Thornbury demo morning

Thursday morning I was booked to give a demonstration in oils to a local art group in Thornbury, near Bristol. It was a gorgeous sunny day and the journey there was fairly pleasant (I avoided the motorway mayhem by going on the B roads), despite a slight deviation in route through the town centre.  The meeting was in a lovely hall and I had about 16 people come to watch. There were apologies that many of the group were on holiday and so their numbers were a little low.

I took a partially painted piece of a male lion portrait as I was showing how I painted fur with oils and a male lion is perfect for a long and short fur demo. After a brief introduction I got on with painting and I was assisted by a pre-school group singing and playing in the room next door. The singing didn't bother me, it was quite amusing and I found myself several times starting to react with a little bop in my chair!

I started with the long fur showing how I paint wet into wet with liquin and a rigger brush. Then we had a short tea break and after I did some short fur, showing the slight difference in how I apply the paint with a less thin mix of liquin and different brush and brush strokes.

They were a friendly group and thankfully were happy to ask questions as I painted, which makes it more interesting, I am sure for them as it certainly makes it more interesting for me as I never know what the next question might be.

We finished about midday and I left glowing from the positive feedback and general friendly atmosphere of the group.

I had some paintings that I needed to deliver to Nature In Art that day also so I left Thornbury and headed north up the A38 to wards Gloucester. I stopped at Slimbridge WWT on the way as I wanted to see the exhibition that is currently on there. A fellow wildlife artist that I know, Paul Apps, is one of the artists exhibiting and it is a long time since I have seen his work, so it seemed a great opportunity to pop in and view it. It was lovely to wander round and see all his paintings, I especially liked two pieces one called 'Two Guineas' and the other 'Tufted Duck - Wake'. But I couldn't linger long as I had to have a spot of lunch before heading on up to Twigworth just north of Gloucester to the Nature In Art Museum and Art Gallery.

Here I dropped off four pieces of work (three oil paintings and a batik) that were being collected the next day by the owner of Kunstgalerie Oog voor Natuur a wildlife art gallery in the Netherlands. They will exhibit these four paintings for a while.

I stopped to have a look around, as I don't get up to this wonderful place as often as I used to, and enjoyed a lovely mug of hot water with lemon and a generous chunk of delicious lemon drizzle cake in the coffee shop.

What a fab day that was... immersed in gorgeous weather and arty stuff for the day. If only they could all be like that, eh?

Featured Artist of the Day - Artists For Conservation

Each member of this society gets to be the Featured Artist of the Day on their homepage of the website. Today is my turn; as I have only recently become a member, this is especially exciting for me. I hope you will visit the site  and have a look, not just at my work but some of the other wonderful wildlife artists on there.
http://www.natureartists.com/

The two bulls are finished

Finally got the last lick of paint applied late Sunday afternoon last week. The vegetation took a while to think out and lay on, but I'm happy with it now. I really wanted to get those lovely little spindly spikes topped with delicate purple pink flowers. I don't know the name of this plant, but I like the offset of its delicacy with the strength and bulk of the two bulls.

After contacting Dr Kate Evans of Elephants For Africa, (the charity for whom I am doing all these Botswana paintings to show in an exhibition to raise funds and awareness for their work) she was able to positively identify the lighter coloured bull as 'Napolean'. She first met him in 2002 during her field research in the Okavango Delta and named him so, as part of his left tusk was then broken.  When we saw him in 2011 he sported two good tusks again. These two guys were strolling very regally through the low scrub alongside the airstrip near the camp I stayed at. We were on our way to an evening meal out in the bush and were transporting the food, so we could not stop and watch them for long. The light was very low, it was gone 6pm and the sun had already reached the horizon, just before the finality of sunset. My camera was set to the maximum to get as much light in as possible (1600 ISO) but even so the photos were poor, blurred and held no detail. This made them perfect reference for my attempt at a looser style of painting.. I could use them and not be drawn in by detail... It has taken me a while to get this one done, I think I started the initial slapping on of paint back in May last year, but it has been put to one side on more than one occasion, first when I could not paint for 4 months due to a frozen shoulder problem and several times since as I have got on with other smaller pieces. I'm not sure what to call this piece yet but I want to have Napolean as part of the title. I shall have a little think on this.

