Inktober 5 – “Marabou Stork” Moving on now to my fountain and dip pens. I saw this marabou stork on a 2005 art workshop/safari in Kenya. He was one of a number storks and lots of vultures hanging around a cheetah kill. I used my Pilot EF pen for this one. I think it was a little too fine for the size of the drawing and the time I wanted to take to do it, around 90 minutes. But it turned out ok. I used my go-to drawing paper, Strathmore 300 vellum bristol.
TBT (Last one till Inktober ends on Oct. 31, then it will become an occasional feature) “Hayden Valley Thunder” from 2003, Oil 30×15” Private collection: I had a great piece of reference from the Hayden Valley in Yellowstone National Park of this bull bison standing on the hill with clouds behind him. I’ve always love Maxfield Parrish. So I decide to try combining the two by changing out white clouds for sunset colors. I also added the cow from another reference photo.
When I made the decision to specialize in animal subjects, I also took a deep breath and made a personal commitment to reach the highest level of excellence that I was capable of (still chugging away). Then I researched the approach and working methods of the best current and past wildlife artists, figuring the odds were that they knew a few things that would be useful to me.
And guess what, not a single one of them, (including Bob Kuhn, Carl Rungius, Wilhelm Kuhnert, all unfortunately deceased) like Robert Bateman, Guy Coholeach, Ken Carlson, Dino Paravano, Lindsay Scott, Julie Chapman or Laney, to name some of my favorites, rely on other people’s photos except to supplement their own for specific elements, only go to zoos or game ranches or work exclusively from photos to the exclusion of anything else. They GET OFF THEIR BUTTS, pick up their sketchbooks along with their cameras and hit the road to where the animals are.
This is not a field for the lazy. Even if your passion is the songbirds and squirrels that you can see in your own backyard, you still need to do fieldwork. Believe me, it shows in the work to those who know.
(Endangered Rothschild’s Giraffe and I at the Kigio Nature Conservancy, Kenya or Why I Like Fieldwork.)
There is no substitute for seeing an animal in its own habitat. This was brought home to me when I went to Kenya and saw lions, elephants and warthogs “in context” for the first time. The warthogs in the Masai Mara were the same color as a lot of the rocks. Thirty elephants emerged from trees lining a river bank. They had been invisible. The only evidence of their presence was that the tops of the trees were moving. We were at most 50′ away. The lions are very similar in color to the dried grass.
The prey species like wildebeest and zebra had a vibe that is totally lacking in the ones I’ve seen in zoos. In the wild they have to Pay Attention and work to survive. The zoo animals don’t have to do either and it shows in their body language.
You need:
A good digital SLR: Point and shoot won’t do it. Too slow to catch movement and you can’t change out lenses if necessary
The sketchbook of your choice: you may have to try some different ones to find a combination of paper and pen/pencil that works for you
Pens/pencils: So many possibilities. I use fine point gel pens for the most part because they don’t smear and I can’t fuzt around and erase.
Patience: In ten years, I have found that, on average, a given animal will do something at least mildly interesting or worth recording within about twenty minutes, but you have to be willing to sit and watch and watch and watch and……., even in zoos
Curiosity: Which translates into a willingness to learn about your subjects, not just settle for superficial appearance
Imagination: I’ve been in the field with other artists who seemed to be trying to capture “The Pose” that they would then faithfully reproduce on canvas. I often seemed to be the only one whose shutter was firing. Why? Because I’ve learned that you can never know in advance what you will find useful and when you’ve spent hundreds or thousands of dollars to get to a place, it’s crazy to stint on reference collection, especially with digital cameras and the ever dropping price of memory cards.
The Payoff? Great, unique reference (how many cougar paintings have you seen recently that were obviously from the same captive animal shot in the same locations? Yawn.), your memories of what it was like to be there which will somehow seep into your work, stories to accompany the paintings that will interest collectors and the possibility of seeing things very few people are privileged to.
Here’s a few examples of shots taken on the off-chance they might come in handy sometime. Not necessarily interesting to anyone but me.
The Gobi Desert near my ger camp. Useful elements: cloudy sky, distant mountains, September grass, lay of the land, gravely surface, rocks with red lichen.
Grab shot from Lewa Downs Conservancy, Kenya. It’s a little blurry, but turns out to be the only tree that I’ve seen with that trunk color. It will be the perfect element for something, sometime.
Photographing the animals is a no-brainer, but don’t forget their habitat. I know what animals live in the Conservancy where I took this picture, so I know who could be found in this neat waterhole setting.
