Ocelot Painting So far..

So this is the first time I've attempted a grisaille painting method on a wildlife painting. I'm currently working on the tonal greyscale painting and then I'm going to glaze in the colour later. Here are the first three stages:

In the first stage I use diluted paint to sketch out the ocelot on the canvas along with a quick wash of the background.

Once this was dry I roughed out the base tones of the ocelot along with the markings. This stage actually took forever to dry so in future I'm thinking of adding a little liquin to the paint I'm using. Liquin is a thin medium which is added to paint for glazing but which also speeds up the drying time of paint.

This is where the painting is at following the second layer of paint. The aim at this stage was to make sure the background is dark and that the base tones, shapes, and markings of the ocelot are done to where details can then be worked in. Generally this will mean the lightest highlights and darks will not yet be present and the tones themselves are a couple of shades darker so I can put in the lighter fur details later.

Viva Africa

10 years ago after getting my diploma in Fine Art I headed off to South Africa for a month. I was 19 and had never traveled on my own before, let alone that far, and I'm still kind of surprised I actually did it. I stayed at a place called Moholoholo - a wildlife rehabilitation centre where I was one of the English & Dutch volunteers working there. We lived in a lodge within the reserve bordered by the cheetah enclosure and close by the rescued circus lions and spotted hyenas who would roar and whoop at nightfall and occassionally a lizard or gecko would visit us in our rooms by climbing through the thatched ceiling.

A pair of caracals at the reserve

Why am I mentioning something that happened so long ago? Well, when I was studying art at college we tackled lots of different subject matter from still lifes to animation, but I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do. Looking back, going to Africa is where that changed for me.

Having done a work placement at a local wildlife park whilst at school and growing up around pets in the countryside the idea of helping out at a wildlife centre is something that immediately appealed to me. When I got there I was put into a group with other volunteers with an assigned morning/afternoon round. 

The rounds consisted of watering/feeding certain animals at the centre, as well as cleaning enclosures and clinic. Animals that were on my round consisted of the ex-circus lions and Shadow the Spotted hyena, Guardian the Verreux eagle, the courtyard menageria of rabbits, dassies, and duiker, a pair of tawny eagles, a trio of friendly purring servals, the rather intimidating lappet-faced vultures, and Mama Rotti the giant rat who, being rather civillised, ate cereal off a spoon. 

We had to shoo these big birds to the other side of the enclosure to clean it
 - they were not amused.

As well as my feeding round I also had aviary duties proving a mix of 'nectar' vials and a mushy mixture of wetted dog biscuits and flying ants for the birds. I hung out with a caracal called Desi and the bug-hungry meerkat Shaniki, and bottlefed a pair of cheetah cubs as well as a young kudu called Koda.  Now, by this point this may sound like everything is sunshine and rainbows but it is important to remember that it was a rescue centre for wildlife where the persecution of wildlife and its effects would make its presence known.

I remember a duiker, a type of small antelope, being carried in to clinic by a ranger, bleating. One of it's hind feet had gone, just a stub of bone muddied and dirtied with a scrap of fur hanging. It had being caught in a snare and in the end had to be shot. A similar incidence involved us rescuing four cheetahs under threat of being shot. A trio of males and a lone female with her foot also damaged by a snare. The males, healthy, were transferred to another centre, but after trying to save the foot, the female had to be sadly put down. We also spent one morning running after vultures in the African bush after a poisoned Kudu carcass was eaten by vultures. Many were already deal but we were able to catch and purge the stomachs of birds that we found still alive to save them. And the day before I left to return to England we heard a farmer had shot an elephant to protect his crops and was threatening to shoot others in the area. We turned up to take the remains of the elephant away to make the most of a bad situation by using the meat to provide food for the animals at the centre whilst the officials towed away the head to stop the ivory from being stolen.

I had briefly met the famous wildlife artist David Shepherd not long before my trip and, inspired, made sure to take a camera and sketchbook with me on my trip. I spent quite a few lunchtimes sitting by or in the enclosures sketching the animals. Surprisingly, I even did a pet portrait.

One of the other girls, also a Katie, came up to me one day with a small photo of her springer spaniel dog who had not long ago passed away and I drew him for her. She got a little choked up when I handed it over to her. I confess that it surprised me - I didn't actually think art could have that kind of impact and I was glad I could give her something more of her pet. Seeing that kind of reaction made me realise the impact art can have.

So it's perhaps not that surprising that this trip had the impact it did on the direction of my artwork. When I got back the first artwork I tried weren't paintings but some digital art pieces I made in Paintshop Pro 7 with limited success as I didn't have a graphics tablet and I was using a right-handed mouse (I'm a lefty!). These were some of the first images I put online too for other people to see. 

