Continuing on from last week:
Once again, the identifications are my best guess based on the field guide “Flowers of Hustai National Park”. Corrections more than welcome.
Except where noted all plants photographed at the Gun-Galuut Nature Reserve.
When we last left the big argali painting (36×40″), I had worked through the composition and drawing. You can read that post here.
I finally got back to it this week. The first step was to use the good old grid system to transfer the drawing in pencil. Then I restated and refined it with a filbert (a flat brush with a rounded end) and a light tan tone. Scale does make a difference and the ram at the bottom, which looked ok in the smaller drawing, didn’t cut it when the head was around 13″ from the back of the horn to the nose. Back to the reference. And a much better head position. I taped a piece of tracing paper onto the bottom of the canvas and drew the new head. Once it was done, I moved the paper around until I had him where I wanted him. Then I did a transfer with graphite paper and a #7 pencil. The tricky part was where he overlapped the hind legs of the ram above him.
Now that I could see the painting at the final size, it was time to do the color rough. I have good reference and a pretty clear picture in my head of where I want to end up, so I decided to combine thinking value with working out the color scheme. All I’m after is the overall pattern of relationships, so it’s just blobs of color, but it has the information I need to get started.
I set the rough down where I could see it and then started painting. The first step, for me, is to cover the entire canvas with a medium dark tone that is somewhat opposite the color temperature I’ll eventually end up with. This is all scumbled in with a fairly dry brush. The fun really begins when I start to add the lights in over the darks. Whoohoo!
The main ram is present. There’s someone home in there, even though the eye is only indicated with a rough shape. I’ve added the first layer for the sky. It will go one step darker and cooler and then I’ll paint lighter, warmer tones over it, but still letting a little of the original color show through.
Next, it was time to “rock”, as in scumble in the first tones of the rocks. The light is coming from the right, so I want to establish my light side and shadow side right away and also introduce some visual variety and form. I’ve also added the darkest darks for the shrubs. I stood back at that point to see if they made a good pattern in and of themselves. Ok so far. May need a couple more on the right and left edges.
I’m looking in the mirror a lot at this point as I define the shapes of the rocks. If you look on the right, you can see where I’ve eliminated some pinnacles. The ram’s head felt too confined. He needed more air in front of him.
I spent the afternoon working my way across the canvas. The drawing is mostly lost at this point, but that’s ok because I have it stored in my head, hand and on the tracing paper. The next step is to find it again. I’ve redone the grazing ram (again) and lengthened the front leg of the main ram. Before continuing, I’ll do a proportion check. Argali have big bodies with very thin legs, so they sort of look “wrong” on the hoof.
I’m kind at the point, which many artists hit, when I hate the painting. The drawing was so nice and now things are a dull, undefined mess. All I can see at the moment are the things that are “wrong”. Now is when it’s important to hold onto the vision in my head of the painting I want to do. Here’s the one part I still like. It’s the top of the far left side pinnacle.
On my previous trips to Mongolia it was either spring or fall, too early or too late to really see much in the way of wildflowers. There were some at Ikh Nartiin Chuluu last year, but I had no way to identify them. Then I found the field guide “Flowers of Hustai National Park” back in Ulaanbaatar, which appears to include most of the common flowers one is likely to encounter.
For the next three weeks I’ll post my flower images with my best guess at what they are since I’m not a botanist. I do garden, however, and many of them look suspiciously familiar.
I would love to have assistance in confirming or correcting my identifications.
The following images are all from Gun-Galuut Nature Reserve, which is about two hours southeast of Ulaanbaatar. Some are from the rocky hillsides of Mt. Baits and some from the wetland on the north side of the mountain. None have been retouched in any way.
I was one of a large group of artists in attendance this past weekend at the opening of the Artists for Conservation juried show “The Art of Conservation”, which is at the Hiram Blauvelt Art Museum in Oradell, New Jersey. There were two full days of activities planned for us and we made the most of them.
Considering my lifelong interest in animals and nature, I’m almost embarrassed to admit that while I have been to New York a few times, until this past Friday I had never been to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). On the other hand, the amazing tour we were taken on by Stephen C. Quinn, Senior Project Manager in the Exhibition Department, who is also a member of Artists for Conservation, along with being on the Executive Board of the Society of Animal Artists, more than made up for it. (We also had a day at the Bronx Zoo, courtesy of the Wildlife Conservation Society, but you’ll have to wait for the paintings to see what I found there.)
