Painting the Bonny Brown Hare!

This is the story of the creation of a recent wildlife painting. Everywhere I go I see paintings, sculptures and photos of Hares - it seems that people love them. As I have some of my own nice Hare photos it suddenly felt like time to create a painting! This is what it ended up looking like.

 

The process of its development will be familiar to regular readers of my Blog by now, but every painting is different so the story is ever fresh! It starts off with transferring a sketch across to the canvas-board. In the photograph below I have also started to block in the background. In this case it is the background to the background! The surrounding grasses present a multi-layered texture which I am going to have to build up in stages.

Below the background has progressed and I have started to block in some of the tonal masses. At the same time I am trying to mix something like the right colours. I am working in acrylics and this will be the under-painting to be finished in oils. The tint of the green background jumps about a bit in this series of photos. This is a problem with getting the tonal balance right in the photos, it actually is the same green from photo to photo!

 
 What you cannot see so far is that I am starting on this painting in my local U3A Art Group session. Here we all are, hard at work.

 
I only have two hours in this session so I push things as far as I can. It is a good discipline and there is a good work ethic in the group. Here the facial details start to appear. In my opinion it is always the eye and the mouth that carry the painting and gives it impact so I spend time on this.
 

 I don't know if you have heard of the U3A? It stands for University of the Third Age. It is an international movement in which retired people come together to form groups to pursue activities that interest them. The group facilitators, or teachers, are drawn from the membership itself. They are not paid, they voluntarily bring their particular expertise to share with the group. As you can imagine, there is a lot of expertise out there amongst retired people. Consequently there is a very wide range of groups, especially in the big cities. Try Googling "U3A" to find your local branch. It is amazing and hardly anyone has heard of it!

This is as far as I could get in the group session and will serve as the underpainting. I have been having problems with the facial expression. The earlier stages I showed you above had the muzzle a bit too long - too horse-like! In these last two I have compacted it a bit, but will have to look at it again when I get it home.

OK, here it is at home now (below), that is my little bottle of Linseed Oil on the right and you can just see the bottom of my bedroom curtains top left! That's how I know where we are. I work in oils now to refine colours and textures. The chest fur is coming out a bit warmer in tone than the face. I have used a greenish tint in the darker features of the face and I now have to pull the colour harmony together a bit by adding some warmer touches. It is important to stand back and assess the overall impression I am creating rather than just concentrate on details.

 So, it is shaping up nicely now. I have not put any oils on the green background yet but now it is time to attempt that grass. It gives me the shivers as there is no real way back if it all goes wrong now. Just be bold!

 It didn't go as badly as I had feared, so now I spend more time solidifying the Hare and pulling it all together. You can see how the face has become more solid and the fur texture appears in the stage shown below. There's my Linseed Oil again!

Some further refinements all round just about finish it. I spend just a little more time on the eye details then try to make myself leave it alone. Stop fiddling, just leave it alone!

 
 And here is the final work posing in its posh frame. 

 
 And just a little detail from the face area. You can click on any of the above photos to enlarge them somewhat, but the photo below brings you in really close.

 So that's it for this one. Please visit my website at www.johncrabb.co.uk and you can see all my paintings for sale at https://www.artgallery.co.uk/artist/john_crabb Perhaps you would like to buy one?

 

Frog Painting

PHOTOS IN THIS BLOG WILL ENLARGE IF YOU CLICK ON THEM

 

OK, so I am going to give an honest account of my experience of trying to paint a frog. This is not one of those normal art demos where the artist seems to start with so much skill that, no matter how carefully they explain it, you cannot really see yourself doing it. This is how it actually feels to be a relative beginner in oil painting. Maybe someone will identify with it. The starting point is this photo of a frog that I took some while back.

I like it because of the frog's characterful face. I also thought it might be easier than birds, it hasn't got feathers after all! 

So I start off the same way as usual. I lay a grid of squares over the photo and transfer it across to the slightly larger squared grid that I have drawn on my canvas.

Here it is. Not looking too bad so far!

 
Then what I do is not really part of the painting process and would not figure in most art demo blogs. What I do is walk about the house looking for things that need doing. The idea here is that I really do not want to start on the painting so I look for excuses not to. Maybe I am the only person who does this, I don't know. The reason is that I am scared. The weather is looking fine, maybe I could go out somewhere for a few hours.

The sketch is looking so good that I am pretty sure that I am going to spoil it once I start laying on colours. I really feel that I do not know what I am doing. More accurately perhaps, I look into the immediate future of the painting and see nothing but uncertainty and potential failure, my failure.

Anyway, after several days and having run out of reasonable excuses, plus it's raining, I make a start.

