Tag: Painting

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Big Bear on Blue

I dropped off a large print and sticker order to the Calgary Zoo in February. As usual, I wandered with the camera, looking for reference pics. I often come home with surprises that sometimes end up as paintings.

It was the first time I’d had the opportunity to see the new polar bear enclosure with the two residents, Baffin and Siku, who came to Calgary via Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park Zoo. They had been orphaned as cubs, found wandering near Churchill, Manitoba, by conservation officers who deemed them too young to survive on their own.

According to the Calgary Herald (Nov 30, 2023), “Their new home is a $11.5-million habitat that features two acres of tree-filled meadows, a five-metre-deep plunge pool, a series of dens and rock fixtures, and a shallow pool for the bears to wade in.”

One of the interpretative staff told me there are sections specifically designed to give the bears private time when they want it.

For most animal reference pics, I’m looking for face shots to show the detail I like to paint. I got several unobstructed shots of Baffin lounging on a rock on a sunny winter day, but even with my 300mm lens, I couldn’t get close photos of his face. It can take me years to get the right reference, and even when I have the images, I might not paint from them for a long time. So, I figured I’d try again next time.

Still, I liked some of the pics I took and figured I could do some full-body sketches or rough paintings for practice to include in the bear book.

I often sketch on my iPad in the Procreate app with the Apple pencil, especially for editorial cartoons. When I want to upsize it and draw or paint more detail, I transfer the file to my desktop PC and continue working on it with my Wacom Cintiq 24HD in Photoshop.

Though I never intended this to be a finished piece, I kept returning to it, thinking I’d just put in a little more time. Before I knew it, I had a  new painting.

The northern lights are a common and popular theme in polar bear art, and savvy commercial artists give people what they want.

But for over a decade, I have heard from retailers and customers that they like my art because it’s different and unique. When the first gallery in Banff gave my work a shot more than ten years ago, the manager said that he wouldn’t have been interested, no matter how good they were, had I brought him true to life animal paintings. That’s what everybody else was doing.

While I still featured a version of the northern lights in this piece, I stuck with a blue colour scheme rather than the usual greens and purples for no reason other than that’s what I felt like painting. I love a blue, white and grey palette.
Titles are challenging. While I prefer to come up with something funny or endearing for each painting, I also need to consider my clients and their customers. Simple identifying titles are often better, especially as my portfolio grows. I already have two polar bear paintings on offer, so I decided Big Bear on Blue was a good description and title for this piece. And I liked it better than Polar Bear on Blue, but don’t ask me why.

With several other paintings in progress, I hadn’t intended to slide this painting into the queue. It was a fun discovery that didn’t take as long as I would have thought, and in case you missed it, I’ve got a thing for bears.

Prints are on the way, and I’ll let you know when this piece is available in the store.

Cheers,
Patrick

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Ring-tail Renditions

When the Land of Lemurs exhibit opened at the Calgary Zoo several years ago, I was excited to get up close and personal with these critters. Lemurs are a matriarchal species, meaning the women are in charge. Only females were in residence at the time, but I don’t know if that’s still true.

Because of disagreements in sample size and the territories surveyed, the number of Ring-tailed Lemurs left in the wild is under dispute. However, one thing experts agree on is that the wild population is in severe decline. Deforestation and hunting means lemurs may go extinct in our lifetime.

The World Wildlife Fund and several other conservation organizations work to educate and support communities in Madagascar to help them coexist with lemurs. Unfortunately, colonies in captivity may one day be the only place where lemurs exist.

One of the interesting features of the lemur habitat at the Calgary Zoo is that the lemurs are free-roaming within the enclosure. People must enter through a controlled gate, where an attendant explains the rules. Once inside, other employees and volunteers answer questions while ensuring the safety of the lemurs.

The enclosure design means the lemurs can go where they like, including climbing atop an unsuspecting person who crouches down for something. With no fence or glass, this open concept makes taking photos a real treat.

Early in 2020, before the world shut down, Wacom commissioned me to record a video using their Wacom One display, along with a voice-over narrative I wrote. I recorded a ring-tailed lemur painting for that project, and it’s one of my favourite pieces, mostly because she looks ready to snap. It’s also a popular print with many of my collectors.