Stephen first treated us to a presentation on the legendary AMNH dioramas that fill the Akeley Hall of African Mammals, the hall of North American Mammals, Sanford Hall of North American Birds and other parts of the museum. The research, skill and art that went into their creation is also pretty legendary.
(Animal artists take note:) Nothing in them is generic. The background settings are all real places. Museum artists were sent out into the field and did wonderful studies en plein air. The animals themselves are all individuals, which lifts them far beyond any other taxidermy animals I’ve ever seen. Each specimen was carefully measured in the field and that data was used to create exact forms on which the skins were mounted. Attention was paid to each muscle so that it accurately reflects whether it was tensed or relaxed. These are the only mounts that I feel that I could confidently draw from and know that they are accurate.
The backgrounds are like little master classes in landscape painting. Absolutely stunning. The above images just hit the highlights of some of the details that caught my eye.
As it turns out, a very special exhibition on the Silk Road, “Traveling the Silk Road: Pathway to the Modern World”, opens on November 14 and Stephen took us behind the scenes into the studios and workshops where all the preparations are being done. We also got to see the space where it will all be installed Real Soon Now. A major feature is a partial reconstruction of the sunken dhow (a type of Middle Eastern ship which is “sewn” together, not nailed) that was recently featured in National Geographic magazine. It was found packed with thousands of bowls and other merchandise being exported from China to the Middle East. Until it sank.
Eventually we were turned loose to explore the museum on our own for a couple of hours. I knew exactly what I wanted to find – some of the fossils that Roy Chapman Andrews’ Central Asiatic Expeditions of the 1920s brought back from The Flaming Cliffs (which are located in the Gobi, Mongolia; you knew I’d work Mongolia into this somehow, right?). Andrews was there as part of his work for the museum, so that’s where all the goodies ended up. I visited the cliffs myself in September of 2006 and was able to sit a short distance away to watch them as the sun went down. Flame they did, as you will see below.
It took a little searching, but I found a most of an entire wall in the Ornithischian Hall dedicated to those finds, including a clutch of fossilized protoceratops eggs. The first dinosaur eggs ever found came from Andrews’ Expeditions work at The Flaming Cliffs or, as the Mongols call the area, Bayazag, which approximately means “Place of the saxaul trees”.
Saxaul trees grow very, very, very slowly, so the wood is extremely dense. So dense, in fact, that if a piece of it is thrown in water it will sink. Most of the trees that I saw were ten feet high or less, so this isn’t “forest” as most Westerners think of it. And, not surprisingly, given the state of the planet, they are slowly disappearing due to being cut for fuel. Not quite endangered yet, but getting there.
Lining the walls of the fossil rooms above the displays were some of the paintings that Charles R. Knight did during the time he worked at the museum. One of the first animal drawing books I got as a child was “Animal Drawing, Anatomy and Action for Artists”. I wasn’t really old enough to read it, but I copied and looked at the pictures for hours. As far as I know, it’s still available from Dover Books, but probably for more than the princely sum of $2.00 that my parents paid for it in the early 1960s. I really ought to go back and read it now. Might as well learn from the best.
As a final bonus, there was this lovely drawing by J. B. Shackleford, who participated in the Central Asiatic Expeditions as the official photographer. His place in paleontological history is assured, as you will see from this quote from Michael Novacek’s terrific book “Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs”:
“The expedition photographer, J.B. Shackelford, hung back with the caravan of spindly-wheeled Dodge motorcars. To pass the time, Shackleford took a brief walk. Far to the north on the horizon he could see some volcanic hills that looked like islands floating in a sea of pink sands. As he walked in this direction, he saw an abrupt edge to the burnished grass, and a thin orange line beyond. He walked to the edge of the plateau. There below him extended a fantasy land of orange-red cliffs and spires. As Andrews later wrote, “Almost as though led by an invisible hand, he (Shackleford) walked straight to a small pinnacle of rock on top of which rested a white fossil bone.” This was the skull of a parrot-beaked, frill-headed dinosaur, a year later named Protoceratops andrewsi.”
I probably didn’t even manage to see half of the museum, so I have ample excuse to go back again. Which I shall.
Here are four more new paintings to go with the two I posted last week. I had a problem with the background in the last one and thought I’d show how it was and how I changed it.
Here is one of the takhi (Przewalski’s horse) that I saw when I was at the Khomiin Tal reintroduction site in western Mongolia in September of 2006. It was first light a group of horses were coming down out of the hills to graze.
