PROFILE
22 artistphotographers in America who make a lot of money
suing artists who use their mages for paintings.
Even when you do realist work, you can change
things from the photograph. Examples would be to
change the background, change the branch, or add
leaves. Doing one, or all of those things, will change
the look of the painting, compared to the photo.
So, armed with reference material and some
basic watercolour techniques, I started to
paint wildlife paintings. My early attempts were
pretty awful compared to what I produce today,
but at the time I felt they weren’t too bad.
Over the ensuing years my techniques have
changed dramatically. Perhaps the event that
had the greatest influence on my technique was
attending a wildlife art class with Belgian artist
Carl Brenders, who ran a five-day workshop in
Montana in 2000. I’ve done a number of wildlife
art workshops, but Carl is the only artist who
uses the same mediums as I do. This meant that I
could relate directly to everything he said and did.
I use watercolour and gouache, but there is more
gouache than watercolour in my works. Gouache
has advantages in that it is an opaque medium,
which allows a lot more flexibility for adding texture
to the painting, and it can be re-workable. Simply
dampening the dry paint on the painting will allow
you to push the paint around, so you can change
things later if you decide you’re not happy with the
ways it’s working. There is a disadvantage to this in
that if you try to put a wash over the painting, the
underlying paint will lift and mix with the wash. ThatThE WILdLIFE REaLIsT