Home Sweet Home

About 8 months ago a friend from work shared with me a very cool photograph his wife had taken while she was out for a walk on their property. She is an accomplished amateur photographer and often carries a camera when she's out and about in their woods. This day she caught a bit of movement out of the corner of her eye and saw a raccoon clambering into a tree hole. She got her camera up and ready just in time to catch him peeking out of the hole back at her. It was a rare case of right place right time. I asked her permission to use it in my next painting and she agreed.

Even though it wasn't a super high resolution photo it was really well composed and had all the elements to make a nifty painting. It did have a few issues to overcome. The way a camera sees the world and the way your eye works is quite different. In the photograph you can barely make out some of the features between you and the hollow tree because of the way the camera's focus blurs many of those things out. When I composed the painting I did do some creative editing. I wanted a vertical presentation because they take up a bit less wall space. The two trees to the sides of the photo were very blurry because of the way a camera focuses on a single central point. I still wanted to include them to help create an illusion of depth. I also wanted some sky in the image and the angle of the photograph was a low angle looking somewhat lower. I changed that to a low angle looking slightly more upward to include a bit of sky hoping to convey the feel of a cool crisp morning. Along with the primary tree where the raccoon had taken up residence I included just three of the surrounding trees that helped frame the center of interest without intruding on the vignette created by the raccoon in his comfy home. I noticed the grass in the foreground was also somewhat blurry and monochromatic and I needed something to offer clarity and jazz it up a touch.

In early November I was at a wedding on Lake Superior's North shore. There was some time before the ceremony so my daughter and her boyfriend decided to take their dog for a walk in Gooseberry Falls state park and I tagged along. Alongside the walking paths I saw the perfect foliage for the painting I was working on and snapped a few reference photo's with my ipod. Growing in among the dry curled grasses on those trails were these red sicks and twigs that I assumed were red willow or maybe dogwood shoots? They seemed a bit stunted possibly due to the harsh climate in proximity to that lake. Everything living too close to lake Superior is in a struggle for survival.   

Nonetheless they gave my painting a small splash of color beside all of the browns, tans, and greys, that tend to dominate a cold season scene like this. I also wanted add a touch more “liveliness” to the image and included a small group of the ever present blackbirds flying by. In the photo the bark on the main trunk of the hollow tree was smooth, pale, and very hard to paint accurately. I used some other reference photos of dead hollowed out trunks showing much rougher, darker, bark. Use that reference along with a stream of consciousness I laid on the bark all over that tree. Later I went in with lighter colors and trimmed away where I thought the bark would have fallen away on the damaged old tree.

I felt that I could indicate the time of day by adding a bit of early morning mist low to the ground that usually burns off as the sun rises higher in the sky. It gave me a chance to mess about with my airbrushes and for me that's just too much fun to pass up. I decided not to use plain white for the mist as it could easily have overpowered the rest of the scene. Instead I used a very pale shade of grey that was significantly easier to control. I had already painted in those twigs and grasses I wanted to appear closer to the hollow tree before spraying on the mist and it had the desired effect. I also discovered Bob Ross was completely wrong! I had a very un-happy accident with a little bottle of red paint. I was attempting to open the dang thing when it slipped from my grip and hit the table next to this canvas and “BLAM!” it looked like somebody with a fire engine red shotgun blasted my sky. I scrambled to get it washed off before there was any major damage but a couple dozen or so tiny red circles still showed through on the blue painted sky, along with all of my birds.

I was forced to mask off the upper 1/3 of the painting and re-mix and re-shoot my entire sky. It simultaneously faded out the birds but that had a beneficial side effect I hadn't anticipated. I tried using that fading to my advantage. I left most of the birds as is only darkening small portions of each bird and that created the effect of greater distance between them and the viewer. It gives the illusion of pushing them further into the background from the more intimate foreground image. 

I used quite a lot of glaze layers on this one. It helped moderate values all over this painting. It's like having a brightness / contrast knob built into the painting. First you choose a color that compliments the area you intend to modify. It can be either lighter or darker depending on how you want to influence the object you are painting. Then you mix your glaze  evenly with a tiny part of your chosen pigment and and five maybe ten times as much colorless medium. once your subject is dry paint right over it with the glaze. 


