sos lynx

oil on 18x24 canvas panel. a campaign support piece i made to promote awareness on the critically endangered lynx and the sos lynx conservation in portugal. the original plan for this painting was to make it on a 22x26 panel but at the last second i changed my mind thinking that a large portrait style of an iberian lynx is too much. at that time i was thinking that large canvases would be much better if it was filled with at least 40% background scenery. this lynx project of mine has approximately 20% of the background showing so a smaller and narrow vertical canvas would be a better choice.

using the same ivory black paint from the "watching you" painting i start by blocking in the dark parts of the lynx. its a little funny when i do this part because with all the pencil details i make. it sometimes gets confusing on where to put in the dark blocks and more that one occasion getting frustrated at myself because i forgot what some of the pencil markings meant. but usually after figuring this part out its so much easier to fill in the rest of the colors.

painting the background first before the subject just to get out of my routine of starting a painting with the eyes. in the background i tried to create the impression of a sunny close up grassland. i didnt put in much detail here to balance the painting out because the lynx was already heavily detailed.

doing the color test starting with the mommy lynx's ear then going down and across the head. i used lots of mixes between lemon yellow, naples yellow hue, raw sienna, raw umber, payne's gray and titanium white. there are also some blue hued glazing in some parts.

painting the lynx cub's tongue and eyes last. this painting took thrice the time for me to finish. this probably is the longest time it took me to make a painting. there were lots of distractions and other prior commitments hopefully the next one will be a smooth sailing one.

lethal look

oil on 18 ” x 24 ” artist canvas panel. after painting “ pair of rabbits”, “ mama mallard” and forbidden fruit” i kinda got tired of painting green. not that there is anything wrong with the color. i just wanted a different set of color hues on my glass palette. so i went with hues of yellows, oranges, reds and browns ang thought it would make a nice change. with this in mind i ended up painting a portrait of a snarling jaguar.

after drawing the jaguar in pencil i decided to try something new. based on an idea i got from reading whatever international artist or leisure painter magazine i could buy. in some articles, artists would talk about their process of painting in their desired medium in detail. from this i got the idea of toning the canvas with one color to unify all the colors in the painting. i experimented with this and toned my canvas with a thin glaze of light naples yellow hue then i waited for the whole canvas to dry before proceeding to the next step.

the result made my pencil markings hazy so i decided to block in the darker parts of my painting before anymore details are lost. the last time i blocked in a painting with a darker color first was when i painted my seaturtle painting. this process seemed appropriate with this type of painting but unlike the seaturtle painting i used burnt umber color instead black. lately, i find myself shying away from black. i think i was because i read in an article that there isn’t anything really black on earth because of all the bouncing of light and color and somehow to me this made sense.

next i did a color test on the eyes then proceed painting the jaguars nose then facial fur, ears, teeth then body. my style in paintings as you would have noticed by now is the "by section" type. as you can see on the pictures i’ve divided the jaguar in half and painted the upper part first. this is due to my aversion of using easels especially when i’m painting the top part of the canvas. for me painting the upper part on an easel even with the use of a mahl stick is like exercising with your arms stretched out. after 5 to 10 minutes of this my arm start to ache so much that i can’t paint anymore! usually i paint on an inclined drawing table and when i’m painting the upper part of the canvas i usually put a towel on the lower part of the canvas so that i wont smudge the pencil marks.

the lower half is still painted on an inclined drawing table and the towel is folded as i paint towards the left part of the canvas.

i painted the tongue and jaw for last because this requires a different set of color and there wasn’t enough space again on my glass palette. this jaguar portrait kinda reminds me of my snow leopard painting. both of them show only the head and half of the body. if you haven’t noticed yet i have a different style in painting fur. i don’t lke to paint every strand. i always thought that painting every strand of fur makes the fur look poofy. Even though my paintings are said to be realistic-like i paint impressions of fur and it can be seen clearly on this painting when viewed live and up close. :p

siberian tiger

curious kitty..

oil on artist canvas panel. 22" x 26". i didn't paint until the edges of the canvas for my own peace of mind. This way, if i handle the canvas, i can hold it at the edges without worrying about embedding my finger print on the semi dry oil paint which will drive me crazy in trying to retouch (speaking from experience from the koi-chan painting). I also didn’t clean up the boarder for effect purposes. Besides, when I frame this the un-painted part will be over layed with an extender anyway.

the tiger is a female seberian that's why she's a bit smaller (average 7-feet-11-inches to 9-feet long and weigh 221 to 368 pounds) than the usual tiger pictures. siberian tigers usually have coarse fur during winter time, i hope it's slightly depicted on my painting.

i start with painting all the black parts in the painting. this way when i put in the flesh tone color of wash i can still see the details of my blacks. after this i worked in detail on the head.

when i'm satisfied with the outcome of the head i go to the body. starting with the tiger's left front arm drawing right to left because i'm left handed and to avoid any semi dry paint smudging.

next comes the background. i had a bit of trouble depicting the stone-like texture of the wall but in the end i just used sponges to bring it out.

finally finished =^_^=