Magvandorj was born in 1952 in Tsagaan Khairkhan, Uvs Aimag.

He attended/graduated from the State Pedalogical University in 1980

From 1972 to 1976 he was an member of the Union of Mongolian Artists branch in Uvs Aimag

From 1980 to 1990 he was an artist at the Musical Drama Theater, Uvs Aimag

Since 1990 he has been a freelance artist and a member of the Union of Mongolian Artists in Ulaanbaatar since 2000.

Great Empire of Mongolia

He has exhibited his work since 1977, both in Mongolia and internationally, participating in exhibitions in Paris and Mexico. His work has been in Union of Mongolian Artists exhibitions since 2005.

His awards include:
1987- “Mongolian National Costumes”- First Prize
1987- “Concert of Many Nationalities”- Best Artist
1988- Festival of Raduga- Leading Prize
2008- Leading Cultural Worker, Ministry of Education and Science

Nomadic

Altan Argamj

Dunburee was born in 1941 in Tsakhirt, Ondurshireet soum, Tov Aimag.

From 1961 to 1965 he studied painting and handicraft at the State Pedological University.

From 1989 to 1993 he served as the Director of the Museum of Bogd Khan Palace.

He has been exhibiting his paintings since 1967, both in Mongolia and internationally, participating in exhibitions in Russia, Bulgaria, Japan, Germany, Tunisia, South Korea, China, London and Paris. He has had solo exhibitions in Moscow and Ulaanbaatar, including one at the US Embassy.

Ikh Khuree

His awards include:
1993- the Prize of the Union of Mongolian Artists for his “Ikh Khuree” series
1995- “The Leading Worker for the Culture of Mongolia”
2000- “Star Pole” of Mongolia, which is the highest honor that the Mongolian government bestows on artists

Gun Nuur

Dunburee’s work is in the collections of:
The Mongolian Modern Art Gallery
Museum of Fine Art of Mongolia
Fund of the Mongolian Artists Union
Museum of the Orient of Russia

Private collections

Mongol Altay

Location sketch

BATNASAN DAVAASAMBUU

Batnasan was born in Tsetserleg, Arkhangai Aimag, in February 1967. He lives with his three sons, a daughter and his wife. He paints in oil, watercolor and also does drawings. He is particularly known for his watercolor paintings of Mongolian daily life, portraits, nature and the animals which are the pride of Mongolians.

Work experience:
Mongolian Art University- 1983-1987
UMA member- 1987-present
UMA director of Arkhangai- 1991-1993
Founder and CEO of “Vessels of Honor” Art Gallery- 2004
TV Host of “The Voice of Classic Artists”- 2006-present
Founder and teacher of “ NomArt “ Art Training center- 2012-present

Exhibitions and Festivals:
“Young Modern Artists” joint Exhibition, Ulaanbaatar- 1991
“Mother Land” solo exhibitions, Tsetserleg, Arkhangai- 1993-1999
“Mongolian Birds” solo exhibition, UNDP office, Ulaanbatar- 2002
“Mongolian Lifestyle” solo exhibition, Padova Italy- 2003
“Visitors Arriving” solo exhibition, Zanabazar Fine Art Museum, Ulaanbaatar- 2004
“Laughing and Loving” joint exhibition, Edinburgh, UK- 2004
“Batna Art Show”, Chinggis Khan Hotel, Ulaanbaatar- 2005-2009
“Father’s Love” solo exhibition, Tsagaandarium Art Gallery, Ulaanbaatar- 2012
“Batna’s water color works” solo exhibition,UB EAN Ulaanbaatar- 2012
“Batna’s various art works” solo exhibition, Mazaalai Art Gallery, Ulaanbaatar- 2013

Collections:
Fine Art Museum of Mongolia
Mongolian Modern Art Gallery
Badamkhand Art Gallery
UNDP office in Mongolia
Trade and Development Bank, Ulaanbaatar
Ulaanbaatar
Agricultural Bank,Ulaanbaatar
Chinggis Khan Hotel, Ulaanbaatar

Most of his artworks are in private collections in USA, Germany, UK, Switzerland, Italy, Japan, China, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Korea and many other countries.

