Author: foxstudio

The Times They Are A Changin’…

| foxstudio
“Peaceful” oil 18×24″ $3000

On December 10, 2007 I published the first post on my new blog. Since then, except when I’ve been traveling, and sometimes even then, I’ve posted once a week and, for a year or two, twice a week. In the last few years, however, the way people get their information online has changed. Instead of sitting at a desktop or laptop computer they’re now mobile on smart phones and tablets. And they aren’t reading blogs much, as least as compared to the past. Long form is out, Tweets and Instagrams are in. My stats from the past few years show a steady drop in views. Super popular bloggers like John Scalzi have seen this happen too. So it’s time for a change. But….

One of the valuable things about my blog is the body of information that has accumulated about me, my art, my travels and whatever else has caught my fancy. I link people to various posts for a variety of reasons and for that it’s a resource that I will continue to use.

But it’s time to tweak my choices of the social media platforms I plan to use most in the coming years. My blog is now a “Journal”. I’ll post when I have information to communicate that requires the long form that a blogging platform is so great for. I plan to still post multi-part series on my travels, especially Mongolia, and I have some very interesting things in the works for 2018 that I’ll be announcing and discussing on my Journal.

I’m becoming much more active on Twitter (s_fox), Instagram (foxartist), LinkedIn (Susan Fox), along with my new Facebook group, FoxStudio, which you can find here. I’ll be closing down my public FB page on Dec. 31. You can also stay in touch with me through my quarterly newsletter “Fox Tales”. If you’d like to subscribe, just message me through my Contact page. Look for the announcement of the launch of my Patreon site in January!

Thank you to all my followers who have welcomed me into your inbox all these years! You’ll still hear from me, just not as often. I wish everyone the best in 2018!

In The Studio: Holiday Art Sale!

| foxstudio
Catching the Morning Light
“Catching the Morning Light” oil 9×12″ $300

I’ll be offering a nice selection of small oil paintings, watercolors and drawings at my Sequoia Park Zoo “Art and Conservation in the Land of Blue Skies” lecture next Wednesday, December 13. Here’s a preview, but all are available right now. Please contact me through my website Contact and Purchase Information Page to buy. First come, first serve by time of posting.

These are special prices good only until midnight December 31. They are all unframed one-of-a-kind originals. Satisfaction guaranteed. Return within two weeks for a full refund. Sales tax and shipping within the United States included.

These are all subjects from Mongolia.

Mongolia rain storm
“Summer Storm, Mongolia” oil 12×12″ $500
Yak
“Yak” oil 5×7″ $95
petroglyphs
“Petroglyphs, Ikh Nartiin Chuluu” oil 12×12″  $500
ruddy shelduck
“Ruddy Shelduck” oil 12×12″ $500
scratch that itch
“Scratch That Itch” oil 10z12″ $650
white-napped cranes
“White-napped Cranes, Gun-Galuut Nature Reserve” oil 14×10″ $675

The Art Life: You’re Invited To My Lecture On “Art and Conservation in the Land of Blue Skies”!

| foxstudio

JPEG Conservation Lecture 12.13.17 11x17.jpg

I’ll be bringing original paintings, drawings, location watercolors and some of my Mongolia journals, too.

The Art Life: Big Island Sketchbook

| foxstudio

H 1

We got back last Monday night from our two week vacation on the Big Island of Hawaii. While I wanted to kick back and relax I also wanted to make art, specifically to do at least one sketch a day, and I came pretty close.

I took a variety of dry media with me, along with a 7×5″ Pentalic Nature Sketch sketchbook since it works well for what I use. Also my watercolors and I managed one, but the weather, unexpectedly hot and humid (we’ve been to Hawaii this time of year a number of times and don’t remember it being like so uncomfortable for us northern Californians) made sitting outside for any length of time very difficult. It needs a bit of work in the studio, so I haven’t posted it yet.

I used Cretacolor Monolith graphite pencils, Sakura Micron pens, Derwent watersoluble colored pencils and also their Graphitone watersoluble graphite pencils in various combinations.

The goal was to have fun, try things and have an art record of the trip, not create a finished “museum” piece. Anyone can do this while they travel and I encourage you to try. Get a spiral bound sketchbook so you can rip out and throw away (recycle) any pages you don’t like if that would take the pressure off. Any pens or pencils will do, along with a good eraser. I like the kneaded rubber ones since they don’t make a mess.

Sketching is a different way of seeing and experiencing a place because the way one observes a scene in order to draw or paint it is different than just looking at it or taking photos. With that…

H 3

H 4

H 2

H 5

H 6

H 8

H 7

H 9

H 10

I had less than a minute to sketch each of these geckos before they vanished. Whew.

