But there is a Mongolia connection with all three.
When It Rains It Pours Department: The first two announcements are somewhat related since they both involve very special invitations to travel to “interesting” locations and work with fellow artists.
Update Jan. 2011: Guy and I both bailed on this one when it became clear that it wasn’t very well organized, but who knows, I may still make it to India sometime.
The first invitation has been extended to me thanks to my good friend and colleague, Guy Combes. Even though I’ve bought the plane tickets, I’m still pinching myself about this incredible opportunity. I’ll be departing on January 18, 2011 for Nairobi, from where Guy and I will fly to…..India! We will be part of an international group of artists from the UK, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Peru, the USA and Australia who have been invited to the Kanha Tiger Reserve for an Artist’s Week. We will be exploring the park, shooting reference and sketching in order to be able to produce art for a show which will tour internationally and then be auctioned to raise funds for tiger conservation. All expenses except airfare are being covered by our hosts, who own the luxurious lodge where we will be staying.
This is the place that inspired Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book stories. It is home to 22 mammal species and over 200 species of birds and is one of the remaining strongholds of the Bengal tiger.
And the Mongolia Connection? Babar, who conquered part of India, was a descendant of Tammerlane, who claimed descent from Chinggis Khan. Maybe or maybe not. But he did come from Central Asia and the part of India that Babar ruled became known as “Mughulistan” or “Land of the Mongols”. We know it as the Mughal Empire, which lasted from the 1500s until the British took over India in the 1800s. The most famous artifact of the Mughals is the Taj Mahal, built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan.
Kanha Tiger Reserve is near Nagpur
After our week in India, we’ll go back to Kenya, where I will stay, visiting and animal watching until I come home on the February 15.
The second invitation came via an email from Dr. David Wagner, who specializes in curating shows of animal art, including the Society of Animal Artists annual exhibtion “Art and the Animal”. He has invited me to join him and a number of my colleagues on the Sea of Cortez at the end of March, 2011. We will be accompanied by a scientist familiar with the Sonoran desert and Sea of Cortez ecosystems. Our mission is to learn about them, shoot reference, sketch and paint, hang out on the beach and eat great Mexican food while talking art shop. The end result will be a show at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in 2013. More details and who else will be going soon.
The Mongolia connection? I will be able to compare the Gobi with the Sonoran Desert ecosystem to see what the similarities and differences are of climate, plant and animal life. I already know that the far-western edge of the Sonoran Desert extends to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, where there are desert bighorns and that there are argali sheep in mountain areas of the Gobi.
We will be based outside of Guaymas
Last but not least, I am pleased to announce that Plaza Design, with stores in Eureka, Arcata and McKinleyville, is now offering a large selection of my small, original oil paintings! There’s a little bit of everything, including landscapes and American wildlife. They will be offering a selection of my greeting cards, too.
The Mongolia Connection? There are currently a couple of takhi (Przewalski’s horse) paintings available, with more Mongolia subjects to come.
Here’s a look at the display in the Arcata store:
Next week I’ll wrap up The Best Camping Trip Ever.
A few months ago I blogged about a terrific book by nationally-known artist David Rankin called “Fast Sketching Techniques – Capture the Fundamental Essence of Elusive Subjects”. You can read about it here.
While I was at the Society of Animal Artists 50th Anniversary Exhibition, the pre-show opening activities included full days at both the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park (since re-named the San Diego Zoo Safari Park) and the San Diego Zoo. I had already planned to do more sketching than photographing, so had what I needed. What I hadn’t planned on was getting to spend part of one day and almost all of the next sketching with…David Rankin! What a difference it made to watch how he does his fast sketching. And once I got the hang of it, I was hooked. I did around three times the sketches that I would have done before. And they were better, too.
Another point that David made that really, really helped me was his observation that every media or drawing tool can be compared to a musical instrument. Each one has to be learned and mastered on its own. As he said, a piano is different than a violin.Watercolor is different than gouache. Charcoal pencils are different than Conte crayons.
I have always assumed that drawing is drawing and that I should be able to pick up any pen or pencil and get a good result because the fundamentals of good drawing exist separately from what one draws with. Not so, it turns out. Not only do I now have an explanation for why I’ve had trouble with results when I change media or tools, but it got me off a hook I didn’t even know I was on and gave me a real confidence boost.
There was one other minor benefit….my perception of my subjects, both live and in photographs, was fundamentally altered. I find that I am seeing the simple shapes better and more quickly. I’ve always felt a little lost doing 3/4 views of heads and have struggled trying to understand the structure of an argali’s horn curl. I’m seeing both of those much better now.