I’ve long wanted to create another painting featuring several lemurs, inspired by the following photo I took in 2017. All these lemurs look a little stunned; harmless goofs, not too bright, except for one.
This photo always makes me chuckle. That evil-looking stare straight down my lens, the squinting focused eyes, the chunk missing from her ear. She reminds me of a gangster saying, “Come closer. See what happens.”
What can I say, I see cartoon characters in real animals. This is why I paint the way I do.

I have considered this photo and the painting I have wanted to create for years. I even have a title for it: The Ringleader. The finished piece will be 7 or 8 of the goofy, stunned faces filling the canvas, with the sinister ringleader in the middle, staring down the viewer.

The big challenge isn’t painting the faces but making them look like they belong together. That’s why I’m working on seven faces in the same file. The ringleader herself is a separate file that I started earlier this week.

I haven’t yet got to the stage where I compose them into the finished piece, but I’m getting there. Once they’re each in position, I’ll need to paint more hair and fur to blend the faces as they overlap. There won’t be any bodies or paws because this painting is about the faces filling the space, but I will paint a few tails coming in from the sides and bottom.
I’m happy with how it’s turned out so far, and I’m also hoping to offer the finished piece as a puzzle later this year.

I’m used to working on one painting, start to finish, posting it, printing it, getting it licensed, and moving on to the next one. While quality is my main concern, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think of quantity.
So, when I’m working on several paintings at once and more involved pieces featuring multiple animals or more detailed backgrounds, paintings that take much longer than a whimsical head and shoulders portrait can be uncomfortable. It feels like I’m not getting enough done.

However, I’ve realized in recent weeks that there is a silver lining in working on multiple pieces simultaneously. Each painting gets time to rest, and when I open a project I haven’t touched in a week or two, the deficiencies or problems jump off the screen. That’s good because it reveals areas of the image I need to improve.

Last Friday morning, I opened this goofy gallery of Ring-tail Lemurs for the first time in a few weeks. I laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of the seven faces on the screen and said, “They look so stupid.”

And I meant it in the best possible way.

Would I have had that moment if I hadn’t let the painting rest? I doubt it. My comical critters surprised me. What a gift.
The finished piece will be a lot more detailed than the images in progress you see here. But the vision for what I’m trying to achieve is clear in my mind, and I’m having fun discovering each of these faces.

All that’s left is hours of painting to bring them to life.

Cheers,
Patrick

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Reflecting and a Raven on White

In the late nineties, I worked different jobs at a hotel in Banff for five or six years, from waterslide attendant and manager to front desk agent, night auditor and accounting clerk.

I used to doodle, sketch, and draw a lot in those days. I wasn’t very good at it, but like with any skill, you don’t produce your best work until you’ve paid for it with years of bad work. It was a hobby that I never thought would become a career.

While at the waterslides, after I’d finished cleaning, the job often meant minding the desk until guests showed up. I might spend hours alone in the slow season, so I would read or draw. The night audit position required a couple of hours running financial reports at the beginning of the shift, then babysitting the front desk all night until the day staff arrived.

More time to draw.

I filled countless sketchbooks during those years, all long ago discarded, recycled or shredded. I’m not a nostalgic person, and I don’t like clutter. Some have suggested I should have kept that stuff because it might have been worth money someday.

Ever seen American Pickers? Those outbuildings full of junk are all about people keeping useless stuff for that very reason. Most of it is worthless.

Proving we never know what we’ve got ’til it’s gone, I took all that creative freedom I now miss for granted. No deadlines, no expectations, and no need for any of that artwork to pay the bills. With no social media or website then, I didn’t have to post any of it.

Art for a living is a double-edged sword. While I certainly prefer it to that waterslide job or working midnight shifts minding a front desk, and working at home alone suits my nature; I no longer draw anything just for fun. If I’ve got time to draw, I spend it on editorial cartoons or whimsical wildlife paintings.

I used to enjoy editorial cartooning, but following politics and the news every day, especially in our increasingly toxic and adversarial culture, it’s just a job, and there’s little joy in it. But I can’t ignore that without cartoon deadlines; I wouldn’t have been as disciplined to draw almost every day for more than twenty years. That constant practice has made me a better artist. How could it not?