This was a harem stallion that I saw at Ikh Nartiin Chuluu last fall. He was also the model for Mongol Horse #2. It amazes me that, given the extreme environment that they are exposed to year in and year out, that these tough small horses grow such long manes and tails. But they do.
I saw this Rocky Mountain bighorn lamb with his mother near Tower Campground in Yellowstone National Park a couple of years ago. They were by the side of the road, which lacked interest as a setting, to say the least. So I moved him.
This argali ram, along with five others, gave me an eyeful on my first morning at Baga Gazriin Chuluu Nature Reserve in Mongolia in July. I wanted to work on capturing the quality of light without worrying about painting too many animals, so decided to start with a small painting. I had one idea for the rocks as you’ll see below but, on further review, something wasn’t working. Time to get out the scraper. What do you think was wrong? Answer below the second image.
There were a couple of problems. One, in getting into the grooviness of painting the rocks, I completely lost track of my light source. The rocks are in full light, but are on the same plane as the ram. Buzzz. Second, I tried to use what I knew to design the rocks more or less from memory, which resulted in a boring, distracting (what an awful combination!) set of shapes. I went back to the rocks that were in the original photos and saw that they were much less rounded, which provided a needed contrast with the curves of the ram.
Taking a break from painting for the next week, so y’all are going to have to hang tuff to see the next step of the big argali painting. Tomorrow I’m off to the opening weekend festivities surrounding “Art and the Animal”, the annual majored juried show held by the Society of Animal Artists, of which I’m proud to have been a member since 2002. As those of you who follow this blog know, earlier in the year I learned that I had finally gotten into the show after coming up short for five or six years. I’ll try to blog a little of it while I’m there.
In other (great) news, along with some more pictures of the felt work:
Yesterday I had an eagerly anticipated phone conversation with Gana Wingard, the Mongolian scientist (she’s married to an American attorney who specializes in natural resource law) who was my translator and liaison for my meetings with the herder women who live in and around the Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature Reserve. I came home on the 30th and she stayed to run the Earthwatch team, so I was out of touch for almost a month with anyone who could tell me what happened next.
The women went home the same day we left for Ulaanbaatar, but most of them plus more local men and women, came back on August 5 to clean out the spring that serves both the herders and the research camp. They also created some spots for the argali to drink.
Two physicians came and provided information and advice on infectious diseases like swine flu.
The Bag Governor and his wife (a “bag” is the smallest administrative unit in Mongolia) were there, too. Amgalaanbaatar, or Amgaa, who leads the argali research from the Mongolian side, gave them and the other local people who had not been at original meetings a briefing about the new association “Ikh Nart Is Our Future”. He also brought, by request, 3 meters of good thin felt from Ulaanbaatar that the ladies, according to Gana, very carefully divided up square foot by square foot.
The director of the association, Boloroo, was very happy to receive a laptop computer, which she badly needed for the association’s recordkeeping. The computer was given to her by the research project on the condition that I find a replacement, which is something I’ll be working on. If anyone reading this can donate or knows where I could buy reasonably, a good quality fairly new laptop, please let me know.
There has been no time for Amgaa to research prices for the felt press, so that has had to be put off until October.
Ikh Nart formalized a sister park relationship with Anza-Borrego State Park last fall. I haven’t really met any of the park people yet, but they have donated a fair amount of equipment and help with things like signs. Amgaa visited them in California in January, his first trip to the USA. Six people from the park were at Ikh Nart while Gana was there with the Earthwatch team. Boloroo came to the camp on a motorbike with a selection of craft items. The Anza-Borrego people bought over 100,000 tugrik (about $100) worth for themselves and as gifts. As you can imagine, I was thrilled to hear about this. Two of the American Earthwatch staff members also purchased over $150 of crafts. This means that at least a small income is already flowing to the women who showed up and worked so hard while I was there.
There are two more Earthwatch teams this year and Boloroo plans to visit each one. She has also contacted my guide who was interested in commissioning traditional felt rugs and it looks like something will happen there, too. All in all, a terrific beginning. It was hard not to have been there for what came next, but I’m looking forward to seeing everyone next year!
One of the advantages of my illustration training is the process that we were taught for putting a picture together. I don’t do all the steps all the time, but now that I’m about to start one of the largest paintings I’ve done so far, I need the control that the process gives me.