I have already planned my next two projects.. one a sunset with silhouetted ducks and the other a more challenging piece of a triptych of zebras and lechwe. But before them I need to do some work towards a demo evening I am doing at the beginning of May to an art group in Thornbury, near Bristol.

Two steps forward, one step back

Last weekend I worked on finalising the work on the elephants themselves, adding more texturing to the left hand bull and also correcting the trunk, fore legs, underbelly and painting in the left hand tusk on the right hand bull. I then started adding in the foliage in front of them.

I had several photographs of elephants in grassy areas where a delicate pinky purple flower on extended spikes also grew. I liked the idea of this delicate flower being with the elephants adding a contrast in colour and 'weight'. There was also a bush/shrub that grew, I think it is of the genus terminalia.. it has small clusters of grey green leaves and I wanted to include some of that with a few dead stumps of the bush.

So I spent a day painting this in, it all seemed to go well... I liked the way the texture of the plant was being created and I finished quite pleased.... until I stood back. Something was wrong and I couldn't put my finger on it.. so I walked away from the painting and cooked my evening meal. When I came back after eating the meal my first dismayed thought was ' oh no! They're stood behind a hedge!' I thought I had varied the height of the top twigs and branches but... no. At a distance they all looked uniform in height and the dark and light tones were also uniform! Disaster! What was I going to do.. scrape it all off to start again another day or wait for it to dry and adjust t next week?

I had no time that evening to do anything more to it so it would have to wait until next week. I packed up my temporary studio set-up and hung the painting on the landing wall. That evening I walked by that painting a number of times and each time my consternation with it grew... something else was wrong that I couldn't quite see yet. I got ready for bed about 10pm and as I sat in bed watching a bit of TV before I turned the lights off it suddenly struck me... the scale of the bush I had painted was too big for the elephants! I got up and went to look at the painting.. yup.. sure enough that was what was wrong. I stared at it for a few moments... there was only one course of action now... it had to come off before it dried. So out came the palette knife and some white spirit soaked tissues to remove the foliage from the painting. A day's work wasted.. that was because I had wanted to get it finished and wasn't concentrating on the scale aspect of what I was painting on!

So this weekend... I do that bit again.

This is a close up of the top of the trunk on the left hand bull - it shows my looser brush work. Normally I would paint this in with a great deal more detail but I quite like the softer looser feel (for me) to this particular painting.

The two bulls painting

Over the Easter weekend I worked some more on the left hand bull in this painting... I had laid down a 'foundation' of paint giving me the form of the animal over the ears head and trunk... yesterday I put on the 'texturing' going over this foundation layer with dry brush strokes in the same colour paints as I used before... this is the technique I use to get the rough feel to the skin of animals such as elephants and rhinos. As I am attempting to keep the detailing minimal, I enjoyed daubing colour on and am finding it easier, the more I do of this style, to resist going in to tight. I want to make some alterations to the right hand bull... not quite happy with his trunk, so hoping to attack that tomorrow. If all goes well... the painting is then almost finished... just some foliage to do in the foreground and that is it!

I am already thinking of my next piece... or it could be pieces.. have an idea for a triptych.

Latest off the easel

As it has been a while since I have posted regularly I thought I should post a few images of work I have done recently. All these paintings are done with oils and are as a result of my Botswana field trip in 2011.

The idea for this piece was after watching three bulls cross the flood plain on a dull drizzly day in the Okavango Delta. I toyed with painting the scene as I saw it with the  muted light conditions; but the bulls had crossed singly so I chose to group them in the composition but still give them that space between them. After some thought I decided to change the light level and backdrop. I went through all my reference photo's  to find a setting that had an 'interesting' tree line and broken reed beds. This has been painted on a deep canvas with the scenery painted round the sides.