Keep adding layers letting each one dry until you modify the area enough, a blow-dryer speeds this process immensely. When you're happy with the change you have made you can go back in and judiciously highlight those items that appear too dulled out or add low-lights to dark areas that need a bit more depth.  I used Liquitex matte medium mixed with Golden fluid acrylic paint. One or two drops of color would tint a quarter sized puddle of medium. Adding multiple layers lets you control the intensity of the effect. It used to scare the crap out of me to spend hours trying to get something painted just so and then as soon as it dried painting right over it with a layer of some other color. Now I use the technique fearlessly and it really has improved my results, at least I think it has.  


Hope you enjoy it!

Acrylics on Fredrix stretched Canvas

18” X 24”

Bonne Chance'

Livin' on the Edge

It's been a while since I had anything to post here but you'll have to forgive me as I have been a bit busy. About a year and a half ago I happened across an outstanding reference photo on one of the many websites I routinely scour for material to use on new paintings. This one I just fell in love with. It was a tiger named Binjai in a zoo enclosure somewhere in Australia, possibly Melbourne. There is no captioning telling me so for certain but the young woman posting it had other photo's in the same grouping that she identifies as coming from a zoo in that city.  I decided rather arbitrarily that this cat was a Tigress because “she”was so sleek and beautiful that it just had to be. Absolutely mesmerizing is a fitting description but the enclosure she was in left a lot to be desired. It did give me the useful notion to use a bamboo forest as a backdrop and then add in an edge of wild jungle along her path.


I couldn't get to it right away so I socked it away in a folder I keep for future artwork. I finally got started on it sometime around the beginning of March last year. I very slowly pecked away at it mostly on weekends but a couple of stay-cations during the year gave me a few extended painting sessions. I remember in mid August on a long weekend at the lake I was still working on the grass and dirt behind the tiger at that point. There where so many different challenges on this one painting I'm not really sure where to begin. First I chose a rather huge canvas board @ 24” X 36”, the subject matter seamed to require it.  Next there was tons of research to do as I have never seen or been anywhere near a bamboo forest. I decided to put a very tenacious tree on the jungles edge with its roots clinging to the rocks on which it stood. I could have chosen a much less ambitious back drop but this Tigress was so pretty I felt compelled to do a little more. 


Why I chose to paint rocks I have no explanation, they are my artistic Kryptonite. Some people struggle with water, I have no feel for rocks. I tried for sedimentary rock in this painting because they are essentially one layer upon another and I could at least wrap my brain around that concept. Using the tree roots for distraction may have helped my rocks look a little better too. The roots I modeled after the cedar trees I've seen along Minnesota's north shore near Lake Superior. They have the appearance of savagely clinging to the rock even wedging themselves into the smallest crack or broken edge that offered the least bit of purchase. I considered the way the forest floor looks and had to add in a lot of junk to make it look right. There is always leaf litter, broken sticks, weird clumps of grass, and other detritus on the ground in nature and I needed to convey that here. The jungle foliage was just a wild-assed guess as to what would be in the Thai or Malaysian jungle where this tiger might be from. 


I didn't put the first color actually on the tiger until mid October. I began with the entire darkened left side of the tiger so I would have less trouble keeping track of light sourcing. Next I added a bit of a tail that was not visible in the reference photo. Afterward I jumped to the foreleg and foot before moving on to the back of the animal. These took several available weekends but slowly I began working my way forward on to the ears and head. Once I had nearly finished the entire animal I still had two major hurdles left to clear. First there where all of those whiskers that looked so deceptively simple. Yes there where essentially just a white line but they also had a shadow underline giving them the appearance of roundness. They were somewhat intertwined in places and had to be balanced on both sides. They needed to show up slightly darker on the shaded side of the animal. A lot to pay attention to, trust me.


The eyes were next and last on this lovely beast and took every bit of a day all by themselves for me to get them just the way I wanted. Yeah O.K. I massaged on minor details on the face and whiskers in the process while waiting for portions of the eyes to dry enough to proceed. I suppose I shouldn't blame the eyes entirely even though they really where tedious and time consuming. After the tiger was finished to my satisfaction there were only leaves left to finish. Two solid days worth!  I happened to find a YouTube channel with all of the old episodes of the A&E series "Mobsters" so I had hours of entertaining listening I painted my bamboo leaves and learned about the mob. 


