance is generally less vibrant
3.) distance has softer edges

While the illusion of depth is not a great distance in this section, I kept the above rules in mind so the bottom did not look vertical.

Above I have the underlying connecting slush painted.

 Foreground ice completed.

Cold Reflection

I find water reflections such fun to explore. They can be detailed mirror images, soft reflections, or quite abstract (as in my previous tiger painting, see post August 15.)
Here I am aiming for a soft reflection which I think adds to the feeling of cold stillness in the painting.

I start by blocking in the colors. The darkest colors of the block of ice will be lighter in the reflection and the lightest will be darker, all toned by the water color.

All the reflection colors are painted and you can see the start of the soft blending of them on the right side of the reflection.

Breaking up the reflection with frozen chunks (with their own reflections) completes this section.

Block of Ice

It was this block of ice which helped inspire the composition. Some of the more intense teal color in the shadowed area is with a mixture including Michael Harding's Phthalocyanine Blue Lake oil paint.

Generally my whites are a mixture of titanium white with a touch of cadmium yellow deep. Here, in the sunlit area of the block, I have a bit of gray in the mix. I want to save my warmest "white" for the bear.

Cold water

Much of the open water is one of the original colors mixed for the sky. (See post Not so Fast)

Ice

I've mixed colors from a very light gray-blue (titanium white and paynes gray) to a darker rich gray-blue (with some ultramarine blue and other blues.) To warm up some areas a couple of the colors have a smidgen of raw umber. There are about 7 newly mixed colors on my palette. Using two small angle brushes and one larger angle brush, I am painting my way down.

Not so fast

Today I started painting a new piece. The composition will be a bit tricky with the ice but at least the sky was pretty straightforward.
Mixing just the right color I went to work brushing it on. Unlike most of my skies, the most effective way to represent this sky was with a single mixed color applied with differing thicknesses over the toned background.
After carefully blending the brushstrokes I stepped back. No, the color was too light.
Okay, I'll just mix a darker color and blend it in. All blended with a soft brush and I stepped back.
 No, the color was too blue.

At this point, the easiest thing to do was scrape off all the paint and remix a new color. Some of the old color would remain which in this case would be fine. New color mixed, applied, and blended with my soft brush (which was now pretty thick with paint so I also used another blending brush.)
 I stepped back. No, not right.

I scraped off the paint and took a lunch break.

With renewed focus I returned to my easel. I've known all along the color I wanted but my head was getting in the way. It is a color which on the palette does not look like it belongs in the sky. My artist eyes knew in this painting it did. A remix and it worked. The whole process was not as fast as I had thought it would be because I had to let go.

Detail

Almost Finished

Ascent

28" X 20"

Original Oil

Since I took this photo of the painting I have made a few modifications. Some of the touches throughout included a greater distinction between the cat's nose/mouth/chin and the tree, and some darker areas in the foreground.

Next steps

Adding the middle ground seems to give the piece more weight, helping with depth. At this stage, I was finding the bottom a bit distracting but tried to ignore that as grasses will cover a lot of it.

The spruce grouse has been painted. I've lightened it so it does not appear as a big dark blob and disrupt the flow and focus of the painting. The grouse is still in the normal range of feather colors but does not instantly draw one's focus. You see the mountain lion's movement and then wonder what he is going after before you see the grouse.

When I first started painting the mountain lion its colors didn't seem rich enough. I wanted its warmth to contrast with the coolness of the vegetation.  Grabbing some richer yellows, reds, cadmium orange, and burnt sienna is helping with bringing out a more vibrant coat.

New painting - Mountain lion

I've had this idea for a while and since I have been in "big cat mode", now seemed the right time.
The concept was pretty straight forward - cat climbing tree after a bird. The execution contained some surprises which required alterations to my original design.

A soft background was painted to aid in the feeling of depth.  No sharp edges and muted colors. The slope of the hillside is the opposite direction of the cat's upward movement.

Here I have started with a tree bough. I find it easiest if I mix three separate greens as base colors. Other colors will be added depending on whether parts of the branch are in sun or shade. My plan is also to have another tree in the upper right which is closer to the foreground.

It was clear to me that when I was done with the tree the mountain lion is climbing that the tree in the upper right would just not work. With its trunk out of sight, it would only add confusion to which branch belonged to which tree. My original thought was to make its boughs warmer but I decided that would not make enough of a separation. Back to refreshing all the sky colors and painting them over where the other tree would have been.
This for me is the ugly stage. The tree is okay (maybe needs some more warmth on the trunk) and I like the sky but the painting feels flat. Time to press through that feeling and work on the small trees and brush in the middle ground.

