Grizzly Bear Wildlife Painting Demo - Day 2

Okay...on to day 2. It doesn't look like I've accomplished a heck of a lot yet...just my hubby snapping pics...Like my studio? Lol! It's my kitchen. It has the best light in the house. I do have a proper "studio" set up downstairs, but I never paint down there. It feels too much like a dungeon.

This is about 2 hours in on day 2. I've layed in a mid-tone color for the water, and added some highlights. I've also done more refining on the bear. Just darkening between the wet clumps and accentuating some of the lights, trying to get that feeling of form instead of flatness...

This is about 4 hours in. So that's about 8 hours of painting so far. I've switched to oils now. I confess...I lost patience with the acrylic paint. I looked at all of that water, and realized just how much work it would be in acrylic, and with a huge sigh of defeat,  I pulled my oil pallet out of the freezer. (Yeah, I store it in there to keep the paints from drying out!) Since my discovery of Liquin, a painting medium which helps flow, and speeds drying time, I've found that I can paint wildlife in oils just as effectively as in acrylics, and I love how easy oils are to blend, and that you have time to work with them while they're still wet. 

So here I've worked the water in the whole right side of the canvas. I started picking out individual waves and highlights, trying to achieve the transparency and movement.

Stay tuned for day 3!

In Progress Wildlife Grizzly Bear Painting

The sketch--I use willow or vine charcoal to lay in the drawing...I fill in all the details because it helps me learn my way around the bear. Even though the drawing will be obliterated, my hand and brain still "remember" those little detail lines. When using reference photos and a large format, I grid the canvas and the photo to make sure I get the proportions right. This canvas is my largest so far, "30 x 40".  

This is about two hours in of painting. I'm blocking in the major lights, darks and mid-tones. I usually start with the darks, then the lights, and middle last. I follow the contours of the bear, imagining his muscle underneath and lay down the strokes in the direction that his fur would fall.

The end of Day 1. This is at about four hours painting, not including drawing the image. I've added the light on his nose and his eyes (my favorite part!) The eyes help me focus on the image and make it more interesting for the long haul. Understand that right now, this is all Block-In...every centimetre of what I've already painted will be painted over again and again...the joys of acrylic, and glazing! But it's necessary. That's what gives you the depth and realism. It's like constructing the bear, hair by hair!

My newest painting...done! Finally:) I've been dreaming a lot of grizzlies lately...I guess they're all people want to see in Bella Coola right now. 
11" x 14" oil on 1 1/2" profile cradled panel.
$600.00. Contact me to purchase.

Old Man Drawing

Old Man Drawing in my sketchbook with coffee, graphite and white chalk

about 4" x 6"

Realistic portraits are my default art. When I'm absentmindedly sketching, it's faces, always faces. Ever since I started drawing, as a child, I drew faces (and horses!)  And when I'm feeling directionless, I always go back to faces. It's what's familiar and meaningful to me. 

A human face...the first thing we see when we open ours eyes in this world. 

A roadmap of a life lived, a personality.  Anger, sadness, love, happiness, wisdom. A human being. 

A Doodle Gone Good ~ The Raven

~The Raven ~ pen and ink, and photoshop

I have to admit, I have been horribly remiss when it comes to painting...sigh...where did my discipline go!?  I've been making jewelry, and inventing recipes for gluten free, sugar free baked goods, and sewing for the local farmer's market, everything else but painting.  The business of summer has turned into the business of fall!  

Also something else is taking up a bit of my time...I confess, I got a job. One where you work for someone else, put in your hours and get a paycheck. It is only part time, because I do still consider myself a full time artist, but I needed the social fix, more so than the money. Being an artist is a lonely occupation. And the stress of depending solely on my art for finances really took away a lot of the pleasure that I used to get from painting. I'm happy to say that this year has actually been wonderful as far as my art goes. Sales every year are getting better and better, I just needed a break so that I could learn how to love it again:) I started a new grizzly bear yesterday, though, so I think I'm back on a roll. I'll post progress pics soon. And I'm hoping to get another "charity" portrait done by next week, too. 

Anyways, this painting came together pretty quickly the other day. I was actually just doodling on a random bit of paper, and my doodle looked pretty good, so I decided to add some ink washes. The kids brought home a raven or crow feather, too, and I had another bit of paper, so I sketched the feather on that piece and added some more ink. I spent the rest of the day scanning it into the computer and trying to come up with a cohesive design in photoshop since it was just two random bits. At first I thought it would look neat with just the feather and the raven, but it looked too empty and disconnected. So I added a verse from Edgar Allen Poe's poem, "The Raven" behind, and it tied it seems to have visually tied it all together.