My first sighting of argali at Baga Gazriin Chuluu Nature Reserve, thanks to Onroo the local camp staffer who knows the place and where the animals tend to hang out, was a group of rams in wonderful morning light. Mostly they were grazing and resting. For this painting, however, I wanted action. The essential image popped into my head and then it was a matter of getting it down on paper, which is one reason why the thumbnail process is so valuable.
Here’s some of the reference that I’m using:
I liked the pose of the big ram who is third from the left. This photo was taken at Gun-Galuut Nature Reserve. I dumped the image into Photoshop and did a horizontal reverse to get him going the direction I wanted. And then zoomed in as much as possible. The next three are from Baga Gazriin Chuluu. Talk about reference eye candy.
I did a couple of drawings of the main sheep to try out position and gesture.
In this one I added the a background to see how that worked.
My idea is to channel a little Edgar Degas and have the animals coming in from the frame, not have all of them within the frame. This is too static, but it gives me something to bounce off of. Gotta start somewhere.
Here’s the thumbnail sheet. I’m trying to figure out where the three masses of sheep will be in relation to each other. Then I did another, larger sketch.
This is more what I had in mind. Almost everything is on a diagonal, which gets rid of the too-static quality of the previous sketch. As I draw and re-draw the animals, I’m able to get to “know” them better and can refine and push the poses.
I spent a good chunk of yesterday doing a finished scale drawing that will be transferred to the canvas via the ancient and honorable grid system. I ended up with three layers of tracing paper. The bottom one had the lines for the edge. The second one had the drawing of the sheep. The third was the landscape. I did one and it’s really nice, but not right for this painting. Replaced it with a new sheet and re-did it. When I was satisfied that I had more or less what I wanted, I re-drew the argali, once again refining and tweaking the drawing.
At this point, I have solved the design/composition problem and the drawing problem. Both may be re-visited at any time as needed if I see something that needs fixing, but the next step is a value study, that is, the pattern of lights and darks. We were told in art school that if we get the values in a picture correct, then we can do anything we want with color, which I have found to be true. One of the tasks that needs doing to take the Gun-Galuut argali and the image of the sunny rocks and make them work with the Baga Gazriin Chuluu morning light. For that I’ll do a color study.
I hunted through my reference once again for the sheep images that I thought would work best. And here is, so far, finished drawing. Still not sure about the argali on the left. I’ll see how it looks to me on Monday. I also think I need a little more “air” on the right side and maybe the top. Not much, maybe a half-inch.
Finally, a favorite photo from the local Naadam at Erdene. Waiting for the race results.
I’ve been back a week now. Something special happened on this, my fourth trip. A lot of things came together for me and I was able to experience Mongolia and connect in ways that I hadn’t on previous trips, even though something kept driving me to return.
Some of it was simply gaining a familiarity that made this trip by turns exhilarating, relaxing and just plain fun, instead of low-level stressful. A lot of it was the two people I traveled with, Khatnaa, my guide for the first nine days, and Gana,with whom I traveled to Ikh Nart, who answered my questions with consideration and honesty, and helped me start to understand what it is to be a Mongol. But, mostly, I felt like the land itself let me in and then offered up treasure after treasure.
I’ll share some of those treasures over the next few posts. Today, it will be images of where Mongolia really starts – the land.
Visit my AFC Flag Expedition page
I had a pleasantly uneventful trip home from Mongolia. Glad to be home, but already plotting the trip next year. I was able to get to the Hi Fi music shop in UB and buy a few CDs of contemporary Mongol music, so I’ll have fun painting to that until it’s time to go again.
Yesterday afternoon, I had a final get-together with Gana Wingard and Sukhin Amgalanbaatar. We brought Amgaa up to speed on what had happened during the meetings with the women at Ikh Nart and talked about what the next steps should be.
I showed him some of the pictures I took of argali. It looks like I may have the first and only documented evidence of an argali crossing a river, which I saw on the first morning out at Gun-Galuut Nature Reserve. Up until last year, the only argali research in the world was being done at Ikh Nart, which has no rivers, streams, lakes or creeks. Apparently one scientist has maintained that they won’t cross water. I guess no one told the Gun-Galuut argali since at least four of them had before we got there and we watched one come back across. I’ll be working to confirm the significance of what I saw and what it means in terms of what is known about argali.
Today is “My mind is in California, but my body is still in Mongolia”, so I’m going to take it easy, unpack, do laundry, hang out with my husband, pet the cats and dog, maybe putter in the garden if the sun comes out and think about the past three weeks spent in a country that is starting to feel like a second home.
Susan Fox, American Artist 