All that said, here’s the art. None of these took more than a couple of minutes at most:
Pre-fast sketching; not bad, but....Preliminary try-out from photos get the basic hang of itFirst attempts from live animals; still too much fussing at the top; the flamingos are much betterStarting to get in the groove, simplify shapes and speed upThe hammerkop (bird in middle left) is exactly what I'm going forI'm really having fun nowAdding back in some details and shading
And here are three argali drawings done in the studio from reference I shot at Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature Reserve in August. Drawn with a 6B Wolff’s Carbon pencil on Strathmore Vellum Bristol.
I think that in order to communicate with some immediacy one single day that had enough incident for three, I’m going to simply quote my journal entry for July 15, adding images as needed.
“What an amazing day. Went south-west with Orog Nuur as our goal. Khatnaa knew there was the Taatsin Gol to cross, so stopped at a petrol station to ask about it. Also there were two van loads of Mongols from Togrog who were heading west to mine for gold. Usual Mongol socializing and information exchange ensued.
A third van showed up and all headed towards the river, which was flooded due to rains in the Hangai Mountains.
Assessing the situation
We got across one stream, but were stopped by a broad ribbon of streams and mud. The main channel was moving fast and pulsing with even more water.
Went back up to the bluff overlooking the river and had lunch, watching the three van loads of Mongols look for a way across and mess around in the water.
Lunchtime for us
Went back down to the river. Khatnaa walked a long way to see if he could find a crossing point, but came back and told us that the last stream of water was the worst of all. So we were faced with going north 100 km to the closest bridge. Such is travel in Mongolia.
Suddenly, there was action with one of the vans. A bunch of guys had formed a line across one point of the main channel and the van charged into the water, started to stall, but the guys all got behind it and pushed it on through!
First van crosses the river
Well, if a van could make it, our big Land Cruiser certainly could and did, without even needing a push. We did end up with an extra passenger, a little eej (mother) who wasn’t about to miss her chance to ride in our big car.
Our turn. Halfway across.
We got out on the other side and I photographed the other two vans making the crossing. Then said our good-byes.
Third van goes into the river.
We followed one van up a soft sand slope. It promptly got stuck so we rolled back down and went around it and on up the hill.
The entire “adventure” of the river crossing was a perfect example of Mongol practicality, improvisational skills and good humor. No one at any point got angry, showed frustration or swore. When it looked like things had stalled out, the guys took a break and goofed around in the water. Or so it seemed. They were clearly having fun but they were, in retrospect, also searching for a crossing point.
The spot they found was one where the channel wasn’t too wide or deep and where they felt the bottom was solid enough for a vehicle to get across with a minimal chance of getting stuck.
Without winches, cables or even rope, they simply used the same solution they always do – push.”
——
Once across, we were really able to roll for awhile on good earth roads.
At this point we knew that the lake, Orog Nuur, was 2/3 full and that the river flowing into it was impassible due to run-off from the mountains. But we had also been told that there was a road on the opposite side of the lake.
Khatnaa spotted a ger and drove over to it. I usually just stay in the car while he asks directions, but his time he gestured me to get out and said “Let’s visit.”
We ended up spending around two hours with Batsuuri and his family.
When we entered their large, comfortable ger, the first thing I noticed was two boys sitting on the floor watching Star Wars:The Phantom Menace on a small flat screen tv. Batsuuri was sitting on the floor, a couple of older girls were going in and out and Javhlan, his wife, was just starting, I found out later, to make suutai tsai (milk tea). I’ve drunk a fair amount of it by this time, but had never seen it made before.
A bowl of small squares of fried bread and sugar cubes was placed in front of us. The movie ended and the two boys, both Mongol but one had blond hair, started playing with a bunch of nails they had pulled out of a bag. I watched them happily amuse themselves for over half an hour, arranging the nails in various patterns and finally using a closely lined up row of them as a little hammered dulcimer.
At one point a wrestling competition came on the tv and I knew that we were going to be staying for awhile because Khatnaa is a BIG wrestling fan.
Javhlan asked if we would like to try camel milk airag. We all said yes. It was delicious, of course.
As we sat, and Khatnaa and Soyoloo chatted with our hosts (Besides camels, they have about 300 other animals. They lost 10-15 in the zud, nothing, really.), Javhlan made a meal of rice with meat in it and we ended up having dinner with the family.
Then it was time for her to milk the camels. They have 40 camels, seven of which had babies. So I found myself with another amazing photo opportunity.