H 11

H 12

I did the above one while we were waiting for lunch at Volcano House in Volcanos National Park. The restaurants have seats that overlook the crater. Tres cool.

H 13

 

The Art Life: Salmagundi Club Juried Exhibition Acceptance!

| foxstudio
"Mongol Horses" oil 14x18"
“Mongol Horses” oil 14×18″ (price on request)

I entered my first juried competition in 1991, an Artist’s Magazine contest for wildlife/animal art. I got an Honorable Mention for a colored pen and ink drawing of a wild boar I’d photographed somewhere. Woohoo! I was out of art school, but had not started to paint in oil yet, a childhood dream. I was able to begin that with two years of private study in 1995. In 1997 I decided to focus on painting wildlife in oil. In 2003 I was accepted into my first national juried exhibition, the Art for the Parks Top 100, with a painting of a Yellowstone bison. Since then there’s rarely been a year that I haven’t had work in at least one juried show or another. But this one is really, really special. “Mongol Horses” will be in the Salmagundi Club Annual Member Exhibition, which has been held every year since the club was founded in 1871. It is open to all media and “is meant to showcase SCNY member’s finest work”. It’s the first time I’ve gotten in. Not only is it for all subjects, but I’m very proud to have one of my Mongolian subjects in this prestigious show!

This piece is part of a “new direction” my work is going. I’m drawing, so to speak, on my background in graphic design, calligraphy and love of historic decorative styles, to move away from animals in a landscape and put the focus directly on them. This makes sense for me because since I was a child I drew animals constantly.

In other news, we’re off to Hawaii next Tuesday for a two week vacation. I’ll be taking my sketching and watercolor supplies with me and will be posting here, on Instagram and on Facebook. Come follow along! Aloha!

In The Studio: Cat Art For Sale!

| foxstudio
DSC_3282
 SOLD! “Sleeping Cat” watercolor 6×9″  $30

I had a lot of fun a couple of months ago doing a series of cats in watercolors for a local show of cat art. On the opening night there were kittens available and four were adopted! There were also sales! But I still have some of my pieces left and am offering them for sale right here and now. So consider giving one or more of them a good home. :0)

All of them are done in transparent watercolor on Waterford paper and are unframed.

Saber-toothed Cat
“Sabertooth Cat” watercolor 7×9″ $35

In order to purchase, please leave a comment saying “Sold!” and saying which one(s) you want. First come, first serve.

Sun Cat
“Sun Cat”  watercolor 6×9″ $30

I really had fun getting crazy with color, letting it run and spread as it wanted to.

DSC_3309
“Lazy Cat” watercolor 5×6″  $20 (had a terrible time processing this one for some reason, but it’s on the same white paper as the others
DSC_3265
“Watching Cat” watercolor 7×10″  $35
DSC_3253
“Snoozing Cat” watercolor 6×9″  $30

Once again, to purchase please leave a comment telling me which piece or pieces you want. First come, first serve. Payment by Paypal only. Sales price includes sales tax where applicable and mailing.

Thanks for your interest!

 

New Solo Exhibition Coming Up!

| foxstudio

P and paintings

Details to come, but I will be having a solo exhibition at the Westhaven Center for the Arts, near Trinidad, California, in November and December. It will be a retrospective to celebrate my 20th year as an oil painter. I’ll be showing work that has been accepted into juried shows and/or won awards, along with a look back at my artistic roots as a kid who loved to draw and then worked for twenty years as a sign painter, graphic designer and freelance illustrator. I studied the craft of oil painting with a local artist for two years from 1994 to 1995. In 1997 I took a wildlife painting workshop (wow, people might PAY me to paint wildlife!)  and decided to make the move to painting in oil full time, focusing on what I’ve always loved most as a subject….animals.

I’ll occasionally be posting work that will be in the show between now and when it opens. In the meantime you can see that I would not be able to do the preparations without the enthusiastic assistance of Peregrin, our 18 month old rough collie boy.

The Art Life: Not Just Art

| foxstudio
Alexander
Alexander A Really Great Cat

I have the good fortune to work at home doing something I love. It also means “visitors” every day. Our two rough collies and three cats wander in and out, sometimes just to say “hi” or to hang out. The last few days Alexander has come in, sprawling across my desk in front of my iMac to get his tummy skritched and combed out. He was a slightly scruffy little shelter kitten who we got when he was about three months old. He’s grown into a phlegmatic 8 year old, 16 pound furball.

(And wouldn’t you know it, as I was proofing this post in he came. Pause for tummy combing….)