After laying down high and low light colors to outline the shape and shadow directions it was layer upon layer of different color glazes, all yellow or green. Glaze layers can be a simple as thinning down the color you intend to use with water. This tends to be a bit harder to control. Too thin or too thick and your results can be a bit unpredictable in coverage and drying time. One potential pit fall of thinning acrylic paint with water is called "lifting." It stems from water not having any polymers in it, those in the paint become so spread out they no longer form a cohesive bond with each other or the canvas. In extreme cases they crack and lift away from the canvas. To avoid this problem I prefer to use either glazing media for large areas or airbrush medium for spot glazing as they handle and dry just like un-thinned paint because they are essentially acrylic paint without any pigment. After each new layer dries I assess where I want to go next add in more glaze or correct lost details that the previous glaze layer has covered too much. Or I can adjust my next glaze layer a bit lighter or darker, bluer or greener to refine what I am seeing on my canvas. 


I used glazing all over this painting. It is a fantastic tool to help adjust values, tint or shade colors, or to consolidate any given object in the scene into a unified whole. I leaned heavily on four distinctly different yellows on this piece and seven different greens! The full palette for this painting truly ran to seventeen specific colors and I needed every one of them. It was a whopper of a challenge every inch of the way. Particularly getting a decent photo of it for posting on-line. I must have re-centered the lighting and re-set the camera dozens of times trying to get that one magic shot that captured everything just right. All I wanted was no glare, hot spots, or angular distortions, not so much to ask. Oy vey! I gave up after ten or twelve different setups and nearly a hundred individual shots. This is the best I could get but it pales in comparison to the original, Trust me...


Acrylic on Canvas-Board 24" X 36"




Update: I was in general as pleased with this painting as any I have ever done. I decided this would be a good piece to use in order to explore the process of getting prints made for potential later sales. I contacted my local Blick art supplies store that still offer print making as one of their core services. They referred me to a photographer to have a 1st class digital print made. It was more hassle to get to her studio during a Minnesota morning traffic jam than it was to get the canvas photographed and the image processed. It was also by a wide margin the least expensive aspect of getting prints made. 

Now that I have a top quality digital image in several formats, I can shop online for the best over-all printing package and then assess how best to distribute those prints. I'll update this post when I am a bit further down the rabbit hole...

Update:2


I have now made my first ever prints of my original artwork. The company I found online was located in Quebec Canada, it's called the Giclee Factory. Giclee is pronounced (ZHI-Clay) (French I think) and is the name of the printing process. It's like using a gigantic ink jet printer on heavy watercolor paper in my case. It can be done on photo paper or canvas as well but I thought the heavy paper was my best option. I chose to get two sizes of prints made. Unfortunately the size of the original piece worked against me in getting reduced size prints made. The aspect ratio of the original was 2:3 and that ratio had to be maintained in order to avoid distortion or large unequal white borders in all subsequent reductions. 



The print quality was outstanding the color reproduction was absolutely spot-on. The only disappointment was in the odd size of the reduced roughly 1/2 sized prints.  I ended up with a non-standard frame size of 16" x 24" which meant an off the shelf frame was never going to be an option. A trip to the custom frame shop would result in a bill of $50.00 to $60.00. unless the new owner wanted to up the frame size and use matting to compensate for the size mis-match. The cost of even my modest print order was a bit of an eye-opener. I asked modest prices for the prints I distributed and with a bit of luck I should just about break even. That's all I was really concerned about. I am just pleased as can be that so many people wanted a genuine TJ Willms reproduction.




Bonne Chance'

The Sunshine Girls

I've done it again, volunteered myself for a painting without really intending to. My niece posted a nice little cell phone photo of her pets lounging together in a sunbeam they found near the front door. It created a very nicely balanced composition before I started meddling with it. When I saw it on Facebook I commented somewhat glibly, that it might make a nice painting. Her reply was emphatic and immediate, "Oh really would you?" Yeah, now that I've opened my big mouth, I guess I will. Damn! Did it again! No worries. After a suitable period of procrastination I tried to get started on it with out much fanfare but ran into a problem almost right away. It was largely due to the very low resolution of the reference image. The cat's entire face was obscured in the glow of reflected light from the window. I couldn't make out her eyes and the markings on her head were lost to the white blur. The entire image had a soft focus that I happened to like and wanted to emulate in the painting. However, I could not get past the issue with cat and to have any chance at success I would have to locate a better image. 