To print or not to print...

That is the question.
Artists take different approaches to this question. I know one artist who makes prints of every painting. There are others who never make limited edition copies.
Most of us are somewhere in between. From my roughly 40 oil paintings a year I average making two into limited edition canvas giclee prints.

So, how do I choose?
Occasionally I have a client who would like a canvas giclee print of a painting I have done and I decide the image would fit into my print selections.
More often, I have one painting each year which I believe would have broad appeal.

The proofing process is a time-consuming project. With my professional printer we constantly tweak the canvas print until it looks like the painting when they are placed side by side. It is not uncommon for the printer to use more than 8 separated layers to achieve the desired result. A part of the water might be adjusted differently than a small section of the reflected head. A little more peach here, more contrast there, more saturation over here. Even with scanning directly from the original, tiny alterations are essential. If I painted it this way, why have the canvas print look differently?

Once all the adjustments are made, it is time to decide on sizes and how many. My largest giclee canvas editions are a total of 75 which can include three different sizes. I have some editions which are only 35 prints at one size.

Stealth - Amur Tiger (see post below) will have canvas giclee prints available. I've decided on three sizes: the original (24" X 34"), 17" X 24", and 12" X 17."  I haven't decided how many in each size, but the total will probably be 65 or less.

I'd like to share two more thoughts on prints.
First, some artists believe that to call a copy a print, it must be an original print, hand pulled. I treat the subject with the common public perception in mind. Many understand the word print as the old method of off-set lithographs. I do canvas giclee "prints" and make the details clear in my Certificate of Authenticity.
Secondly, some artists like to hand enhance their canvas giclees. I am not a fan of hand-enhancing. It can confuse the collector with a piece that is somewhere between a print and an original. If the artist is hand-enhancing to make the piece look more like the original, they might want to find a printer with the expertise to do that. And, if I want to put paint on something, it will be an original. Another consideration is that the longevity of the paint on top of archival inks and canvas is unknown.

Finished

Stealth - Amur tiger

24" X 34"

Original oil painting

The colors might seem a bit different than you have seen in the posts leading up to the finish. The above image is from a scan of the painting - a more accurate representation of the painting than the quick in-progress photos with my phone.

Thanks for following along! 

More fur

Above, almost done with the non-white fur color. Just the tail remaining.

Below, the white fur (titanium white and cadmium yellow deep) on the tiger is painted. I've also repainted all or portions of the stripes. In painting the more orange fur, much of each stripe was covered. By painting the stripes first, then the orange fur, then the stripes again, I am able to blend the fur colors into each other creating a more natural looking coat.

Next up, sparkles in the water, revisiting the tiger reflection, and the leaves.

The tiger

The eyes are the first part of the animal I usually paint. They help give the rest of the painting life.

Even though most of the stripes will be repainted to blend into the golden orange coat, I like to paint them next.

 For passages like these, I like to use a small flat angle brush. Each stroke lays in a block of color in the direction of the cat's fur. The "white" of the coat will be last.

Tiger reflection

When I started the reflection of the top of the tiger's head I realized that my color was not dark nor rich enough. So, I increased the intensity with burnt sienna and burnt umber to give the section that pop. Some of the deeper colors are also repeated throughout the reflection.

The sections of lightest white reflection have been added.
Note: I have kept the white in the reflection dull by painting it a light gray. This will help the reflection read like it is in the water.

Reflections continued

Setting the stage for an abstract reflection of the cat is the sky reflection. I used Rembrandt ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, titanium white, and a touch of Van Dyke brown, plus Michael Harding's Phthalocyanine Blue Lake.
Premixing four blues worked well. Once they were blocked in, I realized that I needed a deeper richer blue swath from the lower left.
(Note: My new selection of Michael Harding oil paints have been a wonderful addition to my palette. It seems I can create more exciting and a greater variety of colors.)

Continuation of the ripple line.

Start of the cat's reflection. This is going to be tricky, but fun.

Reflections

One of my favorite things to include in my wildlife paintings is water. There are so many color variations to explore. While painting a mirror image can be effective, I find abstract reflections more interesting.

This stage, when I block in the colors, I find the most distracting. It is time to grab some blending brushes.

The first stage of the blending is complete. Next up is the lower section of water and then the cat's reflection. As I work through the piece, all the sections of the water will be continually modified until they feel right.