Blink

Funny that. Just blinked and a couple of weeks went past. What happened to January 2013? It always reminds me of Einstein's quote with respect to time and relativity, "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity."  Funny that it sounds more like subjective time rather than relative time.

So what happened to the rest of January. Well there was another couple of paintings and not a lot else. Saw another great picture on 500px which was an African Sunset... fabulous sky (and you know me - I like sunrises and sunsets, and all bits of sky in between). So it might turn out that this post contains some links to the steps in the creation of the oil painting. First I need to find the picture again to show what I was working on. Here it is, and thanks to Robert Weber for having taken it. Giraffes really are quite odd shaped creatures. Don't forget to try and watch the battling giraffes in Episode 1 of the BBC Series Africa (yes yes, he has already mentioned this a couple of posts ago, but you know it is the whole age thing, potentially a senior moment - ed)

So here are the steps in my painting of this; step 1, what I have just noticed is that I failed to take a photo of the quick sketch I did, to get the placement right. (another senior moment - ed?). The other thing to note is that I have inadvertently put in a slope from left to right which is not in the original (artistic licence anyone? - ed)

Then Step 2 takes me to here. Now looks like the sketch of the 'Mummy' giraffe has a diplodocus head, but the wonders of oil paint will in due course fix that!

Step 3 (we are not learning a dance for Strictly Come Dancing - ed), leads us to this place. Have to say that the photo isn't the best and the giraffe is looking more like a dinosaur (no comment - ed).

Then I appear to be almost there with step 4 this and then we finally get to the final here. Now it took me a while (seemed like hours relatively - ed) to work out that the yellow part at the bottom of the photo and hence the painting was in fact sand... initially thought it was water, but nope, was sand. You may also notice that I made the nearest, largest tree have more branches than the original, but also more than I intended, didn't get enough of the background sky in, and didn't want to try and put it in as I had lost (lost? - ed) the original sky colours.

Below are smaller images, which due to shrinking images miss out some of the painting but show the flow:

King of all he surveys

Well, I could have put King of the Jungle, but lions don't tend to live in jungles. Please correct me if I am wrong, but don't they roam the great plains of Africa, Kalahari being one of them? They also roam or walk in constrained environments of many a zoo around the world, looking not quite so majestic and generally a little sorry for themselves, or is that me just anthropomorphising?

BTW highly recommend the BBC Africa series, the first episode with the fighting giraffes is quite astonishing. Fabulous photography and the lovely tones of Mr. Attenborough to add the appropriate gravitas.

So why this lion theme? Well I cam across a photo the other week of a lion on 500px in fantastic orange-ish light. Have to be honest not sure that he is in the desert or not, but the colour is great (but it does matter how you look at the photo, on my laptop, not orange-ish at all.

So I thought I would attempt a real great cat, after having done, what I have been told is a great cat Loki back before Christmas (a Maine Coon cat - big and hairy - (sounds like your sons - ed)),.Saturday afternoon I had a lion-goggling search through 1000'a and I really do mean 1000's of lion pictures for the one picture I wanted to use as the basis for my painting, namely Lion by Alan Hinchcliffe.

 I will apply for and get an artistic licence for my representation, but Alan has taken a fabulous photo, go and buy a copy from him.

What I have ended up with so far is the initial cut and then a bit of filling in to give me this. Now this (obviously - ed ) needs a bit more work, I feel it is a little all over the place. Going to make the lion appear to be on a large rock, with the plains of the Kalahari off to the left, maybe with a hint of a herd of zebras. We shall see. But not happy with his body, reckon I might have to add a rear leg coming into view as his body just doesn't look right. Also have to work on his Mohican, wasn't bad for a while, then I bodged it a little and now not at all happy with it. Whether I like the result or not, I will put a link to the 'finished article' probably here at some point in the future.

Postscript

The lion painting has moved on a little bit, closer to completion than it was. Can you splot (or spot) the deliberate error, obviously for artistic licence..