Thunder Over Louisville

This year was a rainy one in Louisville Ky, when thunder was about to roll through the Ohio river valley. It was cold and windy, and wonderfully sparsely populated. The show started off normally with some most aircraft making a single pass, but I still felt confident that it would just be a low light, overcast show. The weather began to get 'squirrely' as our humble narrator put it, and this presented a problem for incoming aircraft. The cloud layer (and thus viability) was falling below 4,000 feet, too far into the performance box for some of the aircraft to fly in. We did see some big guys, plenty of helicopters, and the Coast Gaurd's new C-144 Ocean Sentry so I was feeling confident. When the weak were breaking from Ohio river windburn, I still had hopes that the finale would come through. Although the squirrelliness of the weather prevented several flights from making the show, The end of the video shows the F-22, for which I was seeing for the first time. I'm Hooked like a drug. Enjoy.

BALD EAGLE

This fine specimen lives at the Salato Wildlife Center about 30 minutes from my hometown. I watched it (I have yet to inquire if it is male or female) fohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifr several minutes and took numerous photographs while it made interesting chirps.

I wanted to select a particularly stoic and regal pose. I used lots of custom brushes which were similar to those taught by David Nash at his workshop 'Pushing Pixels' in Cincinnati. This was also my first go at using some of the new realistic paintbrushes in PS CS5. I intentionally made the background vague as this is a portrait piece. Feedback is welcome.

Salato Bird Oil Paintings.

Cardinal sketch, oil 2011.

Tufted Titmouse Sketch, Oil 2011

These are three small 12X14 one day oil paintings of some local wildlife at the Salato Center.
I recently had a discussion with extraordinary wildlife artist Charles Alexander in which he gave me some great advice on many things but one I spurned into immediate application was to only use my own reference photo's. This at first seemed like some hard advice to follow, It's not always easy to get photo's (especially good photo's) of critters you really want to photograph. This can result from expense of equipment, to time involvement, to access to locations, all of which are challenging for me. So to make up for what I currently lack in free time and extra cash for a safari with a Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L IS USM with extender, I had to improvise and compromise.

As it turns out, I am quite fortunate to live in a state of the union with a bountiful abundance of natural beauty and a great Fish and wildlife service system. Salato center serves as a Visitors Center for the States Department of Fish and Wildlife and is located only 30 minutes from my home in our grand old capital Frankfort.

The photo's I ended up using for these paintings came from just walking around hand held in the parks excellent trails and also from their exquisite indoor bird feeder viewing area. I attended the Backyard Bird Count event there and I think we listed over 20 species, although I didn't get excellent photo's of all the birds.

What I am beginning to accept is that to be a real wildlife artist, you must also be (or have access to) a real wildlife photographer. Working with any budget, I am putting to the test this theorem of using my own reference photo's, the Idea of which I like because it requires you to actively seek out your subject. you are forced to get to know them, study and document them, and this can only serve to improve your work after gaining a familiarity with them.