drawing

My Reply to a Comment on the Previous Post About Using Photoshop + Mongolia Trip Photo of the Week

| foxstudio

I started to write a reply to the (partially quoted) comment below and realized that the topic was worthy of its own post since, as you will see, I have strong opinions about the subject (Who, me?).

“I found your process very interesting…especially because I tend to ‘jump right in ass-first’ and not do any studies to figure out composition etc. I have no idea why I hate doing that…perhaps I am just impatient to get to the fun. of course this does cause problems!!…..Does Photoshop help you a lot in planning paintings? I have never once used it, I must admit…..You can re-position items in your photo using Photoshop? Man, Maybe I need to get a Photoshop For Dummies book!”

My response, which is intended to address the general issue, and not in any way the individual commenter who I quote above, is as follows:

I never use Photoshop for planning paintings in the way you describe. IMHO, it’s a pernicious trend that’s been used by way too many artists as an excuse to avoid the hard work of actually learning to DRAW.

It’s also very obvious a lot of the time when that’s how a picture has been put together. It looks like a bunch of bits with no cohesion. Animals that look pasted onto the background. Animals the wrong scale. Animals in a position that is impossible given the perspective of the setting. Light sources that don’t match. Uncorrected distortion from shooting the subject with a wide angle lens in which you end up with a back end view of something like an elk with a tiny butt that has an overly large head sticking out of it. Slavish adherence to the reference. Lack of variety of edges,with  every edge same from front to back. No emotional punch or a point of view that’s unique. No exercise of the craft of painting. Just tedious rendering of Every Single Thing In The Photograph.

I’ve been in workshops watching artists beaver away at moving an animal around in a landscape on their computer and then transferring it directly to their canvas. Kind of pathetic, really. There’s a power and a mastery that comes from entering your subject directly into your brain by drawing it over and over. It’s how you learn what something looks like.  Photoshopping short-circuits that. Look at who the top wildlife artists are and have been. They can all draw like crazy. Some stay with highly detailed work, like Carl Brenders, or push the limit of looseness, like Julie Chapman, but being able to draw lets them make the choice.

Copying a Photoshopped composition without having solid drawing skills cheats the artist out of all that is most important in the creative process, i.e. the creativity.

A painting is really just a series of judgments and choices. The better an artist gets at those, the better the paintings. Photoshopping images into a montage short-circuits this part of the painting process, too.

I realize that the struggle is a drag, but there isn’t any easy way to do good work that I’m aware of. The best work comes out of the struggle. I long ago lost count of the times I hit the wall on a painting, slid down to the floor, picked myself up and soldiered on until I broke through. It doesn’t happen as often now, but I know it could happen at any time.

What I do is go through a lot of paper. What you see in my posts are just a small sample. Since one of the reasons I’m an artist to begin with is that I always loved to draw from the time I was a little kid, it would defeat a main purpose of the exercise for me to eliminate that step. I also use a mirror to check my drawing for accuracy. It’s almost magical how errors jump out at you. Can’t use Photoshopped photographs for that.

I’ll just flatly say it- If you want to be any good, much less excel, as a painter of animals (or any other representational subject, for that matter), learn to draw. And draw live animals whenever possible. Period. No excuses.

Mongolia Photo of the Week

Start of national Naadam ceremony at Sukhbaatar Square, Ulaanbaatar; the band
Start of national Naadam ceremony at Sukhbaatar Square, Ulaanbaatar; The band

Best Band Uniforms Ever.

Memorial Day Miscellany

| foxstudio

First, I want to honor and express my appreciation for all the men and women who serve and have served in our armed forces.  I’ve read a lot of history and it’s true- Freedom isn’t free. But, America should never go to war except as a last resort and should never risk our soldiers lives without a compelling reason. My thoughts are with the families whose loved ones have died in service to our country.

———————–

Besides coming down with a cold a couple of days ago, I sat down on Friday to start sketching and got diverted by re-arranging my corner workspace. So not much in the way of sketches or materials info. yet, but I am thrilled to have my wonderful old oak drawing table back in action. Shifting it 90 degrees lets me use the iMac so I can draw from it the same as with the easel. Here’s a couple of pics of the new arrangement. The Rocky Mountain mule deer head was a flea market find. There are also images from Bob Kuhn and Robert Bateman for inspiration. And my favorite 1960’s psychedelic poster, The Green Lady by Mouse and Kelly.