I will be posting about them one at a time on Fridays and Mondays. Then I will introduce my sponsor and supporters, along with additional artists who will be going.

Today, I would like you to meet Tugsoyun Sodnom.

Tugsoyun was born in 1955.

She graduated from the Fine Art College, Ulaanbaatar in 1974 and from the Surikov Institute of Fine Art, Moscow, Russia, in 1980.

She has been exhibiting her work since 1974, both in Mongolia and internationally, participating in exhibitions in Bulgaria, Japan, Russia, Japan, India, Germany, Australia, Korea, the United States and London. Since 1974 she has participated in all of the Union of Mongolian Artists’ exhibitions.

Since 1974 she has designed and/or illustrated over 100 books.

Gobi Camels

Her awards include:
1985- Annual Prize of the Union of Mongolian Artists
1988- Honorary Diploma, International Exhibition, Bulgaria
1989- Mongolian Youth Federation’s Award
1993- “Honored Labor” medal, government of Mongolia
2003- “Pole Star” of Mongolia, which is the highest honor that the Mongolian government bestows on artists

Night of Otgontenger Mountain

Her paintings and graphic works are in the collections of:
Fine Art Museum of Mongolia
Mongolian Modern Art Gallery
Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan
Trade and Development Bank, Ulaanbaatar
Agricultural Bank, Ulaanbaatar
Mongolian Chamber of Trade and Industry
Undruul Hotel
Tsetseg Hotel
Soros Foundation, Ulaanbaatar
The Asia Foundation, San Francisco, USA
Private collections in Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Korea, China, Russia, USA

Ger District; she is particularly known for her series of ger paintings

Horse and Rider; one of her book illustrations

Byambaa and I with my painting at the Society of Animal Artists “Art and the Animal” opening weekend last year

I just got home from a week long trip to the East Coast. I was the board meeting of the Society of Animal Artists (starting my second three year term), spending a couple of days with Society artist friend and colleague Alison Nicholls and, most relevent to Mongolia Monday, meeting for two days with my Mongol friend, WildArt Mongolia Expedition sponsor and supporter Byambakhuu Darinchuluun. We will have a major announcement soon about the Mongol artists who will be going on the Expedition, so stay tuned!

1. Ikh Nart argali head study

An iPad is not a substitute for traditional media. It’s its own media and can let you make images that wouldn’t be possible any other way. But it can also be used for some of the same things as pencils or pens and paper. Here are three ideas on how to do that, all using my current favorite app ArtRage.

1. Color and detail studies- One can do a fairly finished study drawing to learn a subject, its form, structure, proportions and colors. If I do a painting of this argali, I’ll already know it pretty well and can concentrate on my brushwork. I like how easy it is to make corrections, zoom in and out and keep working layer after layer until I get what I’m after.

Mongol horse running

2. Preliminary study sketches- The iPad is great for sketching and finding out if a reference animal draws well. This is a horse I saw last year. I did one sketch of the whole animal,then zoomed in to do a close-up of the head and finally moved down to do the two front legs. Once again, it’s not that this can’t be done with pencil and paper, but the iPad offers other tools like a watercolor brush that would easily let me, for example, add a watercolor wash for the shadow areas. There’s also an eraser tool for making changes or cleaning up lines. It’s also convenient not to have to scan anything. The drawings are already digitized.

Mongol bokh thumbnails

3. Thumbnails- ArtRage works just fine for doing thumbnail sketches for working out composition ideas, like these two bokh, or Mongol elk species, fighting it out during the rut. They were way up on a hillside and as they bugled and sparred, with cows and calves  running past them. It took only a few minutes to do these six ideas, using the pencil tool with a light warm grey color for the marks. That’s another nice feature. You can do drawings like this in any color and easily change the color.

Sunrise with Jargalant Uul in the background

On my second trip to Mongolia in 2006, which I did on my own through Nomadic Journeys, I wanted to go out to the west to visit Khomiin Tal, the third location where takhi/Przewalski’s horse has been reintroduced. I flew out to Hovd, which is around 1000 miles from Ulaanbaatar, met my guide and driver and headed east about 130 miles, most of it on earth roads. I knew nothing about anything in Mongolia at that point and it was all a brand new and exciting experience.

