Animal Painting from Life -- 7 Tips

I make a lot of super-short videos that are only 15-60 seconds long. I think that's too short to put on YouTube individually, so I packaged some of them up a group of them and tied them together with a theme.

So here are seven of my top tips for drawing and painting live animals.


1. TAXIDERMY (ALASKAN WOLF)
2. SLEEPING (BASSET, HUSKY)
3. HOLD THEM (LENNY / TURK / PATCHES)
4. PROFILE (PALOMINO)
5. TREAT (JEZEBEL)
6. MULTIPLES (CHICKENS, RABBITS)
7. AMUSE THEM (SMOOTH AT WINDOW)
(Link to YouTube).

Note the new title sequence, shot recently in a grassy field near here. I like the way the grass stems disguise the wires.
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Previously:
Answers to your questions about sketching animals from life

Aposematism

Aposematism is a special coloration designed to scare off potential predators. It also includes other kinds of warning signals such as foul odors or attention-getting sounds.

Lowland streaked tenrec

It's effectively the opposite of camouflage. Instead of blending into the background, the aposematic color scheme reminds predators to stay away to avoid getting stung or poisoned, thus saving both animals from potential harm.

Poison dart frog

Young predators sometimes make the mistake of attacking one of these conspicuous species. If the attacker survives the experience, it learns to avoid them in the future. The system of defense therefore works best against predators who are able to learn.

The coral snake (above) is poisonous, but the harmless milk snake (below) mimics its coloration and derives a benefit.

Aposematic colors in insects are often red, yellow, orange, and black, colors that are can be seen by birds, lizards, and primates, their chief predators. The skunk uses black and white, because that pattern is most noticeable to mammalian predators.

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Aposematism on Wikipedia

Guest Post by Jeanette

Hi, blog readers and fellow artists. I'm Jim's wife Jeanette, the lady in the background of the videos. A few of you have asked to see what I'm up to, so here's a look into my recent sketchbooks. 

Remember the scene of the house in the Catskills?  What attracts me is that dark ridge of land brooding over the house. I also want to show the garage next to the house, because the owner keeps going back and forth to deal with his classic cars.

I usually prefer vertical compositions, so most of my sketchbooks are set up that way. I'm working in watercolor in a Stilman and Birn Beta Softcover Watercolor Sketchbook 5.5 x 8.5". 

I paint the Vanderbilt Garden on two peaceful mornings, standing under a shady pergola covered with grapevines and surrounded with ferns. 

The only interruptions are inchworms falling on my hat. Two sessions are really great to have for finishing a sketch, if the weather stays consistent. Seeing it with fresh eyes helps me to repair the inevitable mistakes.

This house undergoing renovation is lots of fun to paint, and luckily I have two sessions again. I like the contrast between the pile of heavy rocks and the delicate scaffolding. There's a bright red clump of hollyhocks bravely blooming amidst the chaos.

The last two paintings are done in The Perfect Sketchbook, produced by Erwin Lian in Singapore. The 7"x 10.25" hardbound book has Fabriano watercolor paper, which has a "softer" surface than my other watercolor sketchbooks and an ivory color to the paper.

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Stilman and Birn Beta Softcover Watercolor Sketchbook

Marker Sketch of Fritz

Fritz is an autonomous, sentient drone called a "hoverhead" based on the design of a ceratopsian, from Dinotopia: First Flight (1999). Note that his trim is dented and he's missing the chrome ring around his right eye.

For those of you who like to paint old, dented things, the "Dead Vehicle Challenge" is going strong with lots of great entries already. Deadline is the end of the month. Check it out on the Facebook event page.

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Get a copy of the expanded edition Dinotopia: First Flight  which has a behind-the-scenes supplement for no extra charge.

Mort Drucker: "No Shortcuts"

Illustrators Quarterly is a UK magazine that focuses on historical and contemporary illustration worldwide, kind of a European equivalent of Illustration magazine here.

The current issue spotlights Mort Drucker (born 1929), the movie satirist who worked for Mad Magazine for more than 50 years.

Correction: Ray Walston as Poopdeck Pappy
Robin Williams as Popeye by Mort Drucker

Drucker's movie satires had to capture the look of all the stars from various angles and in various expressions. Even more remarkably, he had to recall the faces from memory, because in the years before the Internet, it was virtually impossible to find movie stills, especially of a movie that was in the theaters.

The article includes about 50 large images of Drucker's work, mostly reproduced from the original, so that you can see the pasted-up text as if it is on the page in front of you.

The article is written by David Apatoff, author of the popular blog Illustration Art. David is a close friend of Drucker and was with him recently at the Society of Illustrators in New York, where Drucker received a coveted Hall of Fame award.

Drucker was self taught in art: "School didn't do much for me," he recalls. "I had no schooling. I didn't know the first thing about drawing and had to learn it all by myself."

He continues: "I wanted to be as good as I could possibly be. No shortcuts. If you had a problem with something, attack it. Like hands, for instance.... Some artists drew hands in pockets or behind their backs and you knew those artists didn't want to have any part of drawing hands. But I always thought that if something's difficult, don't hide, don't run away from it. Learn to master it. That was my philosophy. And so I'd draw hands as if my life depended on it. If you can't draw hands don't look at how somebody else draws hands, study your own hand, do things so that you personally get to know and appreciate hands."
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You can get this issue of Illustrator's Quarterly at Bud's Art Books.
Books on Drucker: MAD's Greatest Artists: Mort Drucker: Five Decades of His Finest Works
Familiar Faces: The Art of Mort Drucker
David Apatoff is also the author if the recent book The Life and Art of Bernie Fuchs.

Claus's Grainy Luminism

Emile Claus (1849-1924) conveyed a brilliant sense of light through fine textures of broken color, giving the painting a grainy look.  (Click image to see uncropped composition)

Art historians classify Claus in the category of Belgian luminism, a movement with sources in impressionism and pointillism. 

Some of Claus's paintings resemble those of Claude Monet, who was one of heroes. The color of the bridge is made up of many different component strokes. 

Instead of doing this with tiny brushstrokes (which can get a mechanical look) you can get this effect by dry-brushing one color over a different a contrasting dry layer of color, which works especially well in casein. 

30+ year old Ektachrome movie film. Film by Justin Cary

The look reminds me of analog film, especially when the subject is backlit. This is a frame from a home movie recently shot on old film stock. The textures are full of grain, and the sky burns out the edges of the silhouettes.

The grainy, jumping quality resemble the way our eyes see, too, as the receptors in our retina fire unequally over time.

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Book on Emile Claus (1849-1924)