Category: Animals

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Whose Art Is It Anyway?

In 2008, I hosted the Canadian Editorial Cartoonists Conference in Banff. Several industry veterans who attended came up in a culture where busy unionized daily newspapers hired editorial cartoonists for impressive salaries, benefits, and pensions. I began my career at the end of all that.

I put a lot of work into the conference and preparing a Photoshop drawing class, trying to impress and curry favour with the more established cartoonists in this exclusive club. But, unfortunately, I realized too late that nobody cared. They were simply looking for an excuse to visit Banff, hang out and talk shop. It was about nostalgia, politics, and competitors fishing for information.

I wanted to improve my skills and artwork and learn how to adapt to a struggling industry, but many of them were focused on avoiding having to change. In fact, in the wrap-up, one of the more senior cartoonists loudly promised there wouldn’t be any Photoshop drawing classes at the next conference.

Clearly, I didn’t belong in this group.

In 2009, I attended another conference, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals in Las Vegas. I had been a member of this supportive online community for several years. Critiques were constructive, questions were answered with enthusiasm, and I learned more from that association than any before or since.

Fresh off that first Photoshop World conference,  inspired to try something new, I painted a funny looking grizzly bear, my first whimsical wildlife portrait.

I went to that conference five times between 2009 and 2014. In 2010 and 2014, I won multiple Guru Awards for my animal paintings, including two Best in Show awards. The classes and instructors, the community of friends and colleagues, it was time and money well spent.

At Photoshop World, I made valuable business connections. For a long time after, I had a welcome working relationship with Wacom, the company that makes the drawing tablets and displays I’ve used for the past 25 years. I recorded two training DVDs for PhotoshopCAFE, and NAPP helped me form a strong foundation for my creative skills.

Eventually, social media killed the forum, and the organization rebranded. As a result, NAPP no longer exists, and the Photoshop World conference is a ghost of its former self.

Time spent pining for the way things used to be is a waste. Adaptation is the most useful skill a self-employed artist can have.

While licensing and retailers are essential for my business, those customers each have their own ideas of what they want from my work. One retailer wants more bears; another wants more wolves. One agency wants me to follow seasonal trends; another client wants more realistic animals. Some products sell better with brighter, more colourful elements, and some without a background. Some items work better with a vertical layout, others horizontal.

Most artists have heard they should find their niche, the work that makes them unique and different from everybody else. It’s the key to survival in a crowd where a lot of art looks the same. But if you work hard and are lucky enough to discover the work that defines you, the next piece of advice you hear is that you need to make it appeal to everyone all the time.

Well, which is it?

How do you create work you enjoy enough to keep doing it year after year and continue to make it pay? How do you serve your customers and clients and allow their input and direction without changing your work so much that it’s no longer yours? Is it artwork or factory work?

When it becomes a grind or just about pumping out more images, it can take all the joy out of it. Lately, finishing some paintings has brought the same sense of accomplishment I get from cleaning the house. That’s a telltale sign of burnout. I’ve been here before, more than once. It’s a common experience with anyone who creates anything, especially if it’s their job, a warning that something’s got to give.

I know how to paint a single animal. I’ve put almost fifteen years into it. Each takes hours to paint, and the work I’m doing now is better than I’ve ever done, but it’s still the same style and (shudder) formula. It’s not as challenging or fulfilling as it used to be.

I’ve taken a new approach with the trio of giraffes, already titled “Long Neck Buds.” I don’t know if it will work the way I imagine it, but if it does, it will be the first of several I plan to paint this way.

This latest individual giraffe isn’t quite a finished piece, but it’s close. It will also be the middle giraffe in the painting based on the group sketch above. With the simple background, it’s a solid painting on its own. I’ll paint the other two individually, like this first one, with my usual high detail, then I’ll place them all together. Finally, I’ll paint the sky, clouds and leaves around them.

I’m a commercial artist, it’s how I make my living. I don’t pretend otherwise. But this is also supposed to be fun. I want to paint more detailed and elaborate images I’ll enjoy while also leaving options open for clients and licenses with different needs.

I want to create more paintings this way—a troop of meerkats, several burrowing owls, and a waddle of penguins. I could paint different species in an image. However, with each critter as detailed as my usual work, these will take longer than a single painting, requiring a more substantial investment in each piece.

I get nervous when spending too much time on one painting, likely due to many years of drawing editorial cartoons. Twenty years ago, when almost nobody was publishing my work, I would spend many hours nitpicking a cartoon, trying to get a caricature right or fussing with perspective. Shonna and I referred to these as Sistine Chapel cartoons. I had to train myself to say, “good enough.”

Most political cartoons have a short shelf life, so speed is essential. Get it done, get it out, and get started on the next one. My cartoon work pays monthly bills.

With a painting, however, the income can come anywhere from next week to next year. Pieces I painted ten years ago are still paying today. Paintings are an investment in future prints, products and licensing, income that often comes later.