Javhlan milking one of the camels
I was wearing one of (local Humboldt County artist) Bekki Scotto’s hand-dyed rayon t-shirts and had Khatnaa take some pictures of me standing in front of the camels. I think Bekki will like that.
Soyoloo, our great cook, and I
Once the milking was over it was time to leave, but it turned out that there is more than one road around the lake. Batsuuri offered to take us part of the way on his motorbike. Khatnaa provided petrol from a jerry can he had in the car. They had almost finished syphoning when who should pull up but one of the three vans! They had taken the main road to the river, found it flooded and had come back to the only ger for miles to find out if there was an alternate route, so Batsuuri showed them the way also. Once he’d gotten us to the correct road, we waved goodbye and drove on into a large saxaul forest, much of which was in light, almost white, sand. Many stops for pictures. And berries!
Batsuuri shows us the way around the lakeThe saxaul forestEdible berries in the Gobi
Finally we could see the lake, Orog Nuur, in the distance. The passing clouds were creating gorgeous spotlite areas on the mountain range to our left.
Ikh Bogd UulRuddy shelducks, Orog Nuur
We made one more quick stop at a herder’s ger and then found a track down to the lake. We parked, got out, walked down to the shore and Khatnaa announced that we had arrived at “bird heaven”. Indeed. The shoreline had birds from one end to the other. The lake edge had even more mosquitos. I observed that it looked like we had also arrived at “mosquito heaven”, which Khatnaa thought was pretty funny.
But we sure weren’t going to be able to camp there. So we moved away far enough to be out of the worst of it, put on insect repellent that Soyoloo had handy and set up camp.
My tent with Orog Nuur in the background
It ended up being cook’s night off since we were all pretty full from the meal at Batsuuri’s. Lunch had been a delicious white fish from Khovsgol Nuur. We all had some leftover fish with rice and a few cookies and we were fine.
In the meantime, the mosquitos were getting pretty annoying. We had no netting, so , once again, Mongol ingenuity rode to the rescue. Khatnaa went out and gathered a small bag of animal dung which he piled up and set smoking with a small blowtorch. We put our chairs in its path. Problem solved. Until the breeze kept changing direction. Soyoloo came up with a brilliant solution. She turned a metal flat-bottomed bowl upside down and had Khatnaa got a small dung fire burning on it, which meant that instead of moving our chairs to stay in the smoke, we simply moved the smoke. We dubbed it our “nomadic dung fire”.
Setting the dung smokingThe Nomadic Dung Fire
We sat until dark, watching a lightning storm across the lake from us, a spectacular sunset to the north and listening to the Javhlan CD I’d brought from UB, finishing off the last of the bottle of Chinggis Gold vodka and chatting about all kinds of things. A perfect ending to a perfect day.”
It was a jam-packed four days of activities at the Society of Animal Artists 50th Anniversary celebration. Along with whale-watching, we spent a day at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the San Diego Zoo.
On the last day, we went over to the San Diego Natural History Museum for the official opening of “Art and the Animal”. Our work is beautifully displayed on three levels of the central atrium. Along with the artists and their guests, many members of the public were also in attendance. The show will be in San Diego until October 31.
Hippopotamus, San Diego Zoo
That evening, it was time for the annual banquet, which included the presentation of the Society’s first Lifetime Achievement Award to Robert Bateman, which he richly deserves for both his distinguished career as an artist and his commitment to conservation and environmental issues.
Our campsite at Anza-Borrego State Park; I slept on the cot under the stars
The next morning I and fellow artists and SAA members Guy Combes and Andrew Denman departed for Anza-Borrego State Park in hopes of seeing and photographing desert bighorn sheep. As you can see below, we succeeded, toughing out unseasonably hot daytime temperatures which reached 112F.
Desert bighorn ewes, Anza-Borrego State Park
Our next stop was the cooler clime of the Sierra Nevada foothills, home to the Sierra Endangered Cat Haven. As many of you know, I refuse to patronize for-profit game ranches. It has been a pleasure to discover Cat Haven, a non-profit operation which not only has the fittest and healthiest captive genetically wild cats that I have ever seen, but is heavily involved in a variety of conservation efforts on an on-going basis. I would encourage my fellow animal artists to consider a visit here to support an organization which puts the welfare of the animals first instead of using them for personal gain.
Tango the cheetah
Yesterday we took an afternoon trip up into Kings Canyon National Park, which I had never been to. We were awed by the jaw-dropping magnificence of the canyon and took a LOT of photos.