After this I did some drawings and watercolour and acrylic paintings. I don't know what exactly led me to oil painting, maybe I just fancied trying them out again, but this trip is what led me to wildlife. Even this many years later those four weeks out in Africa are vivid in my mind and I'm still drawing inspiration from it. Here's to the next 10!

SWLA Wildlife Art exhibition

Running until the 8th is the Society of Wildlife Artists' annual Natural Eye exhibition at the Mall galleries in London.

On display are various depictions of wildlife in media ranging from oils, acrylics, and watercolours, to stylised linocut and monoprinted work, to three dimensional works of wire, bronze, and silver. And much more. Various styles are on display as well from the very realistic to stylised and abstract works, although this year it seemed to me that more abstract works were on display.

From left to right: Gannets - Alastair Proud, Hare - Max Angus, Seals - John Threlfall

This is the third or  fourth time I've been to visit and some of the artists' work are instantly recognisable - although I'm still terrible at remembering names! Two that I always notice are Harriet Mead's scrap metal sculptures, this year three were on display (see below) a fish, lapwing, and a fox. The other is Brin Edwards who's bright oil paintings have distinctive square-shaped mark making with bright areas of underpainting breaking through to create a more illustrative outline.

(Above) Harriet Mead's lapwing and fish scrap metal sculptures
(Below) Brin Edward's Oystercatcher

Wildlife art in the exhibition is international in nature including the more exotic along with British wildlife and although there are mammals and insects on display there is a strong lean towards birds. 

Sloth - Simon Turvey, Little Grebe - Richard Allen, Swallows - Adam Binder

Looking at the linocuts again I'm tempted to have a go as I do like the distinctive style you can get in them and it was always something that I never got to try out at college much along with woodcuts.

Young artists had their winning and commended artwork on show under young artist awards for various age groups and there was some excellent young talent on display. Other awards were aimed at wildlife conservation issues and were provided by groups such as the RSPB and BTO where wildlife artists accompanied bird ringers and nest checkers to produce sketchwork. The Wildlife Trusts had an Undersea Art Award where an artist traveled to a propose Marine Conservation Zone in Northumberland to produce artwork of the coastal and marine wildlife. This included dive training which sounded particularly appealing to my ears!

Seal watching

After the cold and wind driven rain of the previous day I was rather expecting the worst for our seal watching trip and woke the next day hoping the rolling waves wouldn't lead to rolling stomachs. Thankfully though the weather was dry and calm with the sun peeking in and out of the hazy clouds.

We headed out of the harbour on a little fishing boat, donning hats as although it was calm there was still a bit of a bracing sea breeze. Although we hit a few waves heading out of the harbour we headed along the coast of Ramsgate and up into the estuary of the Stour into placid waters.

The river itself used to be both wider and busier in the past when it was used to ferry goods up Canterbury and smugglers waited along the riverbanks where they would lure cargo vessels to shore before stealing away in the night up through tunnels carved into the cliffs. 

Now the estuary sits between two national nature reserves where it's coastal salt marshes provide invertebrates for wetland birds and fish for the seals who take advantage of the tidal nature which causes the narrowing of the channel.

We passed a mudflat busy with black-backed gulls and oystercatchers and the odd avocet. A couple of redshanks wheeled by in the sea breeze across the saltmarsh where I spied some Brent geese wading behind a bank of vegetation. Curlews called and flapped by close to our boat enabling us to see there long downcurved bills that they use to probe for shellfish and invertebrates in the sediment.

Then we saw the seals in the distance, almost hard to see at first looking like shipwrecked row boats along the water's edge.  As we headed closer we could see one or two seals bobbing in the water but most lay in small groups along shore, some sleeping but others watching to see what we were up to. There were a mix of adults and this year's pups who had grown massively so to be hard to distinguish although they tended to have paler fur. Older seals appeared more mottled in appearance, some almost dressed in leopard print. We noticed one small pinkish seal that had been born later in the year that we thought might be albino. All the ones we saw were common seals with their rounded faces although we heard the long-faced grey seals also spent time here too.

Most common seal pups have already shed their lanugo (a white furry coat) before they are born. This enables them to learn to swim very quickly (lanugo's are not waterproof) meaning common seals can breed on estuaries where the flooding of habitat is less of an issue for them that grey seal pups who retain their lanugo for a couple of weeks. 

After getting some lovely views of the seals including one splashing around in the water we headed back to harbour. A couple of heavy looking herons flew overhead before sinking back down into the marshland as we passed. I regretted only having my phone on me for the trip and not taking a camera but hopefully I can borrow some photos of the seals as it would be great to paint them.

