Wings Over Winecountry, Colleen's place (1 Viewer)

All my training is in abstract art too, so the formal elements are always front and center with me. Those reflections are key, and so is how the bands of warm and cool exist, I'm still fussing there looking for over all balance. This painting is much looser than I usually do things, and so it's a bit of a stretch looking for when enough is enough. I'm not happy with the far right bird, it's not the same "finish" as the other 4....

Thanks for the comment, I started as an abstract non objective artist, swung over to tight realism for the last few years, now I want a place between them that has the best of both....

The abstract is apparent here, too - the three horizontal bands of light and the pinky-brown of the sand punctuating them. I think it's a very successful piece, Colleen - tweak all you like, but you'll only be satisfying yourself. I doubt the image would benefit a great deal for it.
How about 'You've Missed A Bit!' ?

timwootton said:

How about 'You've Missed A Bit!' ?

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Great title Tim, I love it...I know I'm sort of picky, well ok really picky...but this is close and I won't do much more....

I do love these birds. I saw the brown ones when I was a little girl all the time at the beach where I grew up in So California, before DDT got them there were so many. I drew them a lot, the brown ones anyway, when I lived in Florida in the 80's. They are the only bird I ever drew from life before the last 2 months experience. I even fed them by hand at the pier there, one got pretty fast and grabbed my hand I was surprised, the bills are very weak, so no harm done but I sure was surprised.

My first encounter with the white ones was out the the middle of the desert in Nevada, coming over a hill after miles and miles of sagebrush, a huge turquoise lake spread in front of me and on a island off shore were these amazing white pelicans....so weird to see them in the high desert. The place was Pyramid Lake a huge mystical place that's on a Indian reservation, the remnants of an inland sea.

Here's a mystery, see attached, here they are folded up and asleep at the sand spit they hang out on....can you believe it! folded up like little weird soap sculptures... who would know they are birds even.

colleenc said:

Great title Tim, I love it...I know I'm sort of picky, well ok really picky...but this is close and I won't do much more....

I do love these birds. I saw the brown ones when I was a little girl all the time at the beach where I grew up in So California, before DDT got them there were so many. I drew them a lot, the brown ones anyway, when I lived in Florida in the 80's. They are the only bird I ever drew from life before the last 2 months experience. I even fed them by hand at the pier there, one got pretty fast and grabbed my hand I was surprised, the bills are very weak, so no harm done but I sure was surprised.

My first encounter with the white ones was out the the middle of the desert in Nevada, coming over a hill after miles and miles of sagebrush, a huge turquoise lake spread in front of me and on a island off shore were these amazing white pelicans....so weird to see them in the high desert. The place was Pyramid Lake a huge mystical place that's on a Indian reservation, the remnants of an inland sea.

Here's a mystery, see attached, here they are folded up and asleep at the sand spit they hang out on....can you believe it! folded up like little weird soap sculptures... who would know they are birds even.

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You're right. Who would know that these are pelicans? Maybe cotton balls, or garlic bulbs, or more likely as you say soap sculptures!

It's always interesting working with subjects with which you have a history. And you really seem to have one with pelicans. Sad to say when I lived on Great Highway in San Francisco and was doing all abstract work at City College of San Francisco I completely ignored the Brown Pelicans as subject matter. I enjoyed seeing them but just didn't consider them as subjects. And I haven't seen any since.

I always find finishing a painting the very hardest part. Does it do what I want? Is it good enough? Could I ruin it if I go much further? I think maybe that's why some artists start reworking paintings months after they thougth they were finished. Sometimes it takes that long to see it clearly........

Yes finishing is always the hardest part, by that time I'm thoroughly fed up with it usually and can't wait to get it over. On the other hand I nearly always know there is more, so it's never finished, I just find a place to stop.

Since I'm so new here, thought I might post an earlier work from last year, one of my more tightly rendered works, one of only two birds I've done before starting the bird work of this year, and the only owl I've tried.....she lives in a sanctuary in Nevada. Her name is Cordelia, and I fell in love with her funny face.She goes to the schools to help the kids learn as she is not able to fly. Animal Ark is an amazing place in the high desert country outside of Reno Nevada.