The wildlife paintings, however, are the antidote to the negative news cycle. I’d much rather spend every day painting fur and feathers, recording painting videos, or writing, but that’s currently just over half of my artistic income, so I need to devote equal time to the darkness and light.

The financial pressure I assign to my wildlife work often decides which animals I paint. I will avoid certain animals because they’re unlikely to be popular. I must always think about the market potential for anything I paint. Will this or that retail or licensing client be interested, will it be popular at markets, and which products might benefit from this piece?

I’ve only realized in recent years how loud those questions have become. My Otter and Smiling Tiger are two of my bestsellers, but I wasn’t thinking about that when I painted either of them nor could I have predicted their success.

But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t trying to predict and produce the next bestseller every time I plan a new painting, even knowing it’s impossible. Art isn’t an algorithm. Based on market trends, you can’t accurately predict what will resonate with people. I know because every year, the licensing industry pretends they know what people want and what will sell, and they fail more often than succeed.

Like with political polls or long-range weather forecasts, we pay attention to these poor predictions and then complain about how often they’re wrong. We’re not as bright as we like to pretend.

Several people asked me to paint a sloth a couple of years ago. I kept putting it off because I had no interest. But I finally got tired of hearing it and wondered if I was missing something. So, I put the time in and painted one. It was a worthwhile challenge, and I’m pleased with how it turned out. I learned some things in the process, but it’s not one of my personal favourites. I’ve never felt any connection with sloths. It sells well enough, but it’s not a bestseller.

Over the past year, I’ve received a bizarre number of requests for another animal, at least twice a day at the Banff Christmas markets. It’s another I wouldn’t have chosen, but I started on it this week. With the Calgary Expo on the horizon, it’s the best place to test if requests will result in actual sales, should I manage to do a good job. Rather than tell you what it is, I’ll share it in a couple of weeks.
I’ve always liked ravens, and I talked a bit about that in my last post. Because ravens are popular, this piece was a marketing decision and an animal I wanted to paint. It’s nice when it can be both, but I catch myself asking composition questions while I paint that I never would have when I didn’t do this for a living.

Will no background make the painting more or less popular? Will people want the blues and purples in the feathers to be more or less vibrant? Should I have exaggerated the whimsy more, or did I go too far already?

It also applies to writing posts like this. Am I being too negative? Will this angsty artist crap turn people off? Should I write something peppy and encouraging, even though I feel none of that right now? What do people want to hear?

These questions are pointless, but I find them impossible to ignore.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”

But because this work is my livelihood, it’s nearly impossible to avoid these thoughts. My time is limited, and spending it on a painting that doesn’t sell well feels like I wasted it on the wrong painting.

Second guessing like that often leads to procrastination and self-doubt. Too long in that headspace, and I’ll ultimately paint nothing because I’m looking for impossible guarantees.

It would be nice to end a post like this with a positive affirmation or some conclusion that hints at some 11th-hour writing wisdom. But I have no clear answer to this flawed perspective. I’m still working on it.

Cheers,
Patrick

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A Merry Meerkat

I’ve taken hundreds of meerkat photos at the Calgary Zoo over the years. Their antics never fail to amuse me, and because of their natural inclination to stand upright and still, staring at anything that catches their eye, they often appear to be posing for me.

The problem with taking photos of these critters is that every time I go, I try for a shot that’s just a little bit better than any I’ve taken before.

I recently realized that when a photo opportunity is rare, and I can only get three or four decent ones, I’ll make them work. I’ve painted many of my whimsical wildlife pieces with limited reference, even some of the most popular ones, like the Otter and Smiling Tiger.

But I know that whenever I go to the zoo, I’ll have time and opportunity to take more meerkat shots, so I never have to commit. The ones I have may be good, but maybe the next ones will be better. This means the painting never happens because I’m still waiting for the perfect reference, even though I know there’s no such thing.

The other false belief I’m working to shed is that once I have painted an animal, I must move on to a new one. It often feels like I’m only allowed one shot at it, so I had better make it count. Why bears get a free pass on this fuzzy logic is beyond me.
Earlier this year, I painted my Bugle Boy piece. It’s proven to be a popular painting and has become one of my favourites. But I almost didn’t paint another bull elk because I painted one several years ago, even though I never liked it.

