A peek inside Linda's creative process.
I found this painting particularly satisfying as it reminds me of a special close encounter. As I was hidden against a tree, the cow walked by me and then the bull. Though they were quite close, the pair were more focused on each other than any thing else. They walked up on to a grassy area so my lower angle made them look even larger.
There were 1600+ paintings submitted with 200 chosen for the show. You can view the show here: https://www.noaps.org/2021-fall-on-line
Before I started on the moose, I thought the mountains in the distance needed a bit more definition. I've added a hint of fall snow and a closer hill section for more interest.
Where to begin. I decided to start with the bull's antlers then focus on the heads.
Blocking in the ground colors
After a number of smaller pieces, I decided to work on a larger painting. Its size is fitting for the subject.
October seemed to be my month of moose. With good sightings of bull moose in rut at Turnbull Wildlife Refuge (about an hour from my house) and four visits from a cow and her calf to my property, moose have been on my mind.
The painting size (24" X 48") may be modest for some artists but it fits in to the large category for me.
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| Linda's photo of a turkey in her yard |
I hope you have many people and joys for which to be thankful.
On October 16, I showed you two of my paintings which had been disguised.
Did you guess what they were?
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| Snow-ing at Blackwater Original oil 15" X 21" |
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| Taking Wing Original Oil 10" X 16" |
Come join the fun at the 50th anniversary of the Waterfowl Festival!
I'd love to chat with you. Find me in the Armory location.
Rarely do wildlife artists paint their creatures larger than life. It wouldn't be very easy for me to paint a giraffe larger than life size even though I have a cathedral ceiling in my studio. I'd be on a ladder for the head and on my knees for the hooves.
I debated on these two pieces whether to paint them larger than life size. In the end I opted to paint them slightly less than two times their actual size. These are hummingbirds I see at my house from April to September.
The flower is one which grows naturally on our property and hummingbirds seem to love its nectar. To achieve the iridescent feathers on the calliope's throat, I painted the highlighted area titanium white. Once dry, I glazed it (using Liquin) with very thin layers of Michael Harding Crimson Lake, Richeson Quinacridone Red, and Daniel Smith Pearlescent Shimmer. I made sure the mixture did not touch the deeper shadow reds. The effect worked and is evident even after varnishing.
The challenge on this piece was to create the brilliance of the blossoms. I'm not sure how many combinations I tried until finally happy with this result.
So why larger than life? We often see hummingbirds so fleetingly, never getting a chance to see the detail on their feathers and even less so the movements of their wings with the naked eye.
Now, don't hold your breath for a larger than life giraffe!
It had been a trying morning. I had been on hold for two different issues for a long time. On one of them, each time I reached a representative I was told she couldn't hear me and the person hung up. I eventually found out the company was having phone issues.
This is not how I planned to spend my morning. With one issue handled successfully, just before 11 am on October 27 I headed downstairs and walked in to the kitchen preparing to make myself a cup of tea. I stopped dead in my tracks. Outside the kitchen window, right in the yard, was a cow moose!
It has been more than a decade since we have had a moose (which we have seen) on our property. My camera in hand, I quietly approached the window and found another surprise - a moose calf.
From inside (so not to disturb them) I watched as they moved around the house. The calf smelled a lot of my plants (which he could have easily uprooted and destroyed) but he opted to snack on the remaining leaves of our columnar cherry tree.
Mom kept an eye on her calf and strolled over to see if there were any remaining goodies on the apple tree. After they had their fill, they slowly meandered down the hill.
After a very dry and hot summer, she looked surprisingly fit and had a full healthy coat filling in for winter.
I wonder. If I had not had a frustrating couple of hours first thing in the morning, would I have missed seeing this pair?
Some of the colors in the above image of the painting may look different than in previous posts. The above is a scan of the completed painting.
Morning on the Marsh will be going to the Waterfowl Festival in Easton, Maryland. Come join the fun, great art, sporting dog demonstrations, and partake in some of the best food the east coast has to offer.
My work and I will be at the Armory location.
"Building" the fox
The next and final stage is the foreground and the refining of various sections throughout the painting
Unless you have a particularly vulnerable chicken coop, you are probably a fan of the red fox.
There is a wildness yet adaptability in this stunning species.
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| Soft background painted and foreground roughed-in |
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| I "cooled" the right side of the background to make the fox stand out |
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| fox head detail |
No, I have not become an abstract painter. Let me explain.
The 50th anniversary of the Waterfowl Festival in Easton, Maryland is less than a month away.
I'm excited to be going and sell my oil paintings in the Armory location. Over the next several weeks I'll be sharing some of the new paintings I have completed for the show. (For instance, the previous post with Crab Dinner will be there.)
However, to leave some surprises, I won't be showing you everything. Two original oil paintings which will be there are above - but they are disguised. For the top image I used a kaleidoscope tool and for the lower one a ripple tool was applied.
Can you guess what they are?
