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Panda Totem

PandaTotemHere’s one that I’ve wanted to paint for quite some time. There have been times where I’ve had galleries and others asking me to add a Totem to the series for marketing reasons and it hasn’t always worked out the way I’ve wanted it to. On a couple of occasions, the painting ended up feeling forced and I didn’t have much fun with it, because it seemed like I was painting it at the wrong time.

At other times, however, the request coincides nicely with the desire to paint that animal and I’ve been pleased with the result. This is one of those times.

The Toronto Zoo has a couple of pandas on a five year loan from China and they are proving to be very popular. This year, they were successfully bred and two panda cubs are currently being well cared for. Panda cubs are delicate and they won’t be available to the public for some time, although the zoo has been posting some pretty adorable photos.

I approached the Toronto Zoo to add my Totem prints to their retail program this year and they are eager to place a large order in January, which will include animals in my current portfolio and a few I’ve yet to paint. The Panda Totem was one they requested.
PandaCloseupI’m pleased with how this one turned out, especially since it was one of the easier paintings I’ve done. For obvious reasons, I wasn’t able to take my own reference photos on this one, so I relied on stock footage. My friend Scott had some credits that were about to expire and he graciously offered them to me, for this painting and a few others I’ll paint in the future.

With those new photos and some of the others I’d already bought, I used about four different head-shots for this one and three different bodies, each offering me detail and anatomy that wasn’t available in the others.

Some paintings I’ve done have been arduous, where I had great difficulty getting the anatomy right, or the expression, personality, lighting. My Bighorn Sheep Totem is especially memorable for being a real slog. But this painting flowed nicely, was quite fun and didn’t take nearly as long as many of the others. It was nice to have such a smooth painting experience this time.

I’ll be printing this one in January and it will be available in the online store by the end of next month. The Calgary Zoo has already expressed interest in it as well, as the pandas at The Toronto Zoo will be moving there in 2018. Early speculation is that the cubs will be joining them.

This was painted on the Wacom Cintiq 24HD display in Photoshop CC, photos were only used for reference.

Cheers,Patrick

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Gorilla Totem

GorillaTotemFinalHere’s my latest painting and newest addition to the Totem series.

I started this at the end of October but didn’t get far on it, as I had pet portrait commissions and editorial cartoons taking priority. The bulk of that logjam was cleared last week and I was happy to get back to working on one of my own paintings. As much as I welcome and enjoy commission work, my own work has a lot more freedom to it, as there are no client instructions or details to keep in mind.

If I had nothing else to do, I’m pretty sure I could get one of these done in a couple of days. In fact, I’d love to have a year with nothing to do but paint the animals I enjoy most. But, I guess that’s everybody’s dream, isn’t it? No obligations but the bills still paid would certainly be the ideal. That’s likely why so many hope for retirement one day.

On that front, I often think of one of my favorite artists, Drew Struzan, who has painted some of the most iconic movie art of our time. If memory serves, he has tried to retire a few times, but he keeps doing work when his favorite clients come to call, if he feels like it. I like that. I don’t run well on idle and likely won’t ever retire. I’ll just paint what I like.

GorillaTotemCloseI took a lot of reference photos this year, some in the wild, but most at The Calgary Zoo and Discovery Wildlife Park. Some of the shots were sought out for upcoming paintings, others were happy accidents where an opportunity presented itself and I got the photos