Adelie Penguins

This "surfing" penguin is the primary reason I wanted to paint this scene. It was my first full day on the Antarctic peninsula and we had wonderful sunshine and thousands of Adelie penguins to watch, along with cormorants, skuas, seals, and one gentoo penguin.
The Adelie penguin breeds further south than any other bird and they were first discovered in 1840 by a French Antarctic expedition.
When these penguin are wet, their coats form a smooth insulating layer. On sections of this first penguin I used reflected water colors to create cerulean and ultramarine blue sheens.

Whites

The painting didn't really come alive until I added the whites. First I started with the reflected sunlight on the rocks. This titanium white has a little raw umber, burnt sienna, and paynes gray. As I moved up the painting to the larger sections of white I used a mixture of titanium white and cadmium yellow deep. For the shadowed white under the first penguin, I used either a warm tone (raw umber mixed in) or cool tone (cerelean blue and ultramarine blue.)

More rocks

I designed the painting so the rocks in the dry zone would not form a straight line. This gives the wet zone a more natural feel.
In the deep shadow on the rocks I used paynes gray and ultramarine blue, and then cerelean and ultramarine blues + titanium white for the highlights.

Rocks

As a child, I remember combing the beach for interesting looking rocks. Some would look very non-descript - until I wet them in the ocean. The colors would then gleam and reveal interesting patterns.
The shores of the Antarctic peninsula were no exception. Though not as diverse as on New England beaches, there were still rocks with iron and potassium signatures and what I used to refer to as splotchy rocks, granitic rocks with inclusions.
This section of the painting required patience. In order to make it look like a rocky shore, I needed to take my time and employ lots of colors.

A Cooler Clime

After "visiting" Africa in my last painting, I thought I'd take a trip to a place a bit chillier. It has been a while since I have painted a large water piece and these three guys gave me the perfect opportunity to "wet" my brushes.

When I work on a painting which has a lot of water, I tend to work very long days. The passages are best handled wet-on-wet when I can blend all the edges.

Finished

Someone to Watch Over Me

Original Oil

14" X 22"

Pushing the temperature

When I began thinking of this painting, I knew I wanted to really push the temperature on the lion - make her very warm to contrast with the cool hue of the rocks. Cadmium orange, burnt sienna, burnt umber, and a little naples yellow and cadmium yellow deep were some of my warm colors. For the shadowed "white" fur, I used some of my sky color.
I purposely have other warmth in the painting so the lion doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. You can see some other warm colors in the base of the center grasses and dried leaves, the left-center small tuft of grass, some places in the rocks (most notably in the upper boulder) and in the right-center grasses.