This year, I’m making time to play and experiment.

I’ll share works in progress, sketches, and thoughts along the way, but fewer finished pieces. The ones I do complete will be bigger and hopefully worth waiting for. Of course, I expect I’ll still paint a single animal here and there if the mood strikes me.

11” X14” poster prints will come out only a couple of times a year rather than as I complete them. With higher shipping costs, I imagine that it won’t be a problem for collectors of my work to be able to order two or three new pieces at a time with one shipping cost.But I’ll still welcome custom metal and canvas special order prints. You can order those by email anytime. The above 18”x24” sloth on canvas and 20″x20” Blue Beak Raven on metal below are two custom orders that arrived this week.The puzzles I launched this year felt like a considerable risk, but I sold a lot of them and have received requests for more. I’m suddenly motivated to plan paintings that will work as prints, puzzles, stickers and more. I’m also exploring puzzle licensing opportunities.

In the meantime, my collection of more than 100 paintings will continue to pay the bills with prints and licensing, as will drawing daily editorial cartoons, for as long as newspapers hang on.

I’m not having any fun. That needs to change.

Cheers,
Patrick

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Tarantula

One evening when Shonna and I were first dating, we watched the fun comedy horror movie Arachnophobia with her mom and stepfather. The movie over, I sat in front of the TV to rewind and remove the rented VHS tape. Yes, it was a long, long time ago.

With my back to the room, I didn’t notice Shonna’s cat, Princess, walking up behind me, looking for attention. After two hours of spiders on the brain, I jumped when her whiskers touched my bare arm. To this day, Shonna swears I levitated. Her late stepfather Ivar was crying from laughing so hard, and the cat looked at me as if to say, “what’s your problem?”

Spiders. They certainly push the phobia button for many people, including me.

Multiple legs propel them at seemingly impossible speeds as they find their way under shirt collars or up pant legs. They lie in wait, between sheets and sleeping bags, hiding in dark corners and crevices, waiting to sink their dagger-like fangs into our flesh and inject their killer poison. Or worse, they can’t wait to lay their eggs in our ears.

At least, that’s the nightmare we imagine.

Reality is a lot less frightening, though not for them. Many households have a designated spider killer. But, like most natural creatures, they have much more to fear from us than we from them.

Spiders are fascinating creatures. They keep more invasive insect species in check, including aphids and caterpillars that can decimate crops. They help control the populations of other insects that spread disease.

According to the Boston Children’s Hospital, “It is estimated that less than three deaths per year occur from spider bites. However, most victims are children. Most of the 20,000 species of spiders found in the United States are poisonous, but their fangs are too short or too fragile to break through human skin. The bites of most spiders cause only minor, local reactions.”

Mosquitoes kill a million people each year. While they’re annoying, we hardly fear them to the extent we do spiders. The bite from a tarantula is comparable to a bee sting in both pain and repercussions. If you’re not allergic, it’s unlikely even to make you sick.

The other day, Shonna came home from work and mentioned she’d seen a little spider on the wall inside our front door and wondered what had happened to it. I had seen the same spider earlier in the day and told her it was too cold to put it outside, so I left it alone. It was likely still in the house somewhere. Yet, miraculously, we both keep waking up each morning. Surely we should be dead by now.

For many of us, our first reaction is revulsion and shivers. But, just like with every other animal that scares me (BEARS!), knowledge rarely cancels out irrational fear.

In the fall of 2021, the Calgary Expo had a much smaller mid-pandemic version of the event. Like it was for many people, it had been a financially challenging year, and I didn’t think paying for a booth would be worth the investment, given the reduced attendance.

As a vendor, I usually only have a limited time to look around if I arrive early each day before the doors open. So, it was fun to buy a ticket and attend the event with my buddy, Derek, who brought along his daughter and her friend.

For a small fee, I had the opportunity to hold a tarantula. Of course, I had visions of this hairy little beast running up my arm and sinking its fangs into my neck (why my neck?!) or crawling across my face (OK, that one comes from Aliens), but I knew that in the real world, I had little to fear.

Once in my hands, I was amazed at how light she was. They’re quite fragile, so I knew the spider would die if I dropped it. Suddenly, my biggest concern was not to hurt this delicate creature, and I loved the experience, one I would repeat without hesitation.
Derek took some photos for me, and I’ve wanted to paint this tarantula ever since, though I doubt it will be a popular print. I just wanted to try it.

But how would I make this hairy little nightmare appealing? I know it’s possible because animator Joshua Slice did it several years ago when he created Lucas the Spider, a character based on a Jumping Spider.

As an aside, those two words together are terrifying for anybody with even a little arachnophobia.

Lucas the Spider is adorable and became a series of animated shorts and eventually a show on the Cartoon Network. However, a large part of his appeal was his movements, toddler’s voice and that he blinks. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to achieve any connection with a painting.

