Ambling by Observation Hill

Back in May I posted a bit about an article I did for the Artist and Illustrators magazine. I promised to post an more in depth article here on how I created depth in the painting. My apologies that it has taken me so long to post it... I hope it's a case of better late than never.

I have split it into two parts.... as it really is quite long. This post is about the inspiration for the painting and the start.

"Ambling by Observation Hill"

The Inspiration

This was a commissioned piece of work, with the specific request that it will help fund a trip for me to go to an elephant conservation project in Botswana with the aim of raising funds for their research by having a future exhibition of my paintings of the area and animals in it. Elephants were requested, which I was very happy with, as this seemed the natural subject choice.

For this painting I wanted a calm, relaxing scene of elephants just going about their daily lives with a bit of interest in the landscape, but not too much as I wanted the focus on the animals. I recalled a visit to Amboseli National Park in Kenya some years ago where the landscape was mostly flat with a few hills and of course the magnificent sight of Kilimanjaro across the border in Tanzania. I loved the colours in the pale soils and drying grasses, the varying light of the sun on the landscape at different times of day and the contrasting richness of vegetation and greens of the marsh areas.

We saw many herds of elephants and had some wonderful sightings, mostly just going about their daily lives unperturbed by the “canned” humans in their smelly, noisy metallic cages. When the engines were switched off and everyone fell quiet… the sounds of the landscape filled the senses. As I write this I find I am closing my eyes and reliving that wonder. A truly wonderful place... and that was the feeling I wanted to convey in the painting.


The Start

I watched my video recordings and looked through my many slides and photographs from that trip looking for ideas of landscapes, references for the elephants and remembering the feel of the place - colours, sounds, smells, temperature of breeze etc. I chose not to do Kilimanjaro in the background - wanting instead something more personal to me and also to the client, whose daughter (now a very good friend) had been on that very same trip. Observation Hill fitted in perfectly with my “vision” for the painting compositionally and personally – our little group had a picnic breakfast on the top of it one morning, looking down watching animals move by… including elephants. So I hope that when my friend's father looks at it, he sees not just a hill in the background but a place where his daughter has stood and enjoyed a great view.

I spent sometime drawing up the elephants to try to get proportions and the animal anatomy to my satisfaction. And then transferred these to separate bits of tracing paper to play with the composition of the grouping, abandoning several proposed elephants from the group, until I found something that seemed right and would “flow” across the canvas. Then I played with the landscape moving the position of the hill around, up and down, left and right, bigger and smaller until it fitted my ellie group and canvas shape. Once happy I made a final outline drawing on more tracing paper and then transferred it to the canvas.

After drawing in the elephants in more detail on the canvas I applied a thin wash of purple acrylic over the surface. By coating the canvas with a thin wash of acrylic I not only fix the pencil to stop it lifting and mixing into the paler colours as I start painting but it also takes away the dreaded expanse of whiteness that can be intimidating to start painting over. My colour choice of the wash depends the final painting, I try to use a colour that “grounds” the final piece – for this one it was pale purple but for another painting I might choose, sepia, burnt sienna or an orche colour wash.



What I used

Canvas - 24”x12” stretched cotton medium grain
Paints - Oils: Windsor & Newton - Titanium White, Alizarin Crimson, French Ultramarine, Cerulean Blue, Cobalt Blue, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Yellow Hue.
Van Dyck Ferrario – Gamboge.
Acrylic: Windsor & Newton – Windsor Violet, Burnt Umber, Crimson.
Brushes –Sizes 1 and 4 round watercolour, Size 0 Rigger, ¾” Filbert, ¾” Mop
Artists White Spirit
For this piece I used oils ‘straight from the tube’, without any other medium such as linseed oil or Liquin (I never use the former) and apply it in a thin opaque layer. My oil brushes are a mix of watercolour and acrylic, both old and new.

My Palette of colours!

Sketching morning

Now that I have got over the initial flurry of work at the zoo, I can now start up my 'training' sessions again. The zoo is keen on staff developement, but it is quite tricky for me to train at art specific to my job at the zoo... I can think of quite a few workshops etc that I could do to improve my art, but that is not related strictly with my zoo job... alas! So my boss and I came up with the notion of my training being free sketching mornings once a fortnight. This is so that I can go sketch what ever I want, rather than what I need to do for an upcoming job. The freedom of this is wonderful.

This week I decided.. as my primate drawing skills have always been a little rough.. that I'd go sit in the Lemur Walk-through enclosure and try and get something done in there.. it helped that it was a lovely warm day. So I sat for just under 3 hours in the delightful setting of the enclosure watching mongoose lemurs and ring-tailed lemurs... and, of course, sketching. I was pleased that despite a long gap on my sketching mornings, I did a lot better than I had expected.

When I know I have a few hours for sketching.. I pick on one animal subject and concentrate my focus there. Flitting between several species rarely makes me feel like I've achieved what I want from the process of a sketch. I want to try and learn/understand how they move, sit etc and it takes a good few hours of observation and sketching for me to feel as though I've given myself that chance to achieve my goal.

Once I've got myself settled in front of my subject I start with some time spent purely observing.. taking in mental notes of their form, behaviour and where they like to be doing certain activities. Then I usually start with quick thumbnails of just a few lines to get the feel of body shape and how limbs, head and tail relate to it. Then I start adding more - I rarely go into great detail 'til much later in the session, if at all. Then I might pick on a feature (such as hands and feet) and concentrate on trying to understand the form of that.

Here's a couple of pages from that morning's session with the lemurs.

Two of my latest zoo paintings

Thought I'd do a couple of updates about what I've been up to at the zoo since April, when I started back after my 3 months off.

As usual there was the checking and replacing of faded and damaged ID signs as my first priority and then it was to set about the rather large pile of ID requests waiting for me on the desk!