An unexpected sight was Khar Us Nuur National Park, which has been set aside to conserve and protect a complex of three lakes and their connecting channels. It is also one of the great birding hot spots in the world. But it’s difficult to get to the lakeshore in most places due to the thick reed beds. We camped on the shore of one of the channels the last night out in the countryside. Here are some of my favorite photos of a place I’d love to go back to sometime.

The steppe at sunset, looking back to the east with the lakes behind me. This was my first look at the legendary grassland steppes the now exist only as remnants in Mongolia.

Great cormorant using an old wooden bridge as a fishing perch

Stoat or ermine who popped up on the old wooden bridge right near where we were camping.

Bactrian camels near the soum center, Dorgon. This was the first large herd of camels that I’d seen in Mongolia.

There is a previous post about great wildlife watching places in Mongolia that includes Khar Us Nuur. You can read it here.

Rock Hoppin’ 20×36″ oil

I went to Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature Reserve last year with a plan to focus on getting good, paintable Siberian ibex reference. Boy, did that ever work out. On three out of four mornings, I shot over 1000 photos and watched ibex for at least five hours. They were a couple of groups of nannies, kids and juvenile billies who were hanging around some of the rock formations at the west end of the valley where the research camp is located, only a 30 minute walk.

I’ve got a lot to chose from, but loved the “rock hopping” that occurred when this group, who I had already been watching for over an hour as they rested, grazed and interacted, got up and started to move off when the big nanny did. So here she is, cautiously and seriously leading her group to wherever she’s decided they will go, while the youngsters goof off and play follow the leader up and down and on and off the rocks.

Here’s a step by step of “Rock Hoppin’ “:

Ibex group at Ikh Nartiin Chuluu; one of the dozens of photos I shot of this group as they moved off from left to right, the nanny leading the way and stopping at times to evaluate what’s ahead. Most of my reference showed only the rocks, but I wanted some sky also, so chose this photo for the upper left hand part of the painting, particularly that unstable formation at the top, which gives a feeling for the habitat the ibex like best.  There had been a lot of rain and the reserve was as green as anyone could remember. Wildflowers were everywhere. The photos one usually sees of this species are from way up above the tree line in mountains where there is very little vegetation. I liked showing them in a different and more colorful habitat.

Preliminary graphite study

After doing a compositional drawing at the final size, I did a graphite transfer to the canvas and then re-stated the drawing with a brush. There had been a fifth ibex in the lower right, but something didn’t seem right design-wise and the solution seemed to be to remove that one, which I did. Then there was still something not right. I realized that I needed an adult ibex, the nanny who was leading the group, not a juvenal billy. This not only let me use a larger animal, which was visually more interesting, but made the painting behaviorally accurate, which is very important to me. I’ve developed a painting procedure that lets me make minor to major changes at any time in the process. I never have to put pressure on myself by “guessing right” at the beginning and then finding myself stuck when something isn’t working.

First color pass, just laying in major shapes to make sure it all works. I used three pieces of reference for the ibex and at least three for the rocks. I planned the placement of the smallest ibex so that his/her head would be against the sky, which was not the case with the reference photo.

Modeling the ibex and the rocks. I’ve defined the shapes of the shadows on the rocks and can now see the pattern those create. I made sure there were large rocks pointing in from the right so that everything wasn’t moving off the canvas.

Detail of a head in progress. From the base of the horns to the tip of the nose is 1 3/4″. I kept the shapes simple, but accurate. Detail per se is of no importance to me.

Detail of kid in progress. It was important to get the great gesture correct and show the muscles working.

Almost done. After this photo was taken, I punched up everything as needed, both ibex and the rocks and finished the grass, which has about six layers of warm/cool, light/dark colors, plus the summer flowers. I also refined the branches of the wild apricot shrubs. I basically did a repaint over the whole thing pulling up the light areas and adding color variations to the rocks, including the lichens, which give a warm touch that picks up the colors of the ibex and ties them to the landscape.

