Three Small Works for PWAF

With only 2 weeks ahead before the opening of the Plantation Wildlife Art Festival in Thomasville, I've been feverishly working to round out my inventory for the show. Below are three 5x7 pieces headed to that event. I have to admit, I love working on these little gems. It's fun to watch them come together :)

"Crawdaddy" 5x7 oil

"Teton Dawn" 5x7 oil

"Black Bruin" 5x7 oil

 

"A Whiff of Danger"

In keeping with my theme of working toward a more impressionistic style of painting, I began work on a landscape inspired by a trip some years ago to the Tetons in Wyoming. The underpainting was put together quickly with a 1/2" flat brush and relatively thin paint. Once this stage of the painting was complete, I had reservations about going any further. I really liked the freshness of the painting at this point (and it was VERY impressionistic!). That being said, I also know when I feel this way about the underpainting, the finished piece usually turns out to be something special... so I pushed forward.

Block-in underpainting

As I began to work through the next stage of the piece adjusting edges and refining shapes with thicker chunks of paint, I kept feeling like the piece needed a wildlife element. At first I thought something small. Perhaps a magpie or two? But the more I thought about it, the painting was asking for elk... and not just one.
Such a large compositional adjustment at this stage of the painting poses more than a few challenges. My wildlife pieces are mostly designed around the animals themselves, not the other way around. So adding the elk this late in the game was a big risk. Most often, major elements added as an afterthought end up looking like just that... an afterthought.
Finally settling on three elk, I didn't want them to be static. There needed to be some movement and tension. Once I worked out the positioning, another problem became apparent. To keep the spacing and scale of the elk in step with the setting, the lead cow's nose was uncomfortably close the edge of the painting. After pondering this for the better part of the weekend, I resolved the issue by letting the values of her face blend closely with the background foliage.
Finally, the cow stopping to look back before bolting for the next county brings the mood of the piece together as I intended.
 

"A Whiff of Danger" 9x12 acrylic

"Lost Lake" 7x5 acrylic

After a great week in Charleston, it's good to be back in the studio. This small landscape study was an interesting challenge. I love the weather-bleached logs along the shoreline.

"Teton Procession" 6x13 acrylic

With large groupings of animals, the biggest challenge always seems to be their arrangement in the space of the painting. For such a small piece, this ended up being fairly complicated and I could literally go on for pages (but I'll try to keep it short) on why I placed each of the elk where I did. Multiple subjects create several points of interest and the viewer's eye can be jostled about the painting... never settling on a singular major focal point. I was fortunate to photograph this herd early one September morning as they moved accross a platue in Grand Teton National Park. The low backlighting offered a unique opportunity to create that singular focal point by making use of the sunlit steam the herd generated. The easy and predictable solution would have been the bull and his massive antlers, but I've made him a secondary element in the painting. By looking back out of the painting to the right, he gives the impression of the herd being larger than what is seen in the frame of the painting, with more animals bringing up the rear. I wanted the major focal point to be the cow elk in the painting's center (something usually try to avoid, but in this case, because of the strong secondary presence of the bull... it works). So by using the steam to create the area of highest contrast around her head, the viewer's eye comfortably settles here.

This is truly one of my favorite small works. I may use the idea for a larger painting in the future.

Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Bugs in the Grill

Wyoming was magnificent. Entering Yellowstone through the Beartooth Mountains was about as breathtaking as a drive can get. I was in Yellowstone for less than 5 minutes when I spotted 4 mountain goats on a distant rock face. That was totally unexpected as mountain goats are fairly rare in the park. From that point on, I knew it was going to be a productive adventure.

It seemed as though each bend in the road revealed yet another treasure… mountain bluebirds… hundreds of bison… and so many antelope, I hate to venture a guess! One afternoon while exploring the Gros Ventre area of Grand Teton, I was treated to the site of a cow moose far across the river. By the time the encounter was over, she was less than 15 yards from me browsing on willows. Yes… that’s a little too close for something that big!

A morning photographing bugling bull elk in Grand Teton Park put the perfect end to a spectacular week.

Some 4400 miles and 1200 photos later, I’m finally back in the studio. During the drive, there were many stretches of highway where so many bugs were hitting the windshield, it sounded like a hard rain. Not good for highway vision!