First one to be done was a painted colour image of an orange headed thrush, then a detailed pencil drawing of a yellow mongoose head which was particularly enjoyable to do.


And then a series of fish were painted... Flier cichlid, white striped catfish, tinfoil barb and I'm almost finished on a kissing gourami.

This is the white striped catfish.. I'm really pleased with this one as it started out quite badly but I dug my heels in and persevered. The difficulty of this fish was to make it look shiny.... I'm told I have achieved this but I'll leave you to make your mind up. This is a closer view of the fish, many times bigger than the original... look closely at the body and you'll see the range of colours that I have used on this shiny silvery grey/white fish to try an achieve the glistening shine.



I paint a heavyweight watercolour paper with a black... a black that does not come staright out of the tube. I find tube blacks tend to look a little 'dead' so I liven a lamp black up with Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine. I then transfer the outline of the finished fish drawing onto the black and use a series of thin base coats to start building up the body of the fish. I leave all the fins including the tail til after I have finished the body.

In the case of this fish I used a bluish grey overlaying with thin coats of greenish grey, yellowish white, and washes of darker blues and greens. The patterning is a dark purple/mauve intermixed with a more 'foggy' dark blue.
With dry brush strokes I brush pinks, yellows, pale greens, mauves, light blues across the body.. this is to try and replicate fractions of light hitting the smooth body of this particular fish. As a finish to the body I use a small amount of white, knocked back a bit with yellow, to apply in dry brush strokes to create the highlights and with a thin bluey white wash I paint over the fish to 'round' the body, in particular its head and underside.
Once I'm satisfied I have the body as good as I can get it, I put on the fins. This is generally done with a thin wash of a pale blue and stroked in in the direction of the rays and structure of the fin. I add lighter colours to accentuate the rays and more 'fleshy' areas of the leading edge and base.

The copyright on these images belongs to Bristol Zoo Gardens.

Artists & Illustrators Magazine; Masterclass Feature

I was recently asked if I would like to do the Master Class article for the June issue (out now) of the Artists & Illustrators magazine. This particular issue is a Wildlife Art Special with contributions from a number of prominent and famous wildlife artists, so I am particularly pleased and proud that the editor asked me to do the "main" feature for this section of the magazine. My painting even made it to the front cover, albeit in the small circle under Wildlife Art Special... but tis there all the same.


When I got the email from the editor I was just starting a new elephant painting, a commission, and I had already been taking step by step photo's of the progress with the idea of doing a stage by stage piece on this blog. So it seemed the natural thing was to carry on, but have the magazine in mind also when taking the photo's. The only thing was.. could I finish the painting, sort the 70 plus photo's I took AND write the article in time! I had only a couple of weeks and to my surprise and delight, I managed it.... just!


The magazine version looks at how to paint an animal in a landscape and being a little "typing happy" I found it hard to keep my words down to the maximum they required.












Despite, or because, of the challenge I thoroughly enjoyed doing it and am very pleased with how the magazine has presented the article. So, now that the magazine is out I can now post another version of a step by step of the painting - this time looking at how I created depth in the piece and I shall probably whitter away to my hearts content. So hopefully I will be posting that very soon.

New addition to my Links

At long last my very good friend, Julie Askew, has now got a blog page. If you've not seen Julie's work before, please follow the link and discover her amazing talent... I highly recommend a look.

Apart from being one of my closest friends; it was Julie that introduced me to teaching art on ships, something for which I shall always be grateful to her for. In 2002 and 2003 she took me along as her assistant whilst she worked as art tutor/presenter on two 3 week and two 5 week 'sections' of the world cruises with P&O. As a result of those trips (and the two I did as a tutor myself in 2008 and 2009), I have seen much more of this planet than I ever dreamed I would get to see. Such fantastic experiences and memories that I shall treasure always.

Happy New Year

It's been a while since my last post and so I thought as it's the first day of the new year and indeed, the new decade, I thought I ought to get typing.

To all my regular visitors, those that pop in occasionally and the 'one-timers', thank you for stopping by over the past year. I must strive to try and post more over the coming months, a new year's resolution perhaps; I got a little lax towards the end of 2009.

I have no cruise trip, working or otherwise, to look forward to this year but with fingers crossed and wind in the right direction along with a little organisation from me, I have at least one exciting project I'd really like to get off the ground on. So I will keep you posted on whether or not that is likely to happen and then if it does, the progress of it all.

Anyway, I hope you all had a lovely Christmas, if you celebrate it, and that your New Year celebrations haven't resulted in too much need for recovery or have dampened your spirits too much today.

Here's to a happy, healthy and prosperous 2010 for us all.

Many thanks
Su

Getting the elephants into print

In October I took the elephant painting to a digital printer in Clevedon, SkyBlue Digital, to get limited edition gicleés done of it. Because of the painting’s dimensions I didn’t want to reduce the image too much from its 36”x11” size as I fear it would lose it’s impact; so the first proof will be at a slightly reduced size. Once I see that, I can decide whether I would prefer it to be full size or not.

The process has started and I have now seen two different proofs over the last few weeks and have decided the slightly smaller size is fine, but some colour changes needed to be made and some shadowing from paint ridges ‘knocked back’.

My fourth visit to the printer’s has resulted in another wait for another colour proof. Whilst the other anomalies have been corrected, the one of the colour of light on the elephants remains. I’m hoping the printer can get it from the whitish colour, at present, closer to the warm yellow of the original oil painting. I am being a bit pedantic about this as it’s an important aspect of the painting in that it sets the time of day and the lighter colour makes the painting look too light and changes the mood of the piece.

Hopefully my next visit will be the last, except for when I return to collect the finished batch of prints.