A tarantula’s mouth is on the underside of its body, so I couldn’t very well have it smiling. The character had to be in the eyes. But with no eyelids or bone structure to help with expression, I wasn’t sure if any personality would appear.

And yet, the natural features below his eyes suggested a moustache and maybe the illusion of a mouth. Humans are geared to see patterns. It’s called Pareidolia, just one of the weird ways our brains are wired. It’s why we see shapes in clouds, the man in the moon, or a religious figure in a grilled cheese sandwich. It’s suspected to be tied to survival and recognizing environmental threats.

I didn’t see the imagined face in this spider until the last few hours, but once I did, I couldn’t unsee it.

I showed the finished painting to Shonna yesterday morning, convinced she wouldn’t like it. But the first thing she said was, “he’s cute.”

I wonder if anyone else will feel the same way.

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Puzzles Packed and Posted

My first puzzle order from the manufacturer was bigger than planned because I sold more in the preorder than expected.

I had been forewarned to anticipate four weeks minimum for manufacture and shipping. So when I launched the preorder with A Wilder View subscribers, I erred on the same side of caution and said four to five weeks until they arrived at MY door, then shipping time after that. I ordered on February 21st, estimating delivery between the 18th and 25th of March.

Three large boxes arrived last Thursday, just nine days after I ordered them. I emailed Puzzles Unlimited to thank my sales contact for such excellent service. She said orders were moving quickly through the factory these days, but she always pads delivery estimates to anticipate issues.

I offered, “Given the shipping delays of the past three years, who can blame you? Better to underpromise and overdeliver.”

“Exactly!” she replied.

I had checked, double-checked, and triple-checked for typos and errors on the box design before signing the order approval, but there was still that nervous moment inspecting the actual puzzle, followed by a sigh of relief. I love the design and wouldn’t change a thing.

Because their early delivery made me so happy, I wanted to pass that on to everyone who trusted me and supported this endeavour. So, with bonus vinyl stickers attached, I began my local deliveries the next day and got most of those done. On Saturday, I dropped several orders at the post office and completed more local deliveries. By Monday afternoon, all orders had been shipped or delivered, except for a couple of people who asked for later delivery.

So if you haven’t received yours in the mail, you soon will.
This whole experience was a lot of fun. First, Shonna and I enjoyed assembling the test puzzle over the holidays. Then, polling my subscribers to vote for their favourites so I could choose my first four puzzle designs worked out great. Then there was the back and forth with the manufacturer to finalize the design, and each new rendering was a gift.

Not to mention how much I enjoyed the enthusiasm with which many of you placed your email orders.

I was nervous ordering and paying for all of these, but the preorders made it much easier as most of these puzzles were sold before I got them. The remaining stock is for the Calgary Expo at the end of April.

I really want to crack one of these open and put it together, but with paintings in progress and Expo on the horizon, I’ve got too much on my plate. But if I’ve got one left in May, I’m looking forward to it.

While putting together the Grizzly on Grass over Christmas, I complained to Shonna that I was sure a piece was missing. I said that about five times. But they were all there, so obviously, I’m a better painter than puzzler.
Though I won’t be assembling another one myself right now, feel free to share your own fun with me. I would love to see your puzzles in progress and hear your feedback.

Thanks for making my first signature series puzzles a success. I can’t wait for the next designs.

Cheers,
Patrick

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Laughing Bear

I’ve lost track of how many animals I’ve painted since that first grizzly bear in 2009, but I know it’s more than a hundred.

Each animal I paint comes with its challenges and rewards because I always learn something new. That’s a big part of why I enjoy the work so much. I’ll never know enough, and there will always be room for improvement.

Though there are many species in my portfolio, I’ve painted more than 30 bears.

And then there’s Berkley. This new piece is the eleventh time I’ve painted her, plus all the sketches and unfinished renderings.

If you’ve followed my work for longer than five minutes, you’ll know all about her. An orphan rescued from the US in 2017 by my friend Serena at Discovery Wildlife Park in Innisfail, I’ve known Berkley since she was a few months old and have been painting her ever since. Here’s the first one.I sometimes get flack for supporting places like Discovery Wildlife Park, the Calgary Zoo and the Birds of Prey Sanctuary because they house captive animals.

Ideally, no animal would live in captivity, but we’re not the intelligent species we pretend to be. There are few places left in the world where animals can truly be wild. Even then, they’re likely national and provincial parks, sanctuaries, and conservancies. And of those places, the ones that admit tourists wage a constant battle against our bad behaviour.

Unless those places are fenced, animals don’t know about park boundaries. Their migration routes and natural habitats may take them in and out of protected areas. Once they leave those places, they easily fall victim to hunters and trappers. Sometimes, it’s reluctant ranchers protecting their herds from predation; other times, the animals have been lured out of parks by bait.