My bull moose painting has long been retired from print. It was popular in its day, and I liked it then, but I’ve been reluctant to paint another one. However, after the positive elk experience, I have gathered new reference to take another crack at a moose. I think I can do a better job of it now.
When it came to meerkats, I’ve long had the idea to paint a whole troop of them, so painting a solitary meerkat wasn’t on the radar, or I’d do the occasional sketch painting, but never a finished production piece. But just like the three giraffes I painted for my Long Neck Buds piece, each of them a portrait on their own, each solitary meerkat might become part of that eventual group painting.

Or it’s just the first meerkat I’ll paint, of who knows how many more down the road.

Cheers,
Patrick

 

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A Genial Grizzly

Winter reared its ugly head this week in Alberta, and I’m already feeling the blues. It happens every year, but painting a happy face usually puts me in a better mood. Grizzly Bearapy. It’s an effective prescription.

For my primary reference for this piece, I selected a few I took during a day with Berkley at Discovery Wildlife Park several years ago. It was the same day I took the reference for my Peanuts painting. But I also referenced other grizzly bears to vary the features.

Half of my business is editorial cartooning; for that work, my clients are newspapers. That’s a business model that was on shaky ground already when I got into it a couple of decades ago. Today, many papers are hanging on by their fingernails. Despite that, it’s still worth my time and effort to draw five or six syndicated editorial cartoons each week for several publications across Canada.

However, I shouldn’t need to explain why that could change tomorrow.

About thirteen years ago, anticipating the day when editorial cartooning would no longer be enough to provide a full-time income, I looked for ways to diversify. With a steady decline in newspaper revenue in recent years, it was a good call. Thankfully, my whimsical wildlife paintings became the other half of my career and business, which still has plenty of growth potential.

While neither part of my business is presently enough on its own, together, they’re my full-time job.

It can be easy to get complacent and coast when things are going well enough. But life can turn on a dime, and the things we think only happen to other people can quickly happen to any one of us.

I’m an unapologetic pessimist; there’s no sense denying it. I’ve had too many plans scuttled by someone else’s decisions, so I don’t take anything for granted. One year, I lost nine papers in one day because a newspaper chain sold. When the pandemic hit, I lost even more. I’ve had licensing and other opportunities vanish overnight when corporations changed direction or personnel.

As we’re all aware, companies are quick to talk about trust and loyalty when convenient, but their actions often walk a different path.
Though this painting was fun to do, as are most of my whimsical wildlife pieces, it was a commercial decision. It’s the first in a series of paintings I’m creating to promote my work to new licensing clients. It’s also another painting for the bear book.

If you’re a self-employed artist, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, especially relevant in today’s economy.

By the end of this week, I’ll have drawn seven editorial cartoons, finished this grizzly bear painting, worked on a pet portrait commission, written content for the book, created page layouts so my publisher can get pricing estimates, and done month-end invoicing and bookkeeping.

All are necessary to keep my business viable but also prevent monotony. By having different things on which to focus, I’ve always got something else I can be doing. Painting grizzly bear fur and features for three hours is delightful—eight hours, not so much.

So it’s nice to make progress on a painting in the morning, then switch to drawing an editorial cartoon, sort and select photo reference, read some marketing material, research and reach out to potential new licenses, plan for upcoming gift shows, or write a post like this one.

Then, when I return to the painting the next day, it’ll be with fresh eyes to correct any errors and add more life to the piece for a few more hours. I get to enjoy the work I love most without allowing it to become a yoke I resent.

Cheers,
Patrick

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Blizzard Bear

While I’m not a big fan of the season, I love winter colours, the blues, greys and whites. Seems like I’m on a bit of a snow kick right now.

I’m proficient with a camera but have no designs on working as a professional photographer or even being a serious hobbyist. I love taking photos, but only because it’s the first step in painting my whimsical wildlife. Images a pro would toss in the trash can still work well for reference. If the photo shows the necessary details, I can ignore any flaws, artifacts, lighting and exposure issues.