I started this painting back last summer it is one of the bigger canvases I have painted so far for my Botswana Collection, it's approx 2' x 3' and I am painting this slightly differently to my normal approach. I am playing with a looser approach for some of my work, these two bulls are my first serious attempt to try and paint less intensely. It has been a challenge to hold off going in with too much detail but it has also been fun 'playing'. These two bulls were seen striding closely side by side one evening near sundown one was very pale probably covered in the pale dust and sandy soil of the surrounding area and the other may have recently washed himself clean of dust as he was much darker. I have had a spell of doing other work, so it has been some months since I last worked on it but this weekend I was able to get back to it. One advantage of the 'time out' has been that I can look at the painting again with fresh objective eyes and can see I have a few adjustments to make to the paler elephant. Over the weekend, though, I concentrated on the darker bull adding in a 'foundation' layer on the ears head and trunk. Once this is dry I shall go over this foundation adding texture which will also lighten him up and better define the highlights.

These three pieces are more examples of some more 'playing' with this looser approach. 

Clover... for Send A Cow

Yesterday I spent the day at the offices of the Send A Cow Charity, donating my time, to paint Clover. 

Clover is the cow sculpture made by the wonderful company Wild Art who did the gorilla sculptures seen in Bristol in 2011 and the Grommit sculptures to be seen in Bristol this Summer. They have made some wonderful shapes of animals, really pleasing to the eye with surprisingly tactile and perfect forms. The sculpture was the prize in a recent competition, run by the charity, to name her. The winning name is "Clover" and as one of the artists who submitted designs to decorate her, I got the honour to paint her... not in the design I put in but one suggested by the lady who won her. She was donating the sculpture to her local school and wanted the colours to reflect the school colours and be patches with the 6 'R' words that make up the school motto. These words will be put on by a signwriter, but first I had to paint the patches. 

After a brief chat with Joanna at the charity to discuss ideas the plan formed of several patches showing the countries of Great Britain and Africa. Great Britain for where the Charity is based and Africa for where they do their work. Then I thought of adding the Send A Cow charity logo and the shape of a clover leaf to represent her name. My prep work consisted of finding suitable map images of both countries, both of which I played with in Photoshop on the computer to 'clean up' of place names etc and turn into plain black shapes. A quick search on the internet for Fresian cow images (to get some basic patch patterns as reference), the charity logo and an image of a four-leafed clover all of which I printed out on A4 sheets.

I took a collection of brushes, a small tray to hold some paint, a water jar, my iPod and speaker and a Cadbury's creme egg along with a few other nourishment supplies to keep me going. 

The day started off badly with my car battery deciding to go on strike and refusing to allow my car engine to turn over and fire up! I got it started eventually by using a set of industrial sized jump leads and my brother's van. Should have been an easy affair to sort, but all manner of things conspired to throw proverbial spanners into works. I got there eventually, with the help of my neighbour Joe, but let's just say it all could have gone a lot more smoothly and simply than it did.

Got to the offices of Send A Cow just after 10am and after being shown around quickly I was then left to sort myself out. As planned my attack of the project as I looked over Clover and took a few 'before' photo's. Then there was nothing to it but to wade in and get cracking...

I had only one colour to apply and for the most part it was make it up as I went along. I used the Fresian cow photo's to get some sense of how I might place certain patches but apart from the emblems. logo and country patches, everything was just playing with shapes. This was great fun and I did enjoy 'finding my way' on her markings.

I decided to do the country shapes freehand.. I had no printouts big enough to trace so it was just a case of start drawing with a pencil and hope my proportions and size looked pretty good. I wasn't happy with Africa.. it looked stunted and fat, so I had some alterations to do to slim it down and elongate the sub Saharan part of the continent. But GB went quite well, I thought.

The school had sent Joanna an image of a school shirt so she could get the right colour blue paint, it also had the school emblem on, so I decided to add that to the design as well. Another on the spot addition was a little heart shape under the chin. It can only be seen by an adult if you bend down really low.. but the small children should see it with no trouble.

Here are some pictures of before, during and after the 'make over'. From start to finish of painting (with no breaks) took about 5- 6 hours.

During the day I had a few of the charity staff pop in to see what I was doing and at the end of the day, as I was painting the last hoof, practically all the staff came in en mass to see the finished product. I was pleased with their reactions and felt relieved that hopefully meant I had done a good job  and that they were happy with what I had done. Now I just hope the signwriter can work with what I have given her and that the lady who won the cow and the school to whom it is being donated like the look of Clover too.  

I was pleased too that, even though it gave a little protest, the car started reasonably well and I got home without further mishap.