So while it’s easy to sermonize on social media that all animals should live in the wild, we’re not willing to sacrifice what it would take for that to happen. We’re the biggest threat to pretty much everything on the planet.

Even without people in the equation, we like to imagine that life in the wild is a happy ending Disney matinee. But nature is often violent, brutal and cruel, and survival is anything but a passive exercise for most species.

Animals are often orphaned and need rescuing. While some facilities exist that minimize human contact and release them back into the wild, truly noble work by dedicated individuals, many animals are rescued too late.

Once an animal has been fed by people or has found too many opportunities to get into unsecured garbage at homes or campsites, they can’t unlearn that lesson. So relocating animals rarely works as they will almost always find their way back to reliable food and familiar territory. Or animals that have already claimed the region will kill this new intruder.

So the choices left to deal with a spoiled bear are a home in a wildlife park or zoo, or they’re destroyed.

I know; I started this post with a happy-looking brown bear, then things got dark. Not my intent to bring you down, simply an explanation of why I support reputable zoos and parks that take care of animals.
Serena regularly sends Shonna and I texts and photos of the animals, and we visit Discovery Wildlife Park as often as possible. Not so much the past few years, for obvious reasons, but I intend to change that once the warmer weather arrives.

I’ve painted several animals Serena has raised, often those who had a rough start in life. Some haven’t made it past infancy, others have had challenging health issues, and many have died after living much longer than they would have in the wild. Serena and her staff have often raised these animals from cubs, pups, and kittens. Saying goodbye to them is always painful, often after expensive preventative or emergency veterinary care. Some of the stories have been heartbreaking, and I don’t know how they do it.

Supported by dedicated staff, Serena works seven days a week, often spending late hours at the park when an animal needs extra care. It’s rare when she gets a day off to spend with her husband and family, let alone take a real vacation. A T-shirt and sticker I’ve seen in a few places reads, “I do this for the money, said no zookeeper ever.”

Getting to know Berkley and spending close contact time with her the first couple of years, she always seems happy, though she did go through an amusing terrible-twos phase. I’ve watched her race up trees in a natural area on the grounds, splash through the creek and puddles, and gorge herself on berries in the fall. A favourite memory is Berkley helping herself to Shonna’s water.
It’s a wonderful feeling that Berkley still knows me each visit and comes to say hello, no matter where she is in her large enclosure.

Whenever I paint one of the animals Serena has raised, I send her the first look. When I sent her this finished Laughing Bear painting, this was part of our text exchange. Even in my whimsical style, she knows her own bears.

Bos and Piper are two other brown bear cubs the park rescued in 2021, and I’ve taken plenty of photos of them, too. I’ve painted Bos once already, but more will be forthcoming, as they both have big personalities and are natural hams.

But it’s obvious I have a favourite.

I’ve joked with Serena that she rescued her, raised her, nursed her through illness, fed her, trained her, played with her, and sacrificed all her free time for her.

But Berkley is my girl.

She allows me that delusion.

________

 

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Designs, Devices and DecalGirl


DecalGirl has been licensing my work on device cases and decals since 2016. It’s not one of my biggest licenses, but it is a favourite. The quality of their printing is excellent and lasts a long time.

It’s always fun to run into people who have my work on their phones or iPads. The above phones belong to two of my favourite supporters, Sheldon and Tracy, taken during a surprise encounter last year when I spent the afternoon with them at The Calgary Zoo.

Shonna and I have had DecalGirl hybrid cases on our phones for years. We both have the older iPhone 8 Plus; we hang onto tech until it’s dead. They’re solid workhorse phones, so we’re reluctant to replace them. Our Decalgirl Hybrid cases have been on these phones for years and are still in great shape. I’ve also got a beautiful print of my Shark painting on my laptop and a Smiling Tiger decal on my iPad Pro.

When people ask me what I do for a living, a common question in polite conversation, I say, “editorial cartoonist and I paint whimsical wildlife.”

Of course, that leads to more questions because they don’t know what whimsical wildlife means, and it’s hard to describe. So it comes in handy to show them my phone case or iPad decal and say, “stuff like this.”
This month, DecalGirl added two new designs to my available images, the Snow Queen and Hey Bear. These are two of my favourite paintings, so I’m pleased to see them in their gallery. As with most licensing, companies will change out the images now and then, keeping the more popular ones and retiring others. I do the same thing with prints.

There are currently ten of my designs available through DecalGirl. Check them out! Use the SAVE25 code to get 25% off right now!

Cheers,
Patrick

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Bugle Boy

Whenever I’ve gone to Ucluelet on Vancouver Island, I’ve walked down a large staircase to the government dock to take photos of sea lions. To locals, they’re unremarkable, even a nuisance. While I’m happily snapping photos, those working on the nearby fishing boats are likely rolling their eyes at this silly tourist.

