Painting Wildlife in to a Scene

"Eligable Bachelors" 30X40 Oil on Linen  AVAILABLEI’ve been putting some wildlife in my paintings lately and having some fun doing it. As one can imagine, wildlife is very figurative and some knowledge of mammalian anatomy is very helpful. Anytime you add a living breathing element to a painting it sort of changes the compositional dynamic. The animal naturally takes precedence in terms of focal point, though other shapes can effectively guide the eye through the rest of the painting.

For the elk painting,”Eligible Bachelors” at right, I combined two photos taken at Rocky Mountain National Park during the Estes Park Plein Air Festival. It is so rare for a great landscape reference photo to have wildlife worthy of painting in it, and often times a fantastic shot of wildlife lacks a great landscape or great lighting. By combining photo reference, one can paint a more appealing  painting. Another consideration when combining photos is to either make sure that the lighting is lazyafternoon-thumbcoming from the same direction in each reference, or be comfortable inventing lighting that feels natural and harmonizes with the whole of the painting.    

In the “Lazy Afternoon” painting of the cows to the left, I also combined two photos. In this one I had to change the direction of the light coming through the trees in the landscape reference. The light was coming from a “back-light” situation, while the cow reference I was working from, the lighting is coming from the side. Rather than changing the lighting of the cows and having to invent the new shadow patterns, I felt changing the landscape reference to be much easier. Also, because the scene is mostly shadows with a couple light patterns, I "Going Green" 12X16 Oil AVAILABLEcould control those light shapes effectively and really lead the eye in to the scene with the light pattern in the foreground. Even though there is a log in the viewer’s way of entering the scene, the light pattern crosses it effortlessly and you’re already confronting the calf. By grouping of the other cows I creat a secondary focal interest, and the cow on the right engages the you again.

The horse painting,”Going Green” was painted from a reference photo I took at Gerald Merfeld’sstudio in Westcliffe, CO. I took out the other horse, and there "Wait Your Turn"  6X8 Oil AVAILABLEwas also a figure in the piece that I omitted. I was struck by the white color of the horse and the reflected light bouncing all around his shadow shapes, hence describing form in a colorful way.

The cow painting below,”Wait Your Turn” was done near Big Bend along the Arkansas River here in Salida. The cows were all sort of in line to get a drink from a small muddy stream. It was done in the field and has a looser quality. It was a fairly quick study, but even so, the cows aren’t standing there waiting for you to paint them. One has to just take some mental snapshots and paint with deliberateness in order to capture them.

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2 Comments

  1. Rita Cirillo March 30, 2009 at 10:38 am #

    Your elk painting is magnifique! I am sending your website to a friend of mine who is just learning how to paint. I think she’ll get a lot of good info, just by taking the time to read some of your ideas.

    Your work just keeps getting better and better.

  2. Princess Brano November 5, 2012 at 8:07 am #

    I am just curious what will be next. Usually people think only about themselves but this could really change because we have such people who partake their knowledge and information thank you!

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