Eowyn inspecting the new set-up
Eowyn inspecting the new set-up
Easel is on the right
Easel is to the right

It’s time to start to pull it together for the upcoming Expedition. One part of it will be keeping a journal, which is provided by the AFC (Artists for Conservation). It’s bound in Italian leather and comes with its own bag. Nothing like a little intimidation.

journal 1Yup, I’ll be hauling this puppy all over central Mongolia for three weeks. I need to do a title page and a map Real Soon Now, but how to face the terror of the blank page? The thought of making a mess is paralyzing, but it must be overcome. I know, I’ll start at the very back-

journal 2So I used an argali image from the trip last year that is representative of what I hope to see and sketch. I’m experimenting with ways to add color. This is Pelikan pan gouache used as a watercolor wash. The paper has a nice tooth and isn’t too soft, but I wanted to see how different drawing options worked, so that’s what’s on the bottom. The Wolff’s carbon pencil didn’t flow and the General’s charcoal pencil was too soft (for my purposes). A mechanical pencil with an HB lead and the Sanford draughting pencil worked well, as did the Pentel pen. I’ve got two kinds of Derwent watercolor pencils that I’ll experiment with next, along with a couple of other things.

Animal Expression, Part 1

| foxstudio

IMHO, there is too much animal art out there in which the subject has about as much life as a department store manequin. Why is this? Is it a lingering result of Descartes’ pernicious idea of animals as “mere machines, incapable of thought or feeling” (Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma)? Being so concerned with surface features that the inner life of the animal is ignored? Not doing the fieldwork and observation which would reveal that inner life? I could make a case for any and all of those reasons, but the fact remains that there are an awful lot of “dead” animals on canvas out there.

Pronghorn doe
Pronghorn doe

Internationally known wildlife artist John Banovich, who I have been fortunate enough to study with, pointed out in one workshop a few years ago that “you are only as good as your reference”. Since then I’ve realized how true that is. I look back through the print photos that I took before I went digital and it’s so obvious why I couldn’t get my work past a certain level. I didn’t have top-notch reference. I struggled to paint with what I had because I wanted to do it so badly.

African Wild Dog
African Wild Dog

Digital photography has been a godsend since it has always been necessary, as any professional photographer knows, to take 20, 50 or 100 shots to get the keeper. Now there’s no excuse not to fire away and greatly increase the chances that you’ll get the shot that will allow you to do the painting that will be ALIVE. Here’s an example: two images of a cheetah, taken 3 seconds apart. The first is ok, but the second is much, much better. The only difference is a slight turning of the head, but it makes a big difference in the expression.

Cheetah 8:45:11am
Cheetah 8:45:11am
Cheetah 8:45:14
Cheetah 8:45:14

For an painted animal to “be alive”, the artist is required to accept that they are sentient beings, with their own consciousness. Whatever else animals are, they aren’t “dumb”.

Meercat
Meercat

For the next few weeks, I’ll be discussing animal features one by one and how they relate to capturing life and expression. The final installment will be how it all comes together to create a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.

Lion yawning
Lion yawning

Hope you find it interesting!

Eggs and Elk

| foxstudio

Ok, here it is, as promised. Sure to bring a million dollars at auction 1oo years after I’m dead and gone (which means it will probably go for about five bucks). Took about 30 minutes.

egg-in-water-glass.jpg

I thought that I might start to post works in progress which, one, always gives me something to blog on, and two, may provide one answer to “How do you artists do this stuff?” So, here we have a start of a cow elk that I photographed in Yellowstone in June of 2005, along with the reference photo. I was “game driving” between Mammoth and Norris and up on a hillside a group of elk were grazing. As you can see, they were in one of the burned areas. Lots of downed tree trunks and fresh new pines coming up.

yellowstone-elk2005-06-25.jpg

cow-elk-in-progress.jpg

The first questions I ask myself when I have an idea for a painting or am inspired by reference I shot are:

1. What makes me want to paint this? In this case, it’s a combination of the light, her graceful pose and I haven’t done an elk painting for awhile. A painting needs one strong idea and everything else is subordinated to it (Thanks, Scott Christensen). Every artist finds their own way to do that.

2. What is the best size and proportion of canvas to communicate the idea of this painting? (Thank you, John Banovich) As you can see, since my idea is the cow elk with the great light, most of the background was extraneous, so I chose a vertical format. This is a simple subject and, for me, didn’t really call for a big canvas, 16″x12″ seemed about right. But someone else might have decided that female animals don’t get the prominence in the art world they deserve and done her six feet high. Both are equally valid choices. I’ve had viewers of my paintings comment that they like seeing something besides bloated trophy males and enjoy my more off-beat subjects, which is encouraging. But ultimately I paint what I want, the way I want and then try to find a market.