Detail; finished ibex, rocks, grass. The grass was an almost acid green since it was so fresh. I knocked it back a little in intensity since it didn’t look quite believable in a painting. I also consciously varied the colors of the ibex and the proportion of light to dark on the bodies.

Rock Hoppin’ 20×36″ oil

Old photo of the Parliament Building, Sukhbaatar Square

Mongolia became the world’s second communist country, after the Soviet Union, on November 26, 1924. In many ways this was a great improvement over the chaos, violence and domination by China that the country had been mired in for years. But after that, for sixty-six years, the country was essentially closed to the west. The door cracked open a little in 1962 when Mongolia became a member of the United Nations. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and his wife traveled to the Land of Blue Skies to see and evaluate the country under the auspices of the National Geographic Society, which published a lengthy article with many photographs. Owen Lattimore also wrote his book about socialist Mongolia, “Nomads and Commissars” around the same time.

In 1990, while most of the world was focused on the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the Mongols were carrying out a difficult but ultimately successful non-violent revolution and transition to a parliamentary democracy. The economy collapsed completely once the Soviet Union ceased providing economic support and life became extremely hard in the following years. There is a generation now who has no memory of “socialist times”, but those who are in their late twenties and older remember them well.

New facade being added to the old Parliament Building, October 2006

The following first-person account was written by Mongol friend who I met a few years ago through Facebook. We have also met in person in Ulaanbaatar. He asked for my assistance on a project that involved an essay. Once I read it, I asked his permission to share it on my blog. History, as time passes, can wander down some odd roads as the people who were actually a part of an historical event pass away. I think that first person accounts like this are extremely important. So, thank you my friend (bayarlala minii naiz) for allowing me to share your story.

I was born in 1987 in Zavkhan Aimag, western Mongolia, to an ordinary family. My father was a carpenter and my mother was a typist. They were both necessary and important jobs back then but they did not require a professional degree. My father used to work for a State furniture factory. During his free time, at night and on weekends, he used to make furniture to sell in order to feed his family because his salary was not sufficient. My mother raised five children and while she was working she told us that sometimes she just wanted to lay down on the sidewalk when walking home because she was so exhausted. In the Soviet era, if you were not the son or daughter of someone influential you had very little chance to go to university and receive a higher education. My mother applied to university three times but she was always pushed back by children whose parents were of good background, even though her grades were acceptable.
In 1990, when Mongolia made the transition from communism to democracy, both my parents lost their jobs as did so many others. Almost everyone had to find some way to survive. Many  people started small businesses by purchasing various items (mostly clothes) from China, which they would then sell in Russia. They also brought goods from Russia to Mongolia on the Trans-Siberian railway. This was how many survived. Some Mongols spent months on the train, never going home. My mother worked in one of these businesses and after a few years our life started to improve a little. Unfortunately, within a few years these small businessmen and women were pushed aside by large companies that had also started to import goods. Because these small businesses were not as profitable anymore, my sister and brothers began helping our parents by purchasing goods from the black market to sell on the streets. It was a difficult time in our lives.
In 2007, I began my studies in the School of Foreign Service at the National University of Mongolia, majoring in International Relations. I have always enjoyed interacting with people from different cultures, perhaps because a couple of times I traveled to Russia on the Trans-Siberian train to help my mother. In my second year in 2009, I was selected for the Undergraduate Exchange Program, which was funded by the Open Society Foundations. This program allows students to participate in a one year educational program in the United States.
In 2011, after I received my degree from the School of Foreign Service, I was hired by a mining company. I was initially hired as a translator but since then I have been promoted three times and am now the Manager of the Government Relations Department.

The new facade of the Parliament Building, August 2008

Raven on Big Head Rock, Ikh Nart oil 30×20″

I was watching, sketching and photographing a group of ibex near this instantly recognizable rock formation at the west end of the valley where the research camp is located at Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature Reserve. Suddenly a raven landed on top of the rock and stayed for quite bit, occasionally announcing his presence. There were also endangered less kestrels swooping around and some red choughs, so it was quite a busy morning.