On the banks of the Ewaso Ngiro river in the Samburu, northern Kenya. We have: a little of the water for context (where did I take that picture?), grass, some kind of spiky leaved plant just coming up (needs to be identified), doum palm nuts and frond droppings and…..elephant dung. This was taken right in camp.
And, nearby, is a doum palm that has been partly rubbed smooth by elephants.
And here are some elephants. Nothing spectacular by itself (well, other than the fact that I’m seeing them in Kenya, of course!). But the preceeding photos provide context and additional elements that could be used with the photo below to create something more interesting and memorable.
I realize that these are exotic locations that many artists can’t get to or aren’t interested in, but the principle applies no matter where you are. Get out into the field and see as much as you can of everything around you. Filter that through your interests and passions as an artist and it will shine through in your work.
ART THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
“Now the light was fading fast. We had to hurry to reach the gate before 7 pm, but just as we were leaving the plains, Dave said urgently, ‘Stop! Stop!’ Thirty yards from the road, a lion and lioness stood silhouetted by the setting sun. She moved against him, rubbing her body on his great shaggy main, and twitched her tail high in the air. Then, blatantly sensual, she crouched on the ground and the big male mounted her. The coupling was brief and ended with a climax of impressive snarls before she rolled onto her back in evident satisfaction.”
Simon Combes, from Great Cats: Stories and Art from a World Traveler
Thanks, Simon. (Photo from Oct. 2004 art workshop/safari led by Simon Combes two months before he was tragically killed by a cape buffalo. More images from the safari and a memorial page to Simon on my website)
I’ve had the good fortune to take two trips to Kenya, one in 1999 and the second in 2004. It really is the greatest animal show on earth. What is happening there now is terribly disheartening. The Kenyan people have never known what it is like to have an honest, competent government and they deserve better. But when you have a young, educated population (most Kenyans finish high school and many have university educations), a lack of good jobs, a majority of the population that stills thinks more in terms of what tribe they belong to than being Kenyans and a one of the three most corrupt governments in the world, the stage is set for the situation that is occurring now. Kenya is very dependent on tourist income and when things exploded, I could hear the sound of safaris being cancelled. I don’t think that it would dangerously unsafe to travel there right now, since visitors have been wisked from the airport to the heavily guarded hotels and then out into the parks and reserves, also guarded, for a very long time due to the serious crime problem in Nairobi, but I wouldn’t take the chance myself until things calm down. The frustration level is clearly very, very high.
On a happier note from happier days for the country, I was fortunate enough to go on an art workshop safari with the late Simon Combes and nine other artists in October of 2004. (I plan to share some of my travel stories and the paintings that came out of them in this blog.) Afterwards, I flew back down to the Masai Mara and stayed a few days at a fantastic tented camp, Kekero, which in on the Talek River. Close enough that hippos woke me up at night with their grunting and roaring. Boo hoo. The routine, either on safari or at a tented camp, is to be awakened before dawn, which, with Kenya being on the equator, is always around 6am. Coffee and some cookies are delivered and you have 15-30 minutes to pull it together, get dressed and be out at the vehicles. So, every morning, you get to see the very light of the day, which suggested the title of this painting, “First Light”
He was a beautiful big boy, still resting after a night of feasting. It was magical to sit there as little by little the sun illuminated him in warm morning light. We had him all to ourselves and hung around until he got up and wandered off.
On the domestic front, I would like to introduce Persephone, who will be seven this year. We had gone to look at a puppy and the woman mentioned a cat she had rescued. Short version: the kitten wouldn’t get down off a fake ficus tree when ordered (!?) to do so, so was grabbed and thrown across the room into a wall. Grandson calls Grandma, who rushes over and takes the cat. Too many dogs in house, so cat ends up in the back carriage house of her small Victorian where we saw her, liked her, adopted her (puppy went to someone else). I watched for neurological damage, but she seemed fine (I know, some would say, with cats who can tell). We did have to take her to the vet for the removal of a front canine that had split vertically into three pieces after we noticed her jaw was swollen, undoubtedly an impact injury, but other than that she’s been fine. This is one of my favorite pictures from when she was about a year old.
She has ended up being not exactly a svelte cat, despite a weight management diet. She’s just an endomorph and has nicknames like The Princess, the Bon Bon and The Plush Princess. She is lightning fast though. I saw her catch a gopher once. Strike, pull it out of the hole in a split instance and then carry it off to eat the whole thing. Here’s a more recent photo. She really is a beautiful cat, but, boy, is she a princess.
Susan Fox, American Artist 