On the sly I scanned through the library of photos on my nieces Facebook page, all of them. I found no clear images of her cat. Correction I found exactly 2 pictures of the cat. Both showing only the back of her little head. Bust! I cast about on line for a cat that looked similar but that was no more successful. She had a very specific tabby markings especially on her head. I had to stop fighting the simple necessity of contacting my niece directly for a clear photo of her kitty. She didn't have to do much detective work to guess what I was up to. So the cat was out of the bag, I had wanted to surprise her with the finished and framed piece. Oh well, despite the best intentions some secrets just are not meant to be kept.

After transferring the image onto the canvas my first step was to mask off the dog, the cat, and the shape the sunlight created on the floor as it poured through the window. I also applied frisket to mask off a chair standing near the hinge side of the door. Next I loaded my airbrush with burnt umber for the woodwork and later raw sienna for the floor boards. I very roughly blocked out the raised panels on the door along with the rails and styles as well as adding in the remaining woodwork. I later threw on the lighter colored floor boards making sure to vary the density of this base coat. None of this was the final color but laid out the features of the room in the broadest sense. Next it was off to deepest darkest Minong Wisconsin made famous as the birthplace of Jack Links Beef jerky. Between fearsome bouts of extreme terrain Boccie Ball, fishing, and a few hotly contested Bean bag matches I found at least some time to work on refining some of the roughly blocked out shapes inside the room.

My first few steps entailed defining some very dark wood work that was very hard to figure out from my source image. I did a fair bit of guessing what certain features actually were, and if I could get them to make sense on the canvas I decided not worry about any wrong assumptions I might be making. A prime example was just outside the window there is an undefined shape in a gray/green or gray/blue color. It could have been the side of the building distorted by the window glass. I decided the shape was a shrub maybe an Arborvitae just far enough from the window to give the impression of shape without its normally deep color. The rest of my vacation time was spent on the door and the window casement as well as the woodwork surrounding all of it. Once I had those elements sorted I worked on the floor boards using a honey gold color mimicking the oak or hard maple floors I grew up on. 

Moving next to the wall boards although it was difficult to see in the photo I decided that the walls should be an off white like old plaster tends to be. I also wanted to accentuate the brightness pouring in through the window so I added just a touch of taupe into the wall color. The dark woodwork added a shadowy touch even to the lighter wall color giving the room a comfortable old appearance. Using minimal shadowing and highlighting the raised panels on the door, the rails and stiles, door knob, even the window sill gained their form from rather slight changes in value. Being satisfied with the basic form of the room I removed the frisket covering the chair and the dog and cat revealing the brilliant white outline of the protected shapes.

The chair was a similar color to the floor but with a touch more red. Even in the hazy photo I could discern some significant grain in the wood of the chair. I decided it was made of oak and the technique I chose to add the wood grain was to add it to the base color in a darker shade and then glaze over it until I achieved the color/value combination that I was comfortable with. There was another element in this room that was caught between brightly lit and deeply shadowed. The dog was lying on a rug placed near the door only in the photo but it was almost impossible to pick out. There was only a straight line of shadow that was slightly off-line with the floor boards and a shadowy shape curled behind the dogs back that might have been anything. Put those two elements together and the logical conclusion comes out to rug. I decided it needed more definition in front of the dog just to make it easily recognizable. I added some shaggy nap to it making it look like what it was, a rug. I also choose to eliminate the curled section behind the dog to avoid having any need to explain what the heck that “thing” was.

I was initially intimidated by painting the cat due to her overpowering whiteness. Her markings were distinctly gray and tabby but there were only a few patches of color amid all of that white. Much of her color was washed out by the intense sunlight pouring in from the window. In fact even the shape of her head including the entirety of her face and eyes were glared out in the reference image. I had the other photos my niece had provided to sort out those lost details. Due to printer difficulties I resorted to taking the photos I needed on a flash drive to the photo center at my local Walmart and had 8” x 10” prints made for just a few dollars and they greatly improved my reference photo situation. With much of the glare eliminated I could now make out some of the cats features in the correct proportions. Getting her eyes right was a true challenge. In my initial sketch I made her eyes much too small and she seemed quite angry about it. When I figured out what I had done and corrected my misstep She seem so perfectly aloof as is natural for any cat. And then there was the Lucy.