For Banff and Canmore locals, elk are like those sea lions. We see them all the time. It can be a herd on a soccer field or a handful walking through an intersection, holding up commuter traffic.

Locals shake their heads and sigh, “come on, hurry up,” while tourists lose their minds trying to grab a photo.

When I first moved to Banff, seeing these big animals all over the place was fantastic. Thirty years later, I’m more than used to them. Last week, I saw several hanging out next to an overpass on the secondary highway. When a herd of elk suddenly decides the grass is greener on the other side of the road, it’s a hazard.

I sent Shonna a text to warn her, as she’d likely take that route home later in the dark.

A little while ago, my next-door neighbour, Chris, told me a herd was hanging out in the ballpark next to our condo complex. He knows I’m always on the lookout for reference photo opportunities. I thanked him, but I was busy, so I asked, “any bulls?”

There weren’t, so I kept working. I have plenty of cow pictures.

That’s how common they are around here.

A local urban legend tells of a tourist who tried to put their child on the back of one for a photo. I’ve never met anyone who actually saw this, it has always been a friend of a friend, but if there’s any truth to it, it wouldn’t shock me.

Everyone around here has seen someone get too close to an elk for a close-up photo, especially in Banff.  Worse, they’ll often attempt a selfie, putting their back to the animal. More than once, I’ve warned somebody that it was a terrible idea, and the response is usually, ‘mind your own business’ or a four-letter version of the same sentiment. Many seem to think ‘national park’ translates to ‘petting zoo.’

When you have to warn people not to get out of their cars to take photos of grizzly bears, it’s not surprising they have even less respect for what might seem like a bigger version of a deer.

Elk are incredibly unpredictable, especially during spring calving and fall Rut. It’s not just the males with the big racks but the cows protecting their young. Or one could decide to charge you for no reason, something many around here have experienced, including Shonna and me.

The only thing to do is duck into any available open door or put a car or obstacle between you, and hope the elk moves on. A hoof to the head is guaranteed to ruin your day.

I remember walking home on Banff Avenue from a night out at the bar in the late 90s. A raised lawn in front of an apartment building put the grass about hip level. I couldn’t see the large bull elk lying on the grass until I walked past the fir tree hiding him. By the time I realized he was there, I could have reached out and booped him on the nose.

Thankfully, having had a few drinks, I didn’t jump and startle him but kept walking, the whole time thinking, “don’t get up, don’t get up, don’t get up.”

A sobering experience, if there ever was one.

Their popularity with visitors is why the third whimsical wildlife painting I ever did was an elk in 2009. It did OK but was never a bestseller. And frankly, it’s among a handful of paintings I’ve done that I genuinely don’t like. I made poor composition choices, and the rack was only suggested.

Having painted more than 100 pieces since then, I’ve learned a lot from my early mistakes. People want to see that rack on the bull elk, and I don’t blame them. It’s taken me more than ten years to try it again.

Many don’t realize that bulls grow and lose their racks each year. As a result, it’s not uncommon to find shed antlers around here, though removing them from provincial and national parks is illegal, a crime that wardens will prosecute with substantial fines.

Ironic that rather than take the reference for this piece in my own backyard, I took the pics at Discovery Wildlife Park in the fall. Their bull, Donald, was bugling away, inspiring this composition I hadn’t considered, allowing me to paint the whole rack.

Males bugle to attract females to their harem and to warn other bulls. Even though Donald doesn’t need to worry about competition, he still shows off his pipes in the fall.

While it’s not a common experience near our place in Canmore, I used to love hearing the bulls bugle when we lived in Banff. It’s a beautiful sound to hear in the mountains. I’d put it up there with wolves howling, though I’m sure many locals would disagree with me. But then, I Iove the sound of coyotes yipping away at night, too.

This video doesn’t do the live experience justice, but here’s some bugling for you. Hope you like the painting.

Cheers,
Patrick

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Pat’s Puzzle Preorder!

Here we go! This is the warning bell for the preorder for my first independently produced puzzles! Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had some fun back-and-forth with Puzzles Unlimited, finalizing the four designs I’m ordering next week.
Just yesterday, I received the 3D preview renderings, the Otter you see here. As it’s been challenging for anybody who ships anything lately, I’ll be double-checking with Canada Post today to get the best shipping price I can, and preparing the preorder to launch on Monday, February 13th.
This preorder will be exclusive to A Wilder View subscribers and will be the best pricing deal I’ll ever offer on these. Might even throw in an extra surprise or two.

If you’re not on the list, you can sign up here and feel free to share this with anybody. Then keep on eye on your in-box for all the details this Monday.

I’m excited for this one!

Cheers,
Patrick

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Poke the Bear

When you find work that resonates with people, any deviation is a risk. People like the happy animals, so why upset the apple cart? Shouldn’t I create another image with a better chance of print sales and licensed images?

