HOW I PAINT
OPPOSITE PAGE
Panthera Leo,
pastel on museum
board, 71.1 x66cmBELOW Study of
African Leopardess
at Rest, pastel and
charcoal on paper,
31x48cmB
orn in Herefordshire in
1961, Gary Stinton didn’t
have the most
conventional start to his career
after dropping out of art college
in his late teens. He persevered,
however, and is now one of the
UK’s leading wildlife artists.
Gary has been exhibiting work
with London’s Jonathan Cooper
Park Walk Gallery for 25 years.
He has also used his art to help
raise awareness for wildlife
conservation. In 1996
HRH Princess Anne unveiled a
commemorative painting of his
that was commissioned by the
Gurkha Signal Regiment.
Gary’s work is on permanent
display in the Museum of Hounds
& Hunting North America in
Virginia, USA, and will also be on
show from 25 June to 1 July at
the London art fair Masterpiece.CAPTURING REFERENCE
Art is about painting what you’re
passionate about, and as nature is
very important to me, I’m instinctively
drawn to capturing animals. To find a
subject, I visit zoos, where I do some
rough sketches to get a general feel
for an animal. My sketching kit
includes Unison Colour soft pastels
and Arches hot pressed (HP)
watercolour paper, which I tint with a
little watercolour. It’s best to work on
a coloured background with pastels
as it brings out the lighter colours.
A camera with a good lens is
essential too. It’s very hard to get
close enough to an animal, so for the
detail, you need to zoom in. I use a
Nikon D60 camera with either an
AF-S Nikkor 50mm lens or an AF-S
Nikkor 200-400mm telephoto lens.
When I’m putting a composition
together, I work from 20 or so photos.
You rarely get a perfect photo and
that’s why it’s essential to know your
subject. For me, the time-consumingpart of the painting is getting the
proportions right, and it pays to study
the animal – their bones, their joints,
their muscles, their movements.
I’ve got replica skulls of all the big
cats, and they’re really useful for
understanding the form of the head.
If you have a good photo of an
animal but want to paint it in a
different position, try making a
plasticine model to get the light right.
I’m working on a painting of a lion at
the moment and I want to pair it with
a tiger portrait I’ve recently finished.
To ensure the light matches in both
paintings, I’ve made a model to see
how the light falls on the lion’s leg.PLANNING AN ARTWORK
Before I begin a new picture, I prime
a museum board to paint on. I always
use these because the 100% cotton
surface is very stable and permanent,
just like the watercolour paper I
sketch on. Museum board hasn’t got
much tooth though, which is why itArtists & Illustrators 67