I lay in a dark green background. Seems safe enough, but already I do not like it. Never mind, ignore it, I can change it later perhaps. Then I try to mix some of the brownish colours on the frog and block in some of the darker shapes. Actually quite enjoying it for the moment!

 
At this stage I am using acrylic paint. My aim is to build up an under-painting that I can then finish in oils. I feel quite safe with this as I know I am not producing the finished work yet. The paint dries quickly and I can easily overpaint it if I make a mistake. One slight problem that you can probably spot from the photo above is that I am steadily obliterating the pencil grid that I drew to guide me. So if major restructuring is required it will have to be done by eye. This acutally turns out to be a real problem a bit later as I attempt to reproduce some of the markings on the frog's face. For the moment though let me just work on the reflection. It is curiously blue looking. I also manage to make some drawing mistakes here that I never quite manage to eliminate from the painting. Ho Hum!

Because I feel safer working on the acrylic under-painting, I decide to continue and add more detail. Actually, it is necessary as I am finding the facial markings and, in particular, the structure of the eyes, rather difficult to understand. Who knew that frogs were so complicated?

Still trying to get the face and eyes sorted out (below) and feeling a bit embarrassed that I am putting so much effort into this stage of the work. Never mind, nobody is watching and no one will ever know. Besides, I feel the need to get this sorted out, even if it is just by trial and error.

After a few hours inconclusive work I begin to wonder if adding some water weeds will take the viewers' eyes off the rather inscrutable face. So I tentatively put some in.

OK, that is about as far as I feel I can go in acrylics. Time now for the final oil painting. Of course this provokes another severe bout of prevarication. It seems like it will be for real now, so I look for other urgent tasks, even non-urgent tasks, to distract me. It is amazing how much there is to do!

About a week later I finally squeeze some oil paints out and start trying to mix some of those subtle colours. My first job is to replace the background with a more lively looking green. Again, backgrounds are a safe starting point. Then it is just a matter of working progressively through the under-painting and refining shapes and colours with the oils. In the process I do away with the water weeds, but perhaps that was a mistake. Not sure. I get so absorbed in the oil painting that I forget to take any more photos as the work progresses. It takes most of the day.

Finally, I stand back and try to appraise the result. It is no good to keep interfering with it in the hope of making it right by a magic accident of brushwork. You have to blow the whistle and accept it for what it is. Here is the final image below. It is just 8 x 10" on canvas-covered board. A portrait of a frog.

I do not often feel really happy with my finished works at the moment. Naively perhaps, I look forward to a time when I will. This was my hope at least until my son, who is a proper artist,  http://www.paintingnature.co.uk/ told me that the difficulties never go away!

Perhaps the best philosophy is just to keep trying and not get too hung up if things do not go well. Years ago the teacher at an art class I attended used to say "That is probably about enough work on one painting" and would then suggest starting the next. Good idea, it will probably be a fox next.

All my paintings to date may be found at http://johncrabb.co.uk/gallery_694720.html

From Bird Photography to Oil Painting Birds

 ALL THE PHOTOS IN THIS BLOG WILL ENLARGE IF YOU CLICK ON THEM

These days I like to think of myself as a bird photographer. If you visit my website at www.johncrabb.co.uk  I think you will appreciate why. It is crammed with bird photos! Logical.

I have been taking bird photos for five or six years now. It has been a passion and a very satisfying passtime. I think I have generally improved and certainly never lost interest in the pursuit of better and better photos. Until now perhaps.

Almost since the beginning I have been aware that I have an interest in it that goes beyond just getting clever photos of birds and other wildlife, satisfying though this is. Something else has always been in the back of my mind and has been growing in significance as time has gone on - I am interested in making beautiful pictures. Gradually I have searched for beauty in the photos I take. Take this picture of a Chiffchaff on a wire for instance.

This was quite an early shot of mine, but it has always haunted me. I was alerted to it by a comment made when I was giving one of my illustrated talks, on this occasion to a camera club. A man in the audience said it moved and saddened him to see the contrast between the soft vulnerability of the bird and the harsh cruelty of the barbed wire. That comment opened my eyes to the fact that my photos could be more than just snaps of different types of birds, they also had emotional and often artistic content too.

Anyway, to cut a long story very short, this idea of artistic beauty gradually grew within me until one day I took the daring step to lay down my camera for a while and see if I could reinterpret some of my photos as paintings. Daring! Especially as I had not tried any thing artistic for more than thirty years.

I attended a short oil-painting course and was expertly taught the basics of oil technique and colour mixing. There then followed a period when I assiduously painted oranges, apples and lemons to see if I could actually render a plausible image on to canvas. Then the big leap to working with some of my bird photos as a source. Here is my first oil painting. It is a reinterpretation of the photo above.