In 2009, my work was editorial cartoons, painting caricatures, and the occasional illustration gig. I was getting bored and painted a funny-looking grizzly bear to try something new. That small experiment changed my life and career for the better.

I painted this angry bear for the same reason, to do something different.

For the last while, I’ve been angry, frustrated, and afraid. We’re human, we have emotions, though we often deny or quash them for fear of others’ reactions. If you’re not dying in a ditch from cholera or a bullet wound in a third-world country, you’re not allowed to feel bad about anything. Don’t be so negative. Cheer up.

It’s called toxic positivity, and many use it as a passive-aggressive weapon to make themselves feel comfortable or righteous. How dare you be grumpy, sad, or depressed when things could always be worse?

Several years ago, I had debilitating lower back pain. It hurt to sit, drive, walk and lay down. It would wake me almost every night and begin as soon as I got out of bed each morning. It wasn’t long before Advil couldn’t touch it.

Shonna suggested I go to yoga with her, and that helped. We’ve been doing that together one night a week ever since, a healthy practice for flexibility, balance, and strength. But it wasn’t enough to eliminate the pain.

While googling incessantly for options, reading about compressed and bulging discs, spinal defects, and worse, I came across a book called Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection by Dr. John E. Sarno.

Sarno’s theory of Tension myositis syndrome (TMS) explains that for those with perfectionist and people-pleasing tendencies, the subconscious mind can create chronic pain to distract a person from dealing with repressed anger, fear, and stress.

Here’s where I lose most of you, and I knew that going in.

Before you post angry comments and send me emails telling me about your genuine bone, nerve, or systemic issues, I wouldn’t dispute anybody else’s pain. I’m not a doctor. Plenty of people require back surgery, have hip and knee problems, arthritis, and other physiological issues related to identifiable causes, especially with age. Stuff breaks down. Parts fail.

But this began in my late thirties. I tried the doctor, physiotherapy, and massage, and there was no reason for this dramatic physical failure. Anything that worked was a temporary fix with no lasting effect.

This was my experience; if it sounds familiar, it might be yours.

In a 1999 segment of 20/20, John Stossel profiled it well and said Sarno cured his back pain. Howard Stern credits Sarno with saving his life and talks about it often.

There were no courses or programs, no supplements to buy, and no up-selling. It was just a book; one I’ve since read and listened to several times.

If you want to call it one, the cure is realizing you’re doing it, acknowledging the anger, and bringing it into the light. It sounds simple, and it is. And it isn’t. Because after a lifetime of bad habits, the pain comes back, especially in times of stress, and not just in the lower back. It often moves around the body and manifests in other places. So when one distraction is realized, the subconscious finds another, somehow convinced that physical pain is preferable to emotional pain. That’s TMS.
Roll your eyes, shake your head, wave it off, and call me crazy. I don’t need to convince you. All I know is I went from near-crippling back pain for several months to having almost none over a decade later. You’d think a genuine bulging disc, spinal defect, or structural deformity would worsen with age, not disappear.

After the back pain left, however, other physical ailments would pop up over the years. I had sciatic pain in both legs that would come and go. I developed migraine headaches in times of stress. I had severe neck and shoulder pain. I once had jaw and tooth pain so bad I thought I needed root canals. At its worst, I couldn’t open my mouth wide enough to eat a hamburger. That went on for months.

These aren’t hallucinations. This was all real excruciating pain, and Sarno explains the physiology of it in the book. But it would fade once I recognized that it was simply another manifestation of the back pain in a different location. Then another pain would show up, and I’d have to realize it again.

In 2016, when the physical distractions no longer worked, I fell into a deep depression, as dark as you can go, and that means what you think it means. Thankfully, Shonna was supportive and urged me to get help. I didn’t want to take drugs, but I went into therapy, and over a few years, I retreated from looking too long into that abyss.

While the darkness is always there in the background, I’ve thankfully never fallen that far back again, though it permanently changed me. You can glue a broken vase, but the cracks remain.

I’ve sought the approval of others for most of my life. When I should have stood up for myself, I held my tongue to keep the peace, and all it got me was pain. The recovery taught me to no longer accept bullying, gaslighting, and criticism from those who would never take it from me.

The most important lessons are always hard.

But every so often, it’s easy to fall back into a bad habit, especially with the stress of the pandemic. Things have built up again over the last year, and I developed stomach issues. I eliminated one food from my diet, then another, then another. Tough for Shonna as she’s such an excellent cook.

At the end of last year and the beginning of this one, I’d finally had enough of this not making any sense. Realizing I was more affected than I thought by the stress of our car accident last year, higher interest rates, inflation, mounting business expenses, financial fear and uncertainty, I went back to the book and a TMS forum site. After some healthy reminders of what I already knew, it made sense that this was just another way my mind was distracting me from acknowledging my fears and anger—sneaky bugger.