I had to hand mix the base tan color of her coat as there is no color called “German Shepard Dog” at my local paint store. In one of my forays to the thrift store I came across a set of six stainless steel “dipping bowls” that may have been donated by a defunct Chinese restaurant. They have a nice little pedestal base for stability, hold only a few ounces and when I have to mix a paint color for a specific job I use these bowls. When I am using the paint color I don't leave it standing open for any longer than needed without tucking it into a Ziploc bag. When I am done for the day I add a few drips of water or airbrush medium to the mixture tuck it back into the bag and store it in the refrigerator. Handled in this way it will keep fluid and useful for several months! I used a great deal more of both Burnt Umber and Van Dyke Brown on her coat than I expected but I moderated the deeper tones of these two shades with a great deal of glazing. 


Glazing used to terrify me, spending all kinds of time painting in an exacting shape or figure only to paint completely over it with a glaze layer. I have since become much more comfortable doing so when it is necessary. Building in layers to the correct value and color to meet the needs of you composition adds a great deal to your finished work in many subtle ways. Once you gain confidence using it you will quickly become reliant on the technique to help quickly solve certain problems. I use Liquitex brand glazing medium it is quite thick but it accepts color uniformly and spreads easily. It has a bit more gloss than I would like when dried. However, in using a matte varnish as protective finishing layer, all of the differing gloss levels from medium to paint to airbrushing are evened out and the higher sheen from this medium becomes non-factor. 

The biggest challenge in painting both animals was making them look like “her pets.” I hope she can recognize them in the finished painting. The dogs body was relatively straight forward aside from the extremes of light and shadow I needed to depict. Her face on the other hand was where the real fun began. Lucy is a very striking dog with features that are predominantly German Shepard but she is also mixed with Greyhound or one of the other slender somewhat elegant sight hounds. Her features bear just enough of that elegance to make her a distinctly interesting looking pooch. She had markings on her face that looked like Cleopatra's eye liner her eyes conveyed an intensity that bore right into you. One other very distinct feature of hers is her right ear. It has a noticeable droop near the tip. Her leaf ear is so perfectly German Shepard shaped and makes the deficiency of her right ear stand out tremendously. In the end despite the challenges of the back-lighting from the sun pouring in the window I “think” I was able to make her “sunshine girls” recognizable.

When I had the animals finished and I looked at all of the open floor between them and the edge of the painting and it  just felt wrong. There was a briefcase in the corner of the reference image that I had cropped out. I decided I needed something to break up all that open space in the forward corner and a briefcase would be perfect. The one in the initial image was not the sexiest of briefcases so I decided to go with one of the old leather valise style cases with the old style buckles and pockets. I also wanted to give it a well used appearance that matched the room it was in.    

 

The last major hurdle was my own doing. I wanted to depict a subtle sunbeam shining into the room from that window. My choice of brushes to use was as obvious as it was going to be tricky to do well. I am by no means an expert airbrush painter but I have just enough confidence using my old reliable Paasche model “H” that I was willing to even make the attempt. The first challenge came in the masking I knew I didn't want to leave a harsh straight edged tape line on my finished painting. I thought if I used something with a rounded contour the atomized paint droplets would flow around the shape without leaving a hard edge. The only thing I could think of that would satisfy this profile was rope caulking used to insulate around window frames before the trim is applied. It has a diameter of 1/2” inch and is incredibly flexible so creating subtle curves was as simple as forming the desired shape and taping it down, blue masking tape of course. Just make sure your paint is totally dry before attempting this. I masked off the rest of the canvas with old news paper total prep time about half an hour to forty minutes.

Next I needed an off white color that would show up well but was not blindingly white. I started with a premixed tan I had from the Liquitex Basics line but it was just a touch too dark to be a convincing sunbeam. It needed thinning anyway so as I did that I dripped in a few drops of titanium white to help brighten it up. Now it looked almost too bright to my eye but I decided since I had added so little white to the mixture I was just being a big chicken. I adjusted the spray pattern on a piece of scrap paper and went for it. Two and a half or three strokes later I was completely happy with the result. Total spray time about 6 seconds. I got exactly what I wanted from my experimental masking technique and because my paint was slightly over thinned I got a few stray larger drops that made convincing dust motes floating in the sunbeam. I added a couple of stray hairs as well to complete the illusion. 