I prefer to take my own reference, but it’s not always possible, especially when the animals aren’t all that local. My Humpback Whale and Sea Turtle paintings come to mind. Thankfully, I’ve known several generous photographer friends willing to share their beautiful photos. If I tried to list them all, I would forget somebody and wouldn’t want hurt feelings. Hopefully, I adequately conveyed my gratitude to them at the time and in the blog posts accompanying any new painting.

I could buy stock photos for reference, and I’ve done so before. But if I’m going to use somebody else’s photos for reference, I prefer to have a connection with the person who took them. It often makes for a better story, and I have a lot of respect for artists who have skills I don’t, especially wildlife photographers.

I spend many long hours painting, obsessing over little hairs on a grizzly bear’s ears or the challenging horn texture on a bighorn sheep, but I’m in a comfortable office while doing it. I haven’t the patience, time, or funds to travel long distances to remote locations with a ton of expensive gear, only to sit in a blind for days, waiting for any animal to come down a trail, hoping to get that perfect shot.

And since wildlife doesn’t punch a clock, they often don’t get the shot. I admire those folks and their commitment.

For most of these artists, the experience and pursuit are often as important as the photos, but I’ve always been more of a destination guy. I don’t even like road trips.
My friend David duChemin is a talented and skilled photographer. He’s been on multiple trips to northern Manitoba to take photos of polar bears. I don’t remember if I had asked or if he volunteered, but he once offered some of those photos for reference.

When I ask to use reference pics, I’m okay with receiving a No, which has happened a few times. I also expect to pay for the exchange, in cash or trade, and am prepared that I might not be able to afford the asking price, which has also happened. Photographers work hard for their craft and deserve compensation. Even with that perspective, I always feel a little weird about asking, wondering if I’m crossing a line, especially with friends.

But I wanted to paint another polar bear, so I swallowed my pride a couple of weeks ago and asked David if the offer was still good. He not only replied right away, but within a few hours, I had a large collection of his photos to download.

I hadn’t planned on using them for a month or more, so I asked early, wary of implying any rush. I was surprised to get them so quickly. I loved looking through the photos because they are all beautiful shots. Rather than try to anticipate what I wanted and create unnecessary work, David just uploaded a bunch and let me decide. Most of them wouldn’t be suitable for reference, but quite a few gave me what I needed. The photos inspired me, so I started this painting the next day and completed it this past Sunday.

If you’d like to see some of David’s polar bear shots, here are two posts (first and second) where he shares some of them. He’s also an excellent writer, so look around his site and enjoy his photography and stories. He casts a wide net with his subjects and themes, but it should come as no shock that I’m partial to his wildlife images, especially the bears. David has taken several trips to hard-to-reach locations all over the Pacific coast and interior to capture glimpses of bears in their natural habitats.

David underwent a surgical procedure earlier this summer, and I drew this cartoon for him. He’s recovering well and will undoubtedly be back in bear country soon. I’m happy with how this polar bear painting turned out, and I look forward to the day I can repay David for his generosity.

Because of the whimsical nature of my work, with an almost caricature quality to the animals, and that I don’t often paint landscapes or detailed backgrounds in my pieces, my paintings rarely look the same as the photos I use for reference. I’m not looking to replicate a picture; I just need to see the details, where the shadows and highlights fall in the anatomy, and what the fur texture looks like. I can’t paint my version of wildlife unless I know what the reality looks like.

That said, I like to take my own photos whenever possible because there have been countless times where the photo has inspired the painting. It might be a hint of an expression I can exaggerate, the way the light hits fur or feathers, or the personality I see in the actual animal that I can develop in the painted version.

But for those times I haven’t been able to take my own reference, I’m grateful for so many photographer friends who have helped bring some of my paintings to life. You know who you are.

One of the challenges with a square format painting is that I need to crop it for my standard 11”x14” print, either vertical or horizontal. I tried both layouts, and vertical was the clear winner. Of course, you can always order the original square format as a canvas or metal print. Drop me a line for more details.

Cheers,
Patrick

 

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Winter Tiger

This cool cat began as a design I pitched for a puzzle license that didn’t work out. But since I liked the idea, I decided to paint it anyway. It was challenging, and I spent a lot of time on the detail. I’m pleased with the finished piece.