It was a very uncertain, but quite satisfying, beginning. I realised how little I knew about painting and therefore how much there was to learn in what remains of my life. I wish I had started sooner!

I was determined in this painting to try to remain true to the idea raised in that camera club talk. Accordingly I tried very hard to reproduce the appearance of the barbed wire. The bird I rendered more softly.

I cannot really describe to you how difficult I am finding this new activity. Each time I sit down before one of my photos and an empty canvas I feel great anxiety and uncertainty. Usually I just stand up again and walk around the house looking for other things that need doing. Any horrible chore suddenly seems more approachable than to attempt a painting. Failure seems to be almost certain and I do not want to fail. But eventually I start.

Sometimes I am surprised how the image grows in front of me. It does not seem to be anything to do with me. I just have to have the courage to keep going, to keep mixing the colours and dabbing on the paint in approximately the right places. Also I need the wisdom to know when to stop! The desire to overdo stuff in an attempt to rescue it is very strong.

My second ever bird painting is shown below.

It is the same bird on a different stretch of wire. Again I have tried to render the wire accurately but this time the bird was more difficult as much more of its feather structure had to be protrayed. These paintings are just 8 x 12" and painted with quite large brushes. I use large brushes because I am fighting against the temptation to reproduce every small detail and thereby end up with an exact copy of the original photo. I want more than that - I will say something more later. But for the time being the problem is, and still is actually, how to satisfactorily portray enough of the feather structure without chasing the details. I think that I have accidentally got it about right in this painting. See particularly the large primary feathers on the folded wing and also the tail. They look fairly convincing just as they are.

The next painting was this one I think, a Long Tailed Tit.

Here, instead of using barbed wire for the emotional contrast with the bird I have substituted a nasty looking bramble. Starting this one was again daunting. Looking back I really do not know where I found the courage. You may think I am overstating the difficulty, but it seems rather real to me! 

Or maybe my next painting was this one. I rather think it was, come to think of it. Another Chiffchaff on another wire in completely different lighting conditions.

Before I ever attempted to paint birds I tried to think of an approach, or vision, that I could embrace and aim for. As I said, I did not want just a copy of the original photo but wanted to add something, or perhaps just extract the essence. I actually never came to a conclusion about the approach to adopt, I just started trying to paint. What I am finding now is that the paintings come out to be different from the photos, but in an accidental sort of way. For now this difference between the photo and the painting is enough for me, but eventually I hope to develop a vision of how I want the paintings to look and what I want them to convey, and set about trying to achieve it deliberately.

This next painting is of a Linnet, again on a wire.

I am struggling a bit with creating backgrounds for my paintings. Normally I ignore the background in the photo (unless it is particularly appealing) and try to think of something that will complement the bird image.

I have done about six paintings at this early stage in my career and am still no more confident when I start each one than I was at the beginning. My technique so far is to transfer an approximate outline of the bird on to the canvas using the "squaring off" method. That is to say, draw a regular grid of lines over the photo, draw a similar grid on the canvas but perhaps larger, then sketch across the contents of each square on the photo until you have a workable outline on the canvas. It is a well know method apparently and it works well enough. I then block in some darkish colours corresponding to the main colour areas of the bird. These under-layers serve as the deepest layer of feathers and I usually build up the lighter upper layers by sparsely brushing them on in the appropriate colour. Sometimes I do the under-layers in acrylic paint as it dries quickly - not sure how I will proceed from here. Before building up the plumage, it is important to get the background in so that I can brush some of the feather ends out into it to soften the bird's outline.

I devote some particular care to painting the eye and the beak with a small brush, but trying not to make it look too fussy. This area of the bird's face has to look convincing I feel.

For my sixth painting I tried this Long Tailed Tit. The canvas board is only 5 x 7" and it was very fiddly to paint the bird.

What I would really like to do at this size is to represent the bird with just a few, bold but well-chosen strokes. I do not seem to dare at the moment and always find myself attempting to reproduce at least some of the details. I really do feel that I have a big hill to climb.

Here is a shot of my work station with the next painting underway. You can see that I have transferred the image and have got as far as blocking in the main colour areas. I am, as always, currently dreading getting back to this for fear of making a mess of it! Have been quite lucky so far though, so fingers crossed. Note that the electronic kit in the background is for something else!

So, that is the story so far. I would like to write another Blog on this subject in a few months time so that we can all see how I have developed.

In the meantime, you can see all my paintings at http://johncrabb.co.uk/gallery_694720.html

Please let me have your reactions to this story. Any  encouragement also welcome at this delicate stage!