Because I haven’t released a new painting in a while, I did not want to publish yet another post promising something new down the road. So, here’s a new piece: a weary-looking grizzly bear in the snow. I’m calling it Bedtime.
I had planned on sharing a different painting this week. Here’s why that changed.
Over the past twenty-plus years of my art career, both as a syndicated editorial cartoonist and a digital painter, there have been plenty of times when something I’ve drawn hasn’t worked out the way I had planned.
The beauty of digital drawing and painting is that it’s often easier to fix mistakes. I can create a new layer, play around and experiment; if I don’t like it, I delete it and try a different direction. Most creatives are familiar with happy accidents, something unexpected that improves an image. It happens all the time.
There’s always an element of discovery in any illustration or painting.
On the flip side, an image can sometimes become an exercise in frustration. Years ago, a bighorn sheep painting had me pulling out my hair. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the curl of the horns to look right. They were either too flat, distorted, or just wrong, and every time I messed with them, I’d have to spend hours repainting the detailed texture I ruined.
It’s hardly a unique story. Every artist I know goes through this. For traditional artists who paint with oil, acrylic, watercolour or airbrush, it’s even worse. Sometimes, they try to fix something that isn’t working and get to a point where they’ve just ruined any chance of recovery. The canvas ends up in the trash, and they start over.
I began a painting of a group of Ring-tailed Lemurs months ago. I thought it would be finished this summer and again this week. I can’t begin to estimate how many hours I’ve spent on this painting. It has been one disappointment after another. But I finally got through the other work and deadlines holding up my progress and recently spent several mornings on it.
I was within what I thought was two or three hours of finishing, then realized I didn’t like it. That’s a hard truth to admit when I have invested so much time into a piece.
On my iPad, I took it to my buddy Derek at Electric Grizzly Tattoo. He’s a talented and skilled artist, and we sometimes ask each other for an unbiased eye. I can always count on his constructive criticism and willingness to help me produce a better piece of art. I do my best to return that generosity in kind, and when asked, offer my own thoughts on his paintings.
While Derek liked the individual faces, he agreed that the composition had problems. It was tough to hear, but it confirmed what I already knew.
After I got home, I spent a couple of hours messing with it, still trying to save it. But it was a gut-punch realization that I’d almost have to start from scratch. If I released the painting as is, knowing the obvious problems, even if others like it, I would hate it every time I looked at it.
So, while I’m not quite back at square one, it’s close. I’ve been sketching over the piece and trying new things, and I’m already much happier with the composition.
Reworking it, however, meant destroying what I had already painted. I must redo all the fur and hair, the detail in the muzzles and eyes, and add other elements that weren’t there before.
Whenever I finish the newer version, I will share more about this process, including what specifically I didn’t like and my thoughts on what I needed to change. I will also show you the piece I showed Derek and share why we both felt it didn’t work. But I don’t want to do that until I reveal the finished piece so you can see the comparison.
Anytime you do something creative, there’s a chance it won’t work. Authors have had to discard whole chapters and rehash plotlines when an editor has their way with a novel. Chefs have prepared complicated and ultimately inedible meals from experimental recipes. Filmmakers have spent years creating box office bombs.
As Benjamin Franklin said, “I didn’t fail the test; I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.”
If you’re not prepared to fail, you’ll never succeed.
So, I set the lemurs aside this week and began this bear piece on Tuesday as a palate cleanser before I jump back into the other works in progress I have yet to complete, including those lemurs.
Because when life hands you lemons, paint a grizzly bear.
That’s the saying, right?
Well, it works for me.
This Thursday, I’ll be one of 150 vendors setting up for the Banff Christmas Market. That evening, a locals’ preview event is already sold out. After that, from Friday to Sunday for the next four weeks, you’ll find me in my booth at the Banff Train Station, offering prints, calendars, coasters, magnets and stickers. Tickets are only available in advance on their website, and they go quickly, especially on Saturdays. I hope to see you there.
Thanks to so many of you who have purchased calendars already. I’ve been getting those orders out as soon as they come in, so if you’re waiting for yours, they’re on the way. If you still want one (or two, three, four…you get the idea), you can get them in the store while supplies last.
Cheers,
Patrick
Though Sarah and her spouse live near Edmonton, and I could ship the painting, she and her Mom had planned for a couple of nights in Canmore this past weekend, and I delivered the 18”X24” stretched canvas to their hotel. I took them outside into the sunlight for the reveal so they could see the bright colours and the details. Whether on paper, metal or canvas, my work always looks better in print than on a screen. People have been saying that to me for years. Sarah said it, too.
I dropped off a large print and sticker order to the 
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 
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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’ve always liked ravens, and I talked a bit about that in my 
I’ve taken hundreds of meerkat photos at the 
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 
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.
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.
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 
My friend 
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. 
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.
This new Winter Tiger will make a nice addition to my 
These next puzzles will also be 1000 pieces since many have asked for those. My recent 
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 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.
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.
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.