On November 12, my blog post will reveal the paintings.
In the meantime, check out all the Waterfowl Festival has to offer. I'd love to see you there!
While this water took longer to paint than I thought it would, I think it helps in telling the story.
And this is a sight I did not expect to see. Next time I will be less surprised watching a loon taking advantage of a tasty morsel found in salt water.
Usually I start with the head of a bird and work outward. On this painting I began by painting the parts of the loon touching the water. This helped me "settle" the bird in the scene.
Okay, so we have a bird in the water. Doesn't seem that unusual or something I might not have seen before. It is what the bird is doing that intrigued me and caught my attention.
Stay tuned.
Every now and then I see a scene so beautiful or interesting that I say to myself, "I can't paint that. No one would believe it." The sunset from our deck is too intense, or the clouds look just like an elephant, or the color of the water is too neon.
Much more common for wildlife artists is seeing a unusual animal behavior in the wild and trying to decide whether to paint it.
Some of the questions I ask myself are:
1.) Is this a one-time event or something that happens but I haven't seen it before?
2.) Does it tell a new story and maybe advance understanding of the species for others?
3.) Will it make for a good painting and resonate with people?
Four years ago I saw something I hadn't seen before. I starting thinking more about this bird which previously I had only watched on bodies of fresh water. It is time to bring the memory of that encounter to "life."
This spring I have been working on eleven paintings for the Louisa Gould Gallery in Vineyard Haven on Martha's Vineyard Island, Massachusetts.
On one piece in particular, I procrastinated. I had a vision of how I wanted the painting to feel but couldn't see the steps. I wanted fog. Usually one would think of fog as whitish gray. That would not work for this painting. I thought sleeping on it would help. It didn't. Giving it another day of rolling around in my head also failed.
It was time to just dive in and start mixing paint. The reference photos I took had lots in the background: trees, other boats, and a few houses. I needed to ignore all of that.
Starting with a consistent (mostly neutral) color for the background, I painted from the top toward the lower half. As I moved down, I began adding more texture and then more vibrant color.
In painting water, I work with it until it looks wet to me. Some stray colors add to the believability.
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| Tranquil 27" X 18" Oil |
This painting (along with 10 other paintings of mine) will be in the Louisa Gould Gallery for the July 1 Opening of the gallery's Icons of Summer Show.
If you are an artist and your eyes started to glaze over at the title of this blog, The Spreadsheet, I understand.
We usually think of numbers with the word spreadsheet. Years ago I found keeping track of entry/competition/event deadlines difficult with just various folders and scraps of paper. There was the added complication of figuring out which paintings to enter. When would I hear from this show so I would know if I could enter a certain painting in another show?
That is when I created my Competition Spreadsheet. Of course, being an artist, the spreadsheet had to have colors!
The next step was to figure out the layout, what categories, and in what order. Rather than get fancy with it, I opted for the basics in this order:
Date Due, Date Results, Name of Application, Submitted Date, Paintings submitted, and two additional info lines. The info might be size limitations, which gallery, whether the painting must be for sale, which painting was accepted, or when the painting needed to arrive.
For colors I use blue for submitted, green for accepted, tan for not accepted, yellow for did not enter, and neon pink for an upcoming deadline.
For the next year I save the file with a new name, change all the backgrounds back to white and erase the details except the Name of Application entries. As dates become available, they are added and the process begins again. In the past few years I have added a number of shows/events/competitions.
Here is this year's current spreadsheet.
You might ask, why bother? I have a number of reasons.
While I could use a bit of freedom in creating the nest, detail needs to be painted for the structure of the supporting branches before I can add in the greenery. Without compromising the careful balance created by the birds in crafting their architectural wonder, I have "moved" and modified some of the outlying branches for a better balance in the painting.
It has been a while since I have posted. My apologies. My brush has been busy and I will be sharing those paintings from start to finish.
Sociable weavers are master builders. Living in congregate groups, their massive nests are impressive in large trees and are unbelievable when suspended in smaller ones. A particular nest in the Namib Desert of Namibia caught my eye for its miracle of engineering.
With some editing and some strategic placing of some of the birds I was ready to start on the painting.
The nest had sticks and birds everywhere. The trick was to capture the texture of the nest without painting every twig. On my palette I mixed four different colors for the rusty orange nest on the right side of the vertical branch. Using a small flat angled brush I started at the bottom.
To give the nest that layered feeling and reflect the weathered condition of the outermost layer, some of the upper part of the nest was painted with splashes of the cooler background color.
Squabble Original Oil 16" X 24"
It has been a while since I posted. For this piece, I wanted to wait until I could scan the painting. My camera was not catching some of the nuances which my scanner was able to capture.
Much of the "pink" was painted with a mixture containing Michael Harding Crimson Lake. I have been having fun exploring my "new" oil colors from both Michael Harding and Richeson. Though many of my choices could be created from my Rembrandt standard palette, I am playing around with bolder selections of color.