While I could start shopping around a couple of designs to puzzle companies for their consideration, it can take up to a year for a licensing design to go from an initial agreement to a product on the shelf. So, if I want new puzzles for the upcoming holiday season, I must produce them myself.

In February, I applied to be a vendor at the upcoming Banff Christmas Market and was accepted for two of the three weekends. It’s a competitive show for admissions, and difficult to get a spot, so I’m happy I made the cut. Both are three-day events, and I’ll be there November 17-19 and December 1-3.

With a 10’x10’ booth inside the stable, I’ve got to start preparing my prints and products well in advance. If I go ahead with puzzles, I’ll have to order them in the next couple of weeks.

Since the pre-order for my first puzzles earlier this year went so well, I plan to do that again if there’s enough interest. I only have a few of each of those initial puzzles left, and though I might produce those designs again later, I want to try some new ones.

Although that puzzle license didn’t work out, I got some great advice about puzzle design, and I’m grateful for the experience.
This new Winter Tiger will make a nice addition to my available prints and other products, but I’ll need to change the design to make it a better fit for a puzzle. A closer crop on the face, contrasting shades of blue in the snow and much less background overall will make for a better puzzle experience. For most puzzlers, a design is better when there aren’t large areas of the same colour/texture.

This tiger has a lot of different contrasts and patterns in the fur and face, which is why I chose it for a puzzle in the first place. Shonna proposed adding some shaped snowflakes in the sky and snow to create landmarks and break up any monotony in those areas. While I’m still messing with it, here’s the idea of what a puzzle would look like featuring this painting. This is NOT a final version.
These next puzzles will also be 1000 pieces since many have asked for those. My recent Long Neck Buds painting was created with a puzzle in mind, so that’s another one I’m considering for this next launch.

I had thought about painting some lighter green foliage in the darker areas of my T-Rex painting, but I’ve learned that people prefer horizontal puzzles to vertical ones, which removes that fierce-looking dinosaur from consideration. It also means I’m less likely to consider other vertical options.

I’m still mulling all this over, so I’d like to ask you to answer these questions…
Would you like to see the Winter Tiger and Long Neck Buds as 1000-piece puzzles?
Would you buy them in a pre-order?
Are there other paintings I’ve done that you’d like me to consider for puzzles?

I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments and feel free to offer any other thoughts you have on the matter.

Cheers,
Patrick

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Long Neck Buds

While labour-intensive, this painting wasn’t especially difficult. There weren’t any parts of it where I worried I might not have the necessary skills. That comes from experience, the feeling that “it’ll take a while, but I got this.”

I wanted the piece to be bright and colourful, with plenty of detail throughout. I planned it to work well for a print and several other products, but I was also thinking about puzzles and diamond art kits.

I’m a commercial artist; this is how I make my living. So, creating a new piece can’t just be about painting for my enjoyment. It’s both a creative and financial investment; that’s the deal you make when a hobby becomes a job.

People often ask how long it takes to me complete a painting. I don’t paint an image in one sitting; it’s usually over a couple of weeks, two or three hours here and there. At the same time, I’m also drawing daily editorial cartoons, writing, answering emails and phone calls while working on marketing, bookkeeping, and managing the self-employment minutia.

So, I usually ballpark it and say it takes ten to twenty hours to complete a painting, depending on the subject. That doesn’t include my time taking reference photos. This piece, however, took a lot longer, and I can’t even begin to guess, because one morning, I painted leaves for three hours.

I began the project with several sketches and refined those into this mockup.

Then I painted the individual giraffes, creating three expressions different enough to be their own characters, but I still had to match the colours, light and shadow so they belonged together in the scene. Each giraffe could have been a single painting.
Painting the environment was the most challenging part. I could have gone with generic-looking green deciduous leaves, and most people wouldn’t have cared. Even though my style of art is whimsical, and I take liberties with exaggeration and expression, I still try for accuracy in the anatomy and environment.

Just as I had looked up the appropriate trees and foliage for my recent sloth painting, I wanted to do the same for these funny-looking giraffes. It seems they’ll vary their diet when needed, but giraffes prefer acacia trees when dining out on the savannah.