What do you think?

I made the front page!

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I made the front page!! Tahirih Goffic Fine Art  ArtsWells and ArtWalk Well, summer has been a whirlwind for me! I wish I could say I that I've been painting like a madwoman, but that's not the case. I have been very much involved in the provincial art scene, though. I think that I may have forgot to mention before, but a painting of mine was juried into the Central Interior Regional Arts Council travelling show in April, and I just discovered yesterday, that they actually used the other one that I entered as the image for their poster! (It also received an honorable mention, but wasn't juried in) I live in a very isolated place, and we're 450 km away from the next closest city, so news gets to me pretty slowly, lol! July was spent for the most part at my parent's farm in Quesnel, (576 km from my where I live now), but I was involved with the Quesnel "Artists in the Market", a once yearly event where the local artists team up with the Farmer's Market for an exhibition. I had a wonderful time talking with the locals, and getting to know some of Quesnel's great artists. August 3-6 was the highlight of my whole trip. ArtsWells, a yearly arts and music festival which takes place in the historic town of Wells, B.C. This cozy mining town is as friendly now as it was in its heyday in the 1930s and was once a company townsite for the Cariboo Gold Quartz Mine. It is filled with many unique heritage buildings, painted in cheerful colors, and is populated with an eclectic mix of snowbirds,  miners, artists and musicians, and come August, it is filled to the brim with festival goers. I was thrilled to once again be invited to take part in the Mini Mural project. Over the four days of the festival we painted our hearts out to each create a 4 foot by 4 foot mural, which will later be auctioned off to raise money for next years' festival. The murals stay in the community and decorate the sides of houses and businesses all over town, adding to it's already colorful atmosphere. And I'm also thrilled to report that six of my paintings will be residing at the Barking Spider bike shop in Williams Lake, B.C., for the month of August, as I am once again involved in ArtWalk 2012! Now it's time to get back to painting...my real job!   Please "Like" and "Tweet" my posts! I love new followers. You guys keep me going!   Copyright © 2012 Dragonfly Studios, All rights reserved.

Slowing Down

Wishing ~ 7" x 9" oil on canvas panel

BID NOW

75% of the proceeds of this painting go to the Hunger Project Charity. Help me help an African family build a sustainable life...and you get a painting!

Today I awoke to the sound of my computer powering up...I guess when you put your computer to sleep it lasts exactly 12 hours, and then the monitor wakes itself up again?! I didn't know that...I thought there was a ghost in my room:P, Lol! But that means I slept 12 hours! Crazy! (I only had four hours of sleep the night before, in my own defense:)

At any rate, what did I do? Rush over to check my emails, start surfing, before you know it I've got like, 12 tabs open and I'm switching back and forth, not even finishing one post before my attention is snagged by another, my brain full of images, factoids, quotes. All before my morning coffee! What!? 

And I realized, not for the first time, that I hate, and I love the internet. For it has created this fast paced society, where we're not satisfied with only one thing at a time, but we have to be speeding through, gleaning bits and pieces, and never fully absorbing anything. Looking for instant gratification, but never satisfaction, because something better or more interesting might be around the corner. It's become a necessary part of my business, but also a huge distraction and mode of procrastination.

So today instead of going for my morning run, I decided to walk. 

And what I saw, and smelled, and thought about, was truly amazing.

Did you know the forest in summer in Quesnel smells like cinammon?

I saw hundreds of deer tracks, and behind them, little mini deer tracks, telling me the story of a mama and baby following the same route as I...I wonder where they went. Are they hiding, watching me pass by? My thoughts wandered, about things important and unimportant, about things sad and happy, I acknowledged them all, and followed them around, asking what they meant to me, but allowing myself to just observe them.

I ate wild strawberries (didn't know they were still out), found a huge saskatoon bush (delicious and juicy), and peeking around the corner of a new path I saw a clearing and I found it filled with wild raspberries. So I had my breakfast, growing wild, a tasty gift from Mother Earth. 

I made a decision to try to do this every day. Acknowledge and absorb the beauty around me, get away from the computer. Be in the  moment.  Appreciate the abundance around me, because I have so much more than these people that I want to help.