Kings Canyon
I’ll be home soon from my travels and am looking forward to getting back to my easel!
I’ve been so busy the last couple of days that there hasn’t been time to do any posts. Day before yesterday was spent at the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park and yesterday at the San Diego Zoo. Terrific animal photos ops, lots of walking. And we’re all having a great time together sharing our love of art and animals.
Today are the main events: the annual member’s meeting, a very special presentation about his work by Robert Bateman, who will be receiving a lifetime achievement award, finally getting an opportunity to see the show itself at the San Diego Natural History Museum and, this evening, the banquet, during which Mr. Bateman will be honored and the show juror’s will announce the winners of the Society’s Awards of Excellence for this year.
Tomorrow Guy Coombes, Andrew Denman and I head out to Anza-Borrego State Park in search of desert bighorn sheep. My contact there has emailed me that the rams are already gathering and butting heads. There are sightings near one of the trailheads and even one of the parking lots! It’s also hot, hot, hot. As in 113F hot. Not sure if we’ll be able to camp in the park under those conditions, so we may have to seek out somewhere at higher altitude. But it’s all part of the fun and privilege of being animal artists on the road.
As I am able to access the internet I’ll try to post a few images from the rest of the trip, which currently also includes stops at two wildlife sanctuaries.
I left Humboldt County this past Sunday morning, picked up fellow artist and colleague Andrew Denman at his home in the San Francisco Bay Area and we journeyed south to San Diego, California, camping out a couple of nights at our wonderful state parks along the way.
The event activities started the next day with an all-day whale watching trip. We didn’t see any whales, but there was lots else to get photos of for possible future paintings – bottlenosed dolphins, California sea lions, harbor seals, gulls and terns, phalaropes, brown pelicans, blue-footed boobies (yes, that’s a real bird and it does have light blue feet), brown boobies, cormorants, a couple of jellyfish and, the really rare sight of the day, a sunfish. Here’s a few images:
California sea lions on a floating dockSea lionsSea lionsSea lionsBrown pelicansCormorantsCormorantsBrown boobiesSunfishNorth Island, one of two that we approached on the boat for wildlife watching
Coming up next – The San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park
Even though I only spent two days there last year, Baga Gazriin Chuluu was a place that I really looked forward to visiting again.
A harem of local horses near our camp
One of the best experiences was visiting the ger of Yanjmaa, who had made boortz soup from scratch for us and served me a bowl of the best yogurt I’d ever had. Would she still be around? Although she had relocated her ger, the answer was “yes” and we had another lovely visit, but also learned something disturbing about the wildlife of the reserve.
There was a zud in Mongolia this past winter, which is a combination of a dry summer and a very severe winter. It was a national disaster that was occurring the same time as the quake in Haiti, so there was very little media coverage until early in 2010. The last estimate I read said that around 10 million head of livestock died.
Yanjmaa told us that no argali or ibex had been seen in Baga Gazriin Chuluu since February. Before then, she had gone out one morning, and to her surprise, found a large ibex billy in with her domestic goats. He was very weak, so she managed to get him into her ger and onto her bed, hobbling him when he started to thrash around.
Having been a vet before she retired, she tried to treat him by offering him cold water and a medicinal plant, shavag, which contains lots of vitamins. Finally, she moved him back out to the goat enclosure, where he died.
Our first thought was that the argali and ibex had all died, like the ibex, but later on that day, it occurred to me that wild animals sense what is going on in their world and that it was more likely they had all simply left as the weather became extremely severe. In some parts of Mongolia, the temperatures dropped to -50F.
Talking with the reserve ranger, Batsaikhan, the next day, we confirmed that the ibex and argali were gone, around 160 animals total. Khatnaa had told me that he had seen 10+ argali about 20 km east of Arburd Sands, which is about a four hour drive north of Baga Gazriin Chuluu, on July 5, a week earlier. This was outside their normal, known range and preferred habitat.
That evening, Batsaikhan came by our camp to give us really good news. A group of visitors had reported seeing a group of argali just within the reserve! Perhaps they and the ibex will all, or mostly, come back to Baga Gazriin Chuluu now that the weather is good. I hope so.
On our way to find Yanjmaa, we had passed through an area that had a number of vulture nests, one of which was on a cliff near the road with a fledgling cinereous vulture in it. I got some good photos from down below, but Khatnaa climbed up behind the nest and came back with some amazing images. We went back the next day and this time I climbed up with him and found myself just slightly above the nest, about 8 meters away. What a photo op!