A little bit of sun on our way back to harbour

Wildlife Watch: Pale toadflax

This year I've been taking part in some volunteering where I help monitor a stretch of roadside noted a Roadside Nature Reserve. Roadsides can actually be important and diverse grassland habitats as they often haven't seen the addition of fertillisers like many pastures have. A species of note here is Pale toadflax (Linaria repens), a plant that is relatively rare in Kent and this is what this Wildlife Watch is about.

Toadflaxes are part of the Plantain family and are so named as their flowers are said to resemble a toad's mouth - not sure i see it myself but the flower shape is quite distinctive with three lower lobes and two upper ones to each flower with each flower having a spur that protects to the back. 

Pale toadflax is a small plant that grows in dry calcareous (alkaline) soils. Its flowers are white or pale lilac that are striped in purple with a yellow central spot. It has a stumpy spur at the flower's base that is straight and flowers in later summer up until October. It is a hairless plant with simple tapering leaves that spiral around the stem in whorls.

Common toadflax - also present at the site

It can hybridise with another native toadflax, Common toadflax - a larger two tone yellow flower to give pale yellow flowers with purple veins. Some of the flowers on the site did seem to have a pale yellow appearance so I wonder if there are hybrids there as Common toadflax is also present; although I'm not sure how common hybrids are.

Pet Breed Focus: The Pug

The pet breed I'm going to look at this time is the pug.

The pug is a small dog distinguished by it's short muzzle, wrinkly face, and curled back tail. The breed originated in China where it was a companion dog for members of royal households where it lived a luxurious lifestyle, often with its own bodyguards. It was then brought over to the royalty of Europe in the 16th century where it was popularised by the House of Orange in the Netherlands following the foiling of an assassination attempt on the Prince after their pug Pompey alerted the family. House Orange then went on to share the breed with House Stuart of England where it may have been bred into the King Charles Spaniel line during a visit, playing a part in the short-muzzled nature of the breed.

At this time the breed was more long-legged and lean in stature and it was after another influx of pugs from China in 1860 that the shorter stockier appearance of the modern pug came to be. Queen Victoria was also involved in breeding of pugs and helped establish of the Kennel Club in 1873.

Studies into the modern pug in the UK show that the breed has seen significant inbreeding and that the 10,000 or so pugs here have the genetic diversity of just 50 individuals. This has perhaps fed into some of the health problems that many pugs can experience such as hip dysplasia which affects over half of pugs. The short muzzle makes them more prone to eye damage and many have breathing difficulties or an inability to regulate body temperature through panting. They may also reverse-sneeze when excited where they gasp or snort due to an elongated palette although this is usually harmless, and sedentary pugs are more prone to weight gain. Along with a few other smell breeds of dog there is a small risk of NME - an inflammation of the brain and meninges, sadly this condition is fatal with no known cure.

The modern pug is a stocky small dog with a short face and underbite; popular colours include light tan and dark brown. It is a sociable companion dog that can be strong-willed at times should they get away with it. Pugs are smart and loving dogs with a youthful sense of fun they retain throughout their lives. They like to spend time napping and are particularly sensitive to the moods of their owners who they love to be around, shadowing them as they move about.

First still life: Part 2 The glazing

Now that the black and white painting has been done it's time to turn my attention to glazing colour into it. To do this the colour is diluted with more oils to allow for transparency (in this case I'm using liquin) with a little medium to ensure it dries. I kept these colour glazes relatively 'pure' in that I did not dull or muddy their vibrancy by the addition of black or white paint. These are built up in layers so the transparency provides a luminescence to the painting. Each layer is allowed to dry (around a day) before a new layer is added.

A reminder to where we were at the end of the underpainting stage:

In my first layer of glazing I glaze crimson into areas of the grapes as well as some yellow. It gives the impression of a faintly tinted photograph in my opinion.

Another couple of yellow and crimson layers are put in the grapes along with adding cool blues to the glass and I add some golden brown into the foreground.

I then warmed the grapes further with red. So far I have worked the layers over the highlights largely ignoring them. The highlights were cooler, more blue in colour so I would work them later. Areas of the stem were glazed with green and then brown glazes.

I then put the highlighted areas back in to the grapes with a simple white glaze to work over later. I also glazed the foreground and background with a warm brown including the dark clear areas of glass. . glazed over blueish hues.

Finally I worked blueish glazes into the grapes and added another brown background/foreground colour glaze. I also added some more warm red to a few of the grapes to finish.

I feel pretty happy with how it turned out although it's so shiny with the liquin glazes it is very difficult to photograph. I am interested to see how this technique would work with wildlife and pet paintings and hope to give it a try soon!

Let me know what you think of my first still life attempt :)