I began a new habit of rapid-fire writing on the advice of one post I read.

I open a blank Word file and type a stream-of-consciousness rant about anything scaring me or making me angry. It’s the things we don’t like to admit, the selfish thoughts, the petty, bitter stuff we don’t say to other people for fear of their judgment. It’s Freud’s Id, that fussing toddler in all of us that wants what it wants.

It’s the part of you that wants to scream and rant in a grocery store lineup or start smashing back and forth in your car to get out of a traffic jam or punch your boss in the face when he makes you feel small and unappreciated. It’s acknowledging what we feel but aren’t allowed to express.

So, when I’ve been feeling ticked off or afraid, I’ve taken five minutes to write this stuff down, with lots of swearing, spelling mistakes, poor grammar, and no editing.

“I’m angry I have to draw another sleazy politician. I’m afraid I will never make enough money to feel secure. I’m angry that the demanding client won’t shut up and go away. I’m angry that my neighbour’s dogs are barking again. I’m afraid of getting old. I’m afraid of getting dementia. I’m afraid that none of this effort matters. I’m afraid people will think I’m whining with this self-indulgent post.”

And when I’ve had that childish temper tantrum on the page, I close the file without saving it. I’ve been doing this once daily for the past month whenever the mood strikes me.

My stomach issues are almost gone.

When we deny our emotions, we deny ourselves. When we allow others to assert their wants and needs over us at the expense of our mental health and we bury the resentment, there are consequences. When we let other people mistreat us and we stuff that down inside, it doesn’t just go away. It will show up somewhere else.

Eight billion people on the planet, and everybody has a different view of the world and their place in it. To live in a community means hiding your darker, baser instincts for everyone’s mutual survival. But it’s much healthier to still admit and acknowledge them privately and give that primitive self a voice. That part of you needs to speak, even if it’s to an empty room or on a blank page.

So this angry black bear was a little art therapy, another way to put some rage on the page, pour it into a painting of the animal I have feared and loved most.

I enjoyed it and I’ll do it again.
____
©Patrick LaMontagne 2023

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Diamond Tiger – NEW RELEASE

Diamond Art Club has the worldwide exclusive license for most of my work on diamond art kits, and I’ve been thrilled with what they’ve done with it.

To create a diamond art kit from a detailed image like mine, designers need to convert a painting into an entirely new format, a kind of blend between paint by numbers and cross-stitch.

I’ve checked out their competitors, and Diamond Art Club’s kits are the best I’ve seen. Clearly, their customers agree as they have a massive, devoted following.
The Otter was my first painting they launched last year, and that kit sold out in the first week. They released the T-Rex at the beginning of January this year, and that kit sold out, too. While the Otter is back in stock, I don’t know when they’ll restock the big dinosaur, but if you follow this link, they’ll let you know. Once on the site, make sure you select your country at the top right for pricing in your currency.

Others are coming this year, but I can’t talk about those yet. Their surprise announcements are always fun, anyway.

This brings me to the latest announcement yesterday. One of my most popular paintings, the Smiling Tiger is now a diamond art kit, and they’ll release it into the wild on Saturday, February 4th!

This kit is 20” x 27” (50.7cm x 69 cm) Round with 37 colours, including 2 Aurora Borealis colours. Diamond and Ruby members have a 30-minute early access window Saturday to shop the newest releases at 9 am PST / 12 pm EST, then general release will follow at 9:30 am PST / 12:30 pm EST.
One of the great benefits of licensing is that it introduces my work to a whole new community and audience. I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from folks who have bought and enjoyed these kits and many of them have become welcome subscribers to A Wilder View.

Cheers,
Patrick

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Do You Have a Sloth?

I’ve had so many requests for a sloth over the years that I decided to make it my first painting of 2023.

As with most paintings, it came with unique challenges and choices.

A sloth’s fur is coarse and wiry, with a bad-hair-day look, rather than the soft and smooth fur I enjoy painting most. I chose an entire body pose rather than a closeup of the face and a full-foliage scene over a nondescript background.

I could have painted the sloth in warmer colours for more contrast with the background or added more leaves in front and behind. Even though sloths are light brown, they move so slowly that algae and fungi grow in their fur, giving them a green tint. They use the algae to feed their young, and it provides camouflage. Moths and beetles live in their hair as well.

Many photos I found showed a lot of green, but some almost none. Some sloths have shorter fur, some longer. Some have smooth-looking heads; others look like they’re sporting a bob cut.

I won’t get into boring technical jargon, but there is a much wider range of colours available on a screen than in print, and green is one of the most temperamental colours to print. So even though I would like to boost the greens in a piece like this, I must account for colour shift.

Thankfully, Photoshop provides several methods to detect areas where print problems might occur. However, I can still push it a little because I have years of experience with my printer in Victoria and know what to expect.