3. As I lay in the drawing with a brush, I’m already thinking about the value (light/dark) pattern. I want the area of highest contrast where I intend the viewer’s eye to land. So, from the beginning I’m altering my reference to suit the idea of the painting. This brings us to the use of photographs in painting; the good, the bad and the sometimes seriously ugly. I have strong opinions about it (surprise. not.), but that’s a topic all by itself. Suffice to say for now that if you don’t have a strong idea of what your painting is about, then you may end up as one of those legion of artists who end up copying their photos, rather mindlessly sometimes. The key is “mindless”. Photorealists have made a quite conscious choice to work a certain way. Do what you want how you want, but do it by choice, not default.

So, here we are after two sittings. During the first, I solved the design: where the animal would be, how big and roughly how the surrounding habitat would go. In the second, which took about an hour. I refined the drawing, laid in my darkest tones and figured out roughly where the small pine trees would be, watching out for bad tangents (which is when two objects on different planes touch, which destroys the illusion of three dimensions) and deciding where the areas of highest contrast would be. California landscape painter Kevin Macpherson comments in one of his books (buy both if you want to self-study oil painting) that a painting is a series of corrections, which is so, so, SO true. When everything is corrected, you’re done. So simple, really.

Final notes (for now): I work mostly with round brushes. I like the calligraphic marks I can make with them, having been a calligrapher and sign painter at one time. I go 3-5 shades darker in value all over and then come back in with successively lighter values. I also try to work “lean to fat”, artist talk for going from thin paint to thick paint. Look at some traditional oils next time you’re at a fine art museum and you can see it. It’s one reason only seeing reproduction is of such limited use. Everything is flattened out. Original paintings have a literally third dimension of paint thickness. Fellow artist Julie Chapman’s work is a perfect contemporary example. You can’t really appreciate her lush, juicy brushwork unless you’re looking at the real thing.

Rats!

| foxstudio

Had one of our first episodes in 2008 of what we call “Animal Planet” last night. Heard a noise in the kitchen, cat in living room suddenly watchful, David went to kitchen and called me. I went in to see…a medium-sized brownish, black rat perched on top of one of our dining table chairs with another cat or two prowling beneath. Rat’s back was damp, but seemed otherwise undamaged.

I’ll lengthen the suspense by noting that while I’m not sure of the species, it was probably a young black rat. Largish ears, cute face with big, sparkling black intelligent eyes.

I’m always tempted to run for the camera, but it’s more important to get a wild animal back outside where it belongs and I didn’t want this guy (or girl) jumping down and getting under something like the refrigerator, which would have caused me to miss the end of the American Idol results show (boo hoo). When it’s mice or lizards or birds, I grab rubber gloves, catch and release. (The hummingbird required a pond net. However, that’s another story.) But I didn’t want to risk a rat bite, so I used a large wide-mouth jar that happened to be sitting on the counter and, after a couple of tries, got the rat to dash into it. We enjoyed a nice long look at our unexpected visitor and then I released him/her next to a pile of alder logs and branches a short distance from the house.

Peregrin, our only male cat, was probably the one who brought the rat in, but seemed only momentarily put out when it vanished.

And yes, I have no fear or hatred of rats. They are smart, canny survivors, but belong outside eating bugs and slugs, not inside providing hunting sport for the cats.

ART TALK

So here’s my version of a very basic drawing exercise that any other artists reading this are probably familiar with. It’s deceptively simple. Draw an egg lit with light from one source. Doing this will, ahem, illuminate something that was worked out by artists in the Renaissance-how light falls on objects. If you look at portraits from that time, the formula is easy to see and has five parts: Light, core shadow, shadow, reflected light and cast shadow. There is also often one bright spot in the light area called the highlight. Anyone can easily set up an egg, shine a desk light on it, take a pencil and paper and have a go. Even people on the road in RV’s. Right, Rene?

egg-1.jpg

It’s Just Not Fair

| foxstudio

So, inches of snow in Atlanta, Georgia and it’s supposed to be around -13F in Green Bay tomorrow for the Packer/Giants game. In most of the country, it’s time for gardeners to kick back with a cup of tea or cocoa, peruse seed and plant catalogs and dream about the gardening season to come. Me? I spent the afternoon weeding. Weeding! In January! It’s like winter has never come, even though it’s been alternately cold and rainy. The grass and weeds invading my flower beds just don’t get that they are supposed to give it a rest already. Sheesh. Where’s the off button?

ART TALK
Many people are interested in how artists do their work. For me, it usually starts with drawings. It’s how I like to familiarize myself with a species that I haven’t painted before and, anyway, I just like to draw. Currently on the home page of my website is my first painting of a badger. Before I started it, I did a number of drawings to learn what a badger looks like. Here are two of them-

Daisy drawings

Her name was Daisy and she belonged to the Triple D Game Ranch in Montana. I “met” her at a animal drawing workshop taught by dynamite wildlife artist Julie Chapman. She was about 20 years old, with loads of badger attitude. She died a couple of years ago, although I didn’t know that when I did the painting or these drawings.