Animal and Wildlife Art Lessons

"Cienega"

By Julie T. Chapman
www.artistinnature.com

”Julie T. Chapman is a Signature Member of the Society of Animal Artists and the American Academy of Women Artists. She has shown in numerous national and international juried and invitational exhibitions, won some terrific awarßds, and offers a yearly artist workshop for aspiring animal artists. Her work hangs in a number of galleries in the western U.S. and can also be seen on her website. She offers a monthly email ‘ArtZine’ with news, images and art musings – sign up at her website”.

Initial oil colors laid in.

First I painted the sky and distant background so that I could put the rock on "top" without painting around (yecch).

At this point, I've completed the first oil layer in all the main shadow areas of the rock. I used some of those fabulous Gamblin transparent earth colors to get the glow of the yellow base through the translucent effect of the oils.

I know I'll be coming back in to put more color on top of the transparent earths, so I use Liquin medium to get everything dry overnight. (Remember that "impatient" part).

Hmm, hard to see the difference here, but...

I've laid on the sunlit areas of the rock with thick brushes, palette knife, whatever. Obviously, it's pretty much in tones of yellow and orange. "Hot" would definitely be the keyword here.

Remember that stuff about hating to paint around? Well, I set myself up for it here because now I gotta paint the cougar in, and it's behind the rock.

However, for me landscape and animals require different amounts of care, so I like to paint them at different times. In this case, I leave off the cougar until morning (faces are so demanding).

 

"Cienega" - 24 x 30TA DA! the finished piece.

Here's what happened after the stage above:

• - Lay in the cougar with a basecoat of transparent earths.
• - Spend the following day at the National Bison Range and don't even touch the canvas.
• - THEN, come back and put the topcoat on the cougar, and scumble on cool tones in the rock shadows and sky-facing planes.

Add whiskers, and she's done, and I'm pretty happy with this image. The tricky'n'fun part was getting shadows + reflected light + direct light correct on the cat, in a believable way.

 

By Julie T. Chapman

Visit Julie's Site: http://www.artistinnature.com

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