When the art is for commercial prints and products, that also affects my composition choices. Most of my paintings are 3:4 aspect ratio because that works best for my needs.

I tell market and Expo customers that every print is 11” x 14”, a typical off-the-shelf frame size you can buy at most stores and that often helps make the sale. It’s annoying to buy a $30 print only to spend $100 or more to frame it because it’s a weird size, so I keep mine consistent.

Painting on a fast and powerful computer, my final pieces are 30” x 40” at 300 pixels/inch. That creates a huge file but allows me to print large sizes without sacrificing detail.

When it comes to Pacific Music & Art products, a painting must work for a long template of a coffee mug design and a square layout for a coaster or trivet. Most licenses don’t require the artist to create format files, but I volunteer to do the layouts for Mike, so I’m happy with how they look.

Here’s a shot I took this weekend at About Canada on Main Street in Banff of some of those products.
I can separate the sloth from the background and foliage for my own use to make a vinyl sticker. As I’m currently working on layouts for my first puzzles, I thought about those while painting this piece and wondered what composition choices would make it more enjoyable to assemble.

Most of the time, I’ll use one primary photo reference for a painting and additional ones for detail. Ideally, they’re photos I take myself. In some cases, I’ve relied on generous photographer friends or purchased reference I want to use. I bought stock photos for this one and used about a dozen images.

With no vacation plans this year and unlikely I’ll be going back to Costa Rica soon, stock photos were my best option for this sloth. Some photos were good for the pose, others for the face, and others for anatomy clarity and colour. Some sloths are cute; others are downright unattractive, so I looked for common features for accuracy. My versions of these critters might be caricatured and whimsical, but I still need to know what the actual animal looks like to make it believable.

A happy irony with this piece is that my buddy Derek Turcotte and his family went to Panama for Christmas, and he saw protected sloths in the wild. He generously offered some of his photos for reference, and one shot, in particular, was a perfect closeup of a cute sloth. I was halfway through this piece when I got it, and it helped a lot.

Critique is helpful when creating art if it’s asked for and given with goodwill. To have people you trust who can look at your work and offer constructive advice is priceless. Of course, it’s essential that if you ask for critique, be ready to accept it with gratitude.

Avoid asking the opinions of those likely to tell you, “That’s stupid. Looks like crap.”

That won’t help you become a better artist, and that kind of nasty cheap-seats criticism is usually more about them than you.

I’ll occasionally bounce editorial cartoon ideas off Shonna or my friend, Darrel. Most of the time, it’s to confirm that the message comes through. Does it make sense? I’ve been doing this long enough that I usually know, but occasionally, I’ll wonder if an idea is too vague or obscure.
I often spend ten to twenty hours on a painting. Though I have a few tricks to reset my brain so I can notice an issue, like flipping the canvas and reference horizontally, or looking at it on my phone or iPad, sometimes trouble spots escape me.

Shonna has an excellent eye for problems in my painted work. I’ll admit that even though I ask her opinion on almost every painting, when she points out an issue, I occasionally resist and must bite my tongue. Sometimes I argue against her view, but if I set aside my ego and seriously consider the suggestion, it’s most often correct.

By the time I ask her opinion, she’s seeing the piece with fresh eyes, knows my work very well and sometimes, it’s a small change that makes a big difference, even though most people wouldn’t notice. But once it’s pointed out, I can’t unsee it.

Derek is another valuable critique resource. He’s an exceptionally skilled tattoo artist and traditional painter. He has often asked me for my opinion on works in progress. Most of the time, however, I see nothing wrong. Like most perfectionist artists, he’s already obsessed over it himself. Nevertheless, when I have seen an area I think could stand some improvement, he’s been receptive and often made the change.

Twice this week, I asked Derek for his thoughts on this painting. Both times, he pointed out a couple of clunky composition issues I had failed to notice. Once seen, it was obvious he was correct, and I repainted those sections.

Even after it was finished, I called him and asked about something small that was bugging me. He could see my concern and suggested an easy way to fix it, but it wasn’t a big deal and Derek told me I was probably overthinking it.

That kind of help from another artist is invaluable.

In other cases, criticism is an opinion that might not align with your vision for a piece. For example, I’ve had plenty of people suggest I paint more realistic animals instead of the caricatured or cartoony personalities that define my work.

That’s their preference. My work isn’t for them.

I’ve had gallery owners and other retailers tell me that if I did create traditional wildlife paintings, no matter how good they were, they wouldn’t want them because that’s what everybody else is selling. My ‘cartoony but real’ animals are my signature look, and that niche has allowed me to continue to create art for a living.

As with every painting, my audience and customers will decide if this sloth becomes a popular piece. That’s something over which I have no control. All I can do is paint the critter, have some fun with it, and release it into the wild.

Then it’s on to the next one.

Cheers,
Patrick