Speaking of Art Blog

I recently finished a commissioned pastel portrait of a rescue Short-eared Owl named Gizmo, Giz for short. I had the distinct pleasure of getting up close to Giz outdoors after watching a raptor center demo. While he was ignoring the owners of the center as they loaded other owls into their van, every time I maneuvered around to take more pics, Giz would lock eyes with me. It’s in an owl’s nature to do this. I found his golden eyed gaze mesmerizing. This is the photo I took that my client wanted me to use for the portrait.

 

The photo is…..OK, better than your average phone pic, but not the absolute best. The whites are really washed out and lacking detail, and the darks are too dark. And while it looks like many of the feathers have black in them, that is not the case. The feathers are actually all shades of brown, no black. I knew I had to venture beyond the photo for this portrait.

Beginners using reference photos tend to want to stick to EXACTLY what the picture shows, almost religiously. That’s a mistake. Photos rarely tell the whole story, and especially when it comes to the lightest lights and the darkest darks, a photo can lie. The camera lens exaggerates those two bookends of the light spectrum, punching them to extremes with very little definition left in those areas. The result is that the camera is choosing where to add the drama to a scene. Never mind what the artist has in mind. An artist has to take charge and decide for themselves where they want the center of interest to be, tweaking their artwork to reach their desired goal.

I also needed to adjust the background foliage. In the reference photo it is interesting enough and reads as foliage, but in some spots it’s too interesting, and thus distracting. By making the upper right tree area a bit greener and brighter, that made the tree/bush in the upper left appear less prominent. I also added some more tall pale grasses to the triangular shaped background along the middle right edge so that the light/dark contrasts between the sparse grassy seed heads were less obvious. Is there some kind of standardized way to remedy and downplay distractions like the ones in the background of this reference photo? Absolutely not. In fact, there’s an infinite number of ways to remedy a problem like this. All I have to do is pick one and try it. If that doesn’t work, then it’s time to smudge out or erase that solution and try another one. Problems come and problems go, with creative experimentation being the key to finding solutions. What I keep as my goal all the way through the piece is my original vision for the piece -- of accentuating that gaze.

One last element that I needed to tweak was the beak. Sometimes because of lighting, a shape or object can look off. That was the case with the beak here. The lighting and color almost made the beak appear concave in the photo, and I guarantee you, Giz’s beak is NOT concave. So I simply cleaned it up a bit, smoothing out the top surface of it. That’s really all it needed to make it look more believable.

When I finished the piece I stepped back and asked myself some questions:

1.  Do I gravitate toward the eyes when I first look at the artwork?

2.  Is there anything stopping me from going there? Is my visual path to the eyes clear of distractions?

3.  Is the background realistic yet uninteresting enough that it doesn’t pull me away from my center of interest?

4.  Do all the lights and darks and colors and shapes and edges play second fiddle to those golden eyes?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Giz Gaze

 pastel

 8x10" commission

One wise (pun intended) art instructor of mine once said, “If you start with a reference photo, that’s fine. But at some point you need to toss the picture aside and follow your instincts. Your artwork will have taken on a life of its own. Venture beyond the photo. Create something fresh and new.”