DSC_2607.jpg

(Ok, I’m back.)

Being at home also means that if I, say, spot a juvenile great blue heron down at our pond I can grab my camera and get some photos.

DSC_2466

After work tasks include watering the vegetable garden and picking what’s ready. We got a very late start this year, but Humboldt County’s warmest weather is in September/October so we’ll get at least some goodies in the freezer like peas for winter solstice dinner.

Vegies

We picked our first real harvest a few days ago. Shallots, a yellow zucchini, Hurst Green Shaft peas (got the seed in England and haven’t found an American source for this awesome variety), Blue Lake green beans, and French haricot verts. Potatoes will be ready in another month or so. We’ve also planted regular green zucchini and summer squash, both of which will start to be ready for harvesting soon. I also, because I had them, threw some brussels sprout seeds from 2012 into the ground just to see if any would germinate. Thought I might get two or three. Well….I’ve now got a clump of over a dozen that are too close together. My plan is to carefully transplant them into a row once the rains come and the weather is cooler.

I think we’re going to dig a small root cellar on the north side of the garage since there are five varieties of garlic on the way, plus some heritage onions. The peas and beans will be, respectively, shelled and cut up for the freezer, where they will join the three gallon-size ziploc bags of blueberries our bushes produced this year. Did I mention that I’m reading Barbara Kingsolver’s book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” right now?  :0).

In the meantime, last night I rummaged around for dinner wanting to use the zucchini while it was fresh and some mushrooms before they were goners. And came up with this…

squash dish

I set water to boiling for the shell pasta and then sauteed the mushrooms in olive oil and butter. I added the zucchini and let it cook for a bit, then added some finely sliced leeks. It’s seasoned with a bit of salt, basil, parsley and oregano. When the pasta was done I dumped it into the vegies and stirred everything together. Dinner was served in our Portmeirion “Borders” pattern china that we got at the factory seconds shop in England  twenty years ago.

As for art, as you saw last week, I’ve got some new small horse paintings under way. I also started this one, getting the brush drawing done. You can still see the pencil marks from where I projected the preliminary drawing for transfer and then made some corrections. But darn, I kinda like the way it looks now, so I might just call it done and keep it around. We’ll see.

DSC_2577

In The Studio: Starting Three New Small Works Of Mongol Race Horses

| foxstudio

Mongol racehorse #1

I’ve started a series of three small paintings of Mongolian race horses and thought I’d share the step-by-step of doing more than one painting at a time. First up was to choose my reference photos, picking three heads that would work together in a group.

naadam race

I generally never post my reference images on the internet for obvious reasons, but in this case I wanted to show you the kind of photos I have to work with. The one above was taken at an aimag (province/state) naadam a couple of years ago. I was able to go out in the chase car for two races, so had a rare opportunity to shoot both stills and video not only as the jockeys, horses and trainers rode out to the starting point, but to travel parallel to the riders as they raced back. Looking through the many hundreds of race photos I’ve taken over the years I found a quite visible difference, which makes sense, in how fast the horses ran in the first part of the race and how much they’d slowed down by the last third or so. This really affected leg position and sense of the effort on the horse’s part as expressed in the body language.

But for this set of three I only wanted the heads, so was looking for variety in coloring, angle and generally interesting shapes of light and shadow. I started with drawings, thinking in terms of “notan” the Japanese method of simplifying an image down to two values….light and dark or light side/shadow side. I was also working on capturing the expression, the bridle and some of the shapes in the manes.

Mongol racehorse #2

I had originally intended to include the rider’s hands and legs in the frame, but those shapes seemed distracting, especially cut off at the edges, so right now my plan is to leave them out. But that could change…

Mongol racehorse #3

The top two pieces will be 8×8″. The one above will be 8×10″. So an arrangement of two squares with a rectangle between them.

The next step was to scan the drawings and project them onto the pre-toned canvas panels, sketching each one lightly with a pencil.

MR 1

The panels were toned with Winsor Newton raw sienna. I indicated all the shadow shapes with a mix of that and a little Winsor Newton violet dioxazine, which creates a warm brown tone that is still related to the background tone.

MR 2 (1).jpg

I scanned the panels with my Epson XP-830 printer/scanner/copier and then imported them into Photos for cropping, color correction and any other adjustments. This works pretty well for small pieces that I want to post to my blog or other social media.

MR 3.jpg

I like working this way because it gives me a lot of control over how much detail I add and where. I also like to leave “lost and found” shapes. What is important to me, though, is accuracy of both the horses and their tack, not detail per se. For me the game is to see how much I can simplify and leave out.