Cinereous vulture nest from below
He/she knew we were there, but never showed any stress. The adult had taken off as soon as we got out of the car, so I felt comfortable staying for awhile and taking almost 100 photos.
The young occupant
Later that afternoon, we took a side trip out of the reserve to visit a local monastery, Delgeriin Choiriin Khiid. It was one of the many, many monasteries destroyed in the late 1930s, but is now being rebuilt. There are 15 lamas in residence. I was allowed to take photos in the interior of one temple, which is in a large ger.
I got back from the Mongolian countryside around 5pm this last Sunday. It’s taken a few days to catch up on things and to let the trip settle in my mind and think about how to describe one of the best experiences of my life.
This will obviously take more than one post. Probably a dozen or more. I shot over 3000 images in 14 days. Fortunately, I also kept a journal. I’ll post some of the sketches from it after I get home and can scan them.
Where to begin? First, this was to be my very own “Nomadic Journey”. Instead of my previous trips where I was really focussed on seeing wildlife and had set itineraries, this time I wanted to get out into the deep countryside and see what Mongolia had to show me. My particular interest this trip was, as mentioned in previous posts, to learn more about the Mongol horses and the herders who breed, ride and race them. I also hoped to find a couple of local naadams to attend.
I had the same excellent guide/driver, Khatnaa, who I traveled with for the first nine days of my AFC Flag Expedition last year. But nstead of the Mitsubishi SUV that survived the hail storm we’d gotten caught in, he had acquired a new Toyota Land Cruiser Prado just a month ago, so we’d really be traveling in style.
In addition, since this was a tent camping trip, Soyoloo joined us as the cook. She proved to be a superb professional and a lot of fun as well. Watching her taught me quite a bit about what it takes to keep people well and safely fed in remote locations. Not to mention keeping track of the water supply.
What all this means is that we had the freedom to travel where we wished and camp where we wanted. I’m totally spoiled now. Mongolia really is the greatest camping destination.
The ger camps require advance reservations since they only keep food on hand for the guests they expect to have and it’s not possible for anyone to “run to the store” to get more food for unexpected guests since the closest shop could be over 40km away.
I spent some time chatting with Jan Wigsten from Nomadic Journeys the day before departure. He observed that people come to Mongolia with a list of places they want to see, often based on a guidebook driving tour, and that by doing so completely miss the point of one of the things that makes traveling in Mongolia so special. This country isn’t really about places, as spectacular as the landscapes are, it’s about people and their connections. The places end up being kind of a bonus.
I mentally filed that away and ended up with a number of compelling reasons to recall it over the next two weeks.
We left Ulaanbaatar around 10am the morning of July 10, the first day of the national Naadam holiday, heading south towards Baga Gazriin Chuluu Nature Reserve. We spent our first night camped near a bend in the Tuul Gol, a little southwest of Hustai National Park.
Pick a spot, any spot
The next day, we stopped for lunch at Zorgol Uul, a sacred mountain. On the backside, away from the road, was a sheltered area with trees festooned with khadags, the blue ceremonial scarves. A pretty special place for a meal, to be sure.
Zorgol Uul
While we were eating, two steppe squirrels suddenly appeared, rearing up on their hind legs and pushing at each other with their front paws and then tumbling around on the ground. Naadam squirrel wrestling!
A short time later I spotted two chasing each other. Naadam squirrel racing! We didn’t miss Naadam after all.
Steppe squirrel
Arriving at Baga Gazriin Chuluu, Khatnaa drove up and back down a small canyon looking for a camping spot. Here’s what he found…
It'll do, I think
We spent three nights in the reserve.
Next post: Where’d the argali and ibex go? Could we find Yanjmaa again, who made the wonderful boortz soup for us last year? And an amazing encounter with the world’s largest vulture.
In the meantime, I’m off to Hustai National Park the day after tomorrow for two nights to see the takhi in the summertime.
Coming down to the wire now. Departure for Mongolia is the day after tomorrow. This will probably be my last post until the week of the 25th. In the meantime, enjoy these videos of some of what I’m hoping to see this coming weekend.
“Naadam” means festival in Mongolian. The biggest festival of the year is the one coming up this weekend in UB. Smaller naadams will be taking place before and after the national event and one or two of those are what I’m shooting for since one can get a lot closer to the action.
First up- Archery:
Second- Wrestling:
Third- Horse racing:
And, finally, a short video that not only includes the events above, but winter camel racing.
Susan Fox, American Artist 