They have cheetah too, my fav wildcat, and it was there I saw a cheetah run free full speed clocked at 60 mph.... not 10 feet away from where I sat one of the high points of my life that I just had to try and paint. The photo does not do it justice, for instance the background is not a solid color, but varied, greens blues and warm tones.....but this gives you an idea. 12x24 oil on canvas The young cheetah's name is Moyo, and the lure he was chasing
(fixed on a cable laid out in a huge football field sized area in the desert,) had just switched direction and he did a 180 to follow it so fast I could barely see it happen

I well remember both of these paintings Colleen - and it's testimony to the strength of the works that I still find a newness and vitality seeing them again. The owl s beautifully rendered - the textures of soft plumage and moist, vitreous eyes make this a very special portrait. The cat is superb; design, movement and masterful painting.

Thank you Tim, I just rediscovered the owl again myself, and felt the same way, and she really did have that expression which is why she made such and impression on me. I don't do very many paintings I really like when I'm done, but the cheetah is one that has lasted with me, something about the balance of the composition, I do like that 12x24 stretch, and hope to do some birds on that size eventually.

A lot to catch up on here, the pelicans have come off very successfully, I always find your process thinking food for thought. I love the photo of the folded up birds, I love the abstarct shapes they make,particularly if you can set that off by adding smaller detailed subjects in between them. Nice to see your older work too, the softness of the owl's plumage is wonderfully done.

Now I'm not surprised that the cheetah pic has stayed with you, it's a really dramatic and dynamic piece.

Mike

You know my first thought with the cheetah is: well how in the world did you go about it? It's one thing to be impressed by something you see. It's quite another, particularly with a cheetah turning on a dime right in front of you, to translate it into paint, especially such a realistic painting! Very impressive.

Did you take photos? Do it all from your imagination? Some combination? I just can't imagine seeing something like that and being able to turn it into a realistic painting.

Thank you Nick and Mike, glad to have you back here, missed you guys
I think the "process" thing comes from long formal art education both undergraduate and graduate work, and some post graduate where every choice has to be justified, esp since most of that education was focused on abstract and non objective work. Then again, I have a tremendous love of art of all ages and have read and read all kinds of writing on art, and about artists and esp how people paint and compose paintings.

Tho I don't do that kind of thing anymore, all that knowledge is upstairs somewhere, and comes into play in an unconscious way. When I work its all just feel , but then when the downtime comes the process mind comes into play and I look at how I can get the painting to come around to the point I have in mind, and I always have a starting point in mind, sometimes it changes a bit, but usually it is the center pole that keeps me on track.

For the cheetah painting, I knew I had to get the speed and sheer amazement of the experience in the work. And I knew because I had been studying cheetah for over a year, spending long hours down the road at a sanctuary where they were free to roam in big pastures, looking and drawing. I knew their anatomy and had been up close on a walk with one. I watched many hours of my dvd's on frame by frame to see how the movement worked...Duma is a good one. There are only a couple of places in the country that run their cheetah and I got hooked up with one and did a lot of portraits of their animals for fundraising.

So when I got to the point where I saw them run I was primed! They run so fast you literally cannot see them, the eye just sort of freezes little moments.( you can try this with your hand, hold it out and move it as fast as you can, follow it with your eyes you'll see what I mean) Even with a camera on motor drive, I measured at least 40' between shots, so there is not way to "see" what I painted, I have for this one combined blurry photos and memory and knowledge and esp composition to create the work. I was also experimenting a lot to see how to create movement, and had recently discovered Manfred Schatz, so was trying some of the things I saw in his work. Actually Moyo was way more extreme at the turn than this work, but I pushed it as far as I thought would be beliveable , at one point he was parallel to the ground, and I thought he'd fallen over, but no way, he just sprang upright like a spring and ran and actually caught the lure, something that is not supposed to happen. But it was the first run of the cheetah in many months and they had just put the lure at 55mph, not to stress them.
I probably told you more than you really wanted to know about this painting, but you can see my enthusiasm is endless for these cats. If anyone is interested, I did another version in pastel where I put the back of a Tommy gazelle just disappearing on the other end in the dust.

colleenc said:

I probably told you more than you really wanted to know about this painting, but you can see my enthusiasm is endless for these cats. If anyone is interested, I did another version in pastel where I put the back of a Tommy gazelle just disappearing on the other end in the dust.

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Not too much at all Colleen,

That's exactly what I was wondering about: how you got such an immediate and striking experience into paint! I very much enjoyed reading it, and looking at the painting. My guess is that others will enjoy reading about it as much as I did.