And wouldn’t you know it, in addition to their distinctive overall look, one of the most prominent features of an acacia tree is sharp spiky thorns. I included less of them in my piece than are visible on some acacia trees as I wanted them to accent the leaves rather than overpower them.

WARNING: Here’s a little tech art nerd stuff for the digital artists in the crowd.

I used to love to create brushes in Photoshop. I’d spend hours experimenting, tweaking, and adjusting brush shapes and options until I got the behaviour I was after. I’ve got brushes for sketching, inking, blocking, hair, texture, rocks, grass, skin, clouds, and more. Most of the brushes I use daily aren’t complicated because it’s not the brush that does the work; it’s the person using it.

It’s no different than a traditional painter, woodworker, sculptor or other skilled creative. They all need good tools to allow them to create their best work.

The hair brushes I use today are ones I designed several years ago. What varies is how I use them, depending on the critter I’m painting. But because I’ve perfected the ones I use most and rarely need to change them, I seldom design brushes anymore.

For this painting, however, I wanted to design three new brushes for the foliage. I created one for the branches and painted those in as a base. Then I designed several variations of acacia leaves and experimented with the brush settings to get the desired results. I realized quickly, however, that I only needed one and used that for most of the painting, adjusting the size as required.

Finally, I created a thorn brush. I set it for random rotation and spacing and erased single thorns as needed if they didn’t look right.

In the image below, the top row shows the brush design for each, the bottom row shows how the settings allow me to use it.

I don’t use any colour dynamics in my brushes. I prefer to pick and choose colour while painting, sampling from adjacent colours to get a better blend.

These new brushes allowed me to create a solid foundation, but it looked flat and lifeless until I spent several hours painting light, shadow, and detail to achieve the finished result.

New digital artists often get obsessed with buying brush packs, thinking that’s all they need to achieve the same look as more experienced artists. But professional tools won’t provide a shortcut past the years of work it takes to become good at anything.

That’s like thinking you’re ready for a National Geographic assignment just because you bought an expensive camera.

I decline to share my brushes and advise people to learn to make their own. The best way to learn how to use them is to learn to design them. I had forgotten how much I used to enjoy that until I created new ones for this painting.

Because this painting took so much longer than most others I’ve done, more than once I felt like I was running behind and not working fast enough. It was hard to slow down and accept there was no rush.

I blame the daily editorial cartoon deadlines for that state of mind. I can never take too long on a cartoon, or I miss the opportunity to have it published, which means I don’t get paid. Depending on the popularity of each image on prints and licensed products, the payment for a painting often spans several years, and it’s easy to forget that. I always feel that I need to get it done so I can start on the next one.

But I’m pleased with this finished piece and glad I spent so much time on it. It feels like a step forward in my work, and I want to invest more time in painting more involved pieces like this one.

While I called it Long Neck Buds, someone could easily interpret them as two parents and a child. People often tell me what one of my paintings is ‘thinking’ or what their expression means, and I wouldn’t dream of contradicting them. If the art makes them feel something or triggers their imagination, that’s good enough for me.

Cheers,
Patrick

P.S. A special thanks to my buddy, Derek Turcotte. I sent this to him near completion and asked for his critique. He’ll send me work-in-progress shots from time to time with the same request. It’s so helpful to have another professional artist look at a piece with fresh eyes, and offer advice to help make a painting better, especially when it’s asked for and answered without ego.

When you stare at a piece for hours, days, and weeks, it’s easy to miss something. I had initially painted too much contrast in the clouds, which distracted from the foreground detail. Once Derek mentioned it, and I made the changes, it was suddenly so obvious he was right.

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Another Long Neck Bud


No, this is not déjà giraffe, but another addition to the ‘Long Neck Buds’ work in progress. From the original mock-up sketch, the first one I painted was the middle giraffe. This is the one on the right of the image.The challenge with this piece is to make each character different from the others but with the same level of detail and colour palette.

Each giraffe is an individual painting, and both are pretty much finished pieces. I could print them individually as they are. But I also know that once they’re placed in the scene, after painting the sky, clouds and treetops, I will add more on each giraffe to make them blend into the environment.

So, after the whole painted scene is finished, each giraffe will look a little different than their individual paintings.

I’m enjoying this piece because each stage of the painting brings a new challenge, and I’m in no rush.

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.