The room in which this scene played out was in my niece and her husbands very first home together. Many years from now I hope my little gift holds some deeper meaning for the two of them. I began working on it in mid August while I had some vacation time that needed to be used up. Then work intruded with new projects and pressures that sapped nearly all of the energy I had to give Monday thru Thursday. Working in fits and starts mostly on weekends and one subsequent shorter vacation finally finished it on December 1^st . I got it varnished almost before the paint had dried and whisked it to the frame shop first thing the next morning. I knew it was going to be tight and the drop dead date the frame shop gave me is that it would be done December 21^st or sooner. So what began as an unintended commissioning of a pet portrait for my niece turned into on hell of a fun project for me.

I just wish I could take a decent snapshot of it to share with you but once again I demonstrate a greater affinity for paint brushes than than I do for cameras.

Acrylic on Stretched Canvas

24" X 20"

"Promises, promises"

Many years ago I made one of those promises, the kind you don't think too deeply about, just a casual sort of, “sure, I can do that for ya.” Well this one I made to my sister in law. She had recently been through some pretty scary health issues that sent her down one of life's very bumpy roads. One day after hearing the latest news of her progress I wanted to do a little something that might raise her spirits decided that a surprise gift just might do the trick. It's about then that I remembered that she absolutely loves lighthouses and my flippant promise to paint one for her... someday. 

 It was time for me to "man up" and get it done for her. So stepping well outside my comfort zone, a painting with both water and a rocky shoreline has long been a sort of Kryptonite for me, I began gathering the materials I would need. Shortly after deciding to start this project I received a sale flyer in the mail from my local art supply house. It featured great prices on stretched canvas and it was just the push I needed to get going. After a bit of searching through their various offerings I found the perfect canvas for a sweeping seaside painting. Twice as wide as it was tall but it was still modestly sized at 12 x 24 inches.

I began searching of just the right reference image on some of my favorite web sites and found loads of lighthouse imagery. Many were ocean-side structures but I was more familiar with great lakes lighthouses. There where really only two contenders and I was torn between two. One was a gorgeous towering white guardian in Portland Maine with waves crashing on the rocks beneath and the other was a wonderful image of Split rock lighthouse from my home state of Minnesota. After discussing it with my daughter she nudged me toward the local favorite. It was also taken from an viewpoint I had never seen before and found really interesting. The angle of the shot was slightly above and behind the lighthouse itself looking out over the lake as it faded toward the horizon line.

I felt the need to make a few adjustments to help the image fill the available space. I more or less stretched the trees on the shoreline sideways to fit the much broader horizon line. I also wanted to get some airbrush work into this exercise and decided the sky was a great place for it. It quickly became a bit brooding and unsettled looking but I liked the direction it was going. I wanted to incorporate fog into the image with airbrushing but decided that would have to wait until I had defined the objects on the shoreline better. I wanted to create some visual distance between the escarpment the lighthouse sat upon and the viewer and did so by adding a single large boulder in the foreground. It was not an easy addition for me to make because of all the natural structures there are in the world I struggle when I try to paint rocks. It's more in my own heavy handedness that creates the trouble and not the nature of how rocks look. I can paint almost anything in nature reasonably well but rocks and water still befuddle me although I am making some progress on painting water.

The lake with the stormy looking sky gave me an idea to add a little story to go with the image. There was a day a few decades ago that began as dark and unsettled and just got worse from there. The cast of my sky and the fog I later wanted to introduce into this paint lead me to do a little research. Apparently in 1975 The Edmund Fitzgerald had in fact passed by this lighthouse in the afternoon of November 9 before sinking the next day. I slipped it into my painting although it probably was far more distant than I depicted. Lake Superior is famous for its strange unsettled weather year round. The fog I wanted to introduce into the image worked surprisingly well to add touch of chill to the painting. I tried to give it the look of ground hugging mist that looks as though it might burn off with some sunshine though none would come that day.