Ken

Glad you found it intersting Ken, here is a bit more

I dug up some of the background on this work including the photo of the extreme position. A lot of what is in this photo is what gave me a clue as this is where he was just before the moment I used in the painting. I also found the pastel, and more important an analysis I did of the compositional movements which is how I got the dynamic tensions. ( See I mark up my own work in pink and blue too)

You'll notice that the two main movements of diagonals and the curving dust, are marked, and the place they cross most strongly is where the cat is, checking the long curve of the lower dust. It took me longer to do the dust than the cat in this, I've studied dust a bit too, I really love watching the forms and movements, mostly with the dust the horses make in the pasture next to where I live. It has to have light and shadow and cast shadows within the movements to work. I had to use the photos for this, the movements are too complex to keep in the mind, but it's a great way to practice values.

In the photo I got clues to apply, clearest focus is on the head, only a few edges clearly defined, esp with a supporting leg, the back lighter in value and the spots blurred. These are also elements I discovered in Schatz's paintings.

If you ever want info on cheetah, including how many spots are on the coats( around 600 per cat) there is a thread herehttp://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=432194 where I posted my journey to master what I think is the most difficult of the big cats. The spots are a whole chapter alone, imagine, for realism, each spot has placement, perspective and value to consider, and a cheetah has more spots than any other cat, if you don't get them right all the underlying form is destroyed.

In the photo, you see a big chain link fence, this is the outside of their enclosed yard, they were actually free in the open for the run.

The pastel called "The Chase" is smaller than the oil 10.5 x 22 , but the composition is the same, I sometimes like to do two versions, one in oil one in pastel, as it helps me learn how to handle technical issues in each one and compare strengths and weaknesses in my skills.

OK, almost too much now, after having relatively quickly gone through all of the 100 cheetahs posts! Not really. I was just curious as to how you came to that drawing and it's been fascinating following the lengthy trail. It was very informative and I think shows an incredible amount of progress along the way.

I have learned though, that if I ever for whatever reason, get some inkling that I'd like to use big cats as subjects I'll be absolutely certain to choose ones without spots! It would drive me nuts to have to worry about that on top of trying to get the sense of fluid movement and strength and other such attributes you associate with cats.

Thanks for the explanation and links. It really was informative. Hope others will read it as well.

Hi Colleen just love the pelicans and the master class.

Gold stars for you Ken! you are a real trouper! I think that thread is about 18 pages....

I have noticed there are very very few of the big time artists that really get cheetah right, and almost none of them have done it in motion,(I've never seen any except for the ones that just freeze the action) so I did take on a lot.

My favorite artist for cheetah and for Africa in general is Paul Bosman, he keeps things simple, clean and fluid, and his cheetah have that lightness of step the cats have unlike any of the other big cats. He has a book with his art called Cats of Africa. I got a used copy really cheap and it is one of my favourite books. Although he was well respected, he is not as well known as some of his comtemporaries.I think he should be He also used pastel frequently, few of the big cat painters do much pastel, tho Bosman was just as adept in oil.

He brings such knowledge to his work, he owned a big game lodge in Africa for many years so there is an authenticity to his work and he loved cheetah, so he was willing to suffer through all the spots.:-O The beauty of the one I did in motion is I didn't have to do so many spots or get them just perfect!

Here are some of his field sketches and the last one, of the leap, is one of the most beautiful sketches I've ever seen. Having observed these cats for many hours now I can tell you he's got it so right, every little nuance and line with such economy and yet not generalized, little changes of angle etc perfectly observed. My own sketch compared to this is about like a kindergarten kid. Mike would love his trees.

Thanks Arthur.....no master class here, just a record of the many near train wrecks I encounter trying to do a painting;-)

I've seen the book of big cats, unfortunately I had no cash on me and when I went back a week later there were none left and I've not seen it since! And, yes, I remember liking his trees. The master of trees as far as I'm concerned though was E.H.Shepard of Winnie the Pooh fame, a master.

Mike

Woody said:

The master of trees as far as I'm concerned though was E.H.Shepard of Winnie the Pooh fame, a master.

Mike

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Definitely! I would also mention Thelwell though. Everyone remembers his ponies and children, but I grew up marvelling more at the backgrounds to his cartoons. His trees are fantastic.

Mike

Impressive work! I think the cheetah from the previous page is my favorite, such a stron composition and the speed of the big cat can be felt.