Acrylic on stretched canvas

12" X 24"

Mamba loves you

2016 was an odd year for yours truly. New job responsibilities at work as well as helping to design and build the tooling for four separate product introductions all at once made for many long days and some very short weekends. As a consequence I had just enough spare time and energy to complete exactly 1 more piece last year where I had finished seven the previous year. Mid February I put the finishing touches on the foal painting for my niece and most of the rest of the year I was just too harried and exhausted to have much interest in painting. In raw hours I put in nearly the equivalent of 14 months in 2016. 

Enough whining, I found my reference photo in a search for royalty free images in the public domain. The website where I found this one is oddly enough named publicdomainpictures.net. They offer high quality images under creative commons licensing conditions. I was impressed by the number and variety of images on offer as well as with their quality. However, they are not ALL free to use, many are stock photos you will need to pay for. Others are offered under different creatives commons license requirements. They don't go out of their way to make those very easy to understand either. Read very carefully the legalese that goes with each image before you set your heart on using one.

As an amateur painting for recreation and educational purposes on a slim budget I am a bit less fearful of copyright entanglements. Were I a full-time professional artist I would probably not rely for my reference material on creative commons or any other source in which I was not in complete control. The availability of incredible imagery on the internet has created a veritable minefield of potential copyright issues. I recommend extreme caution using imagery you find on-line. As a guideline just treat any photographers work with the same respect you would like for your own work to be treated. You wouldn't want somebody else to copy your work with out permission and photographers are due that same respect. They have to put in a great deal of effort for their work product. The one in a million lucky shot rarely happens. It takes tremendous skill, patience, and effort, to capture each and every image to make a living in photography. It would be a scary profession to enter into if one had to rely on the elusive “lucky shot” to feed the family.

The image that I chose was taken by Crotalus Mitchellii as best as I can tell. It looks as though it may be a zoo exhibit? I was intrigued by the fact that there are two snakes intertwined framed within the image. I thought it would make a great “small piece” and the colors involved would lend themselves well to using colored pencils, not my favorite medium. Nonetheless I have been wanting to try a different blending technique. This one utilizes odorless paint thinner and a paintbrush, so I thought I would give it a go. I have had decent results blending by burnishing with a colorless blender, but wanted to try something new. The paper I chose for this one is Canson Heritage 140 lbs. hot press watercolor paper although by the end of this piece I wished I had opted for their 300 lbs. offering. I ended up using a good deal of pressure in blending the scale colors and the heavier paper might have resisted warping better. I decided to size it at 11” X 14” for several reasons but most of all because I am still not as proficient with colored pencils as I would like. Even with some moderate cropping of the original image the initial sketch work on this drawing/painting/whatever was in short, brutal. With all those curves and scales keeping them in alignment with each other was a pain. My electric eraser got quite a workout refining all of my missteps.

I made one other significant departure from the reference image. The tile walls of the enclosure containing these deadly snakes had bland looking aqua tiles that did little to enhance the lurid green on the snakes. I turned to my color wheel looking for a good complimentary or tertiary color to substitute for the aqua. I chose a deep red called Tuscan red on the Prismacolor pencil. I did use the paint thinner blending method on the more distant items in the image, as they helped create the illusion of blurring from focal distance. The snakes were coiled across what I assume was a tree branch with what looked like shredded excelsior draped over the limb in several places. In the more distant areas like the excelsior in the upper right corner and some of the snake body parts above and behind the two heads I used the thinner to blend and got a certain diffusion of color that helped make them look more distant.

The scales required three different greens and the pure depth of color provided by Prussian Blue. I really didn't want that same diffuse blending in the foreground. Crisp details coming forward toward the observer required that I reverted to burnishing as the method of choice for blending. It helped me give the scales the look of a glossy sheen once the highlights were applied. Highlighting a colored pencil drawing has always been one of the mediums greatest drawbacks for me. Keeping small specks of white paper clean enough to provide decent highlights is incredibly difficult. I had previously heard about a new product from BrushandPencil.com. it's called Liquid touch-up texture. It allows you to brush texture onto portions of a drawing that are completely loaded with pigment and need more layers of color to be added. When it's added to another of their products, Titanium white pigment powder it allows you to paint on brilliant white highlights. It's actually ground colored pencil pigment so there are no archival issues when used with most color pencils. I used 2 coats of Krylon matte fixative to protect it long term. Will I keep working in colored pencils since I still do not fancy them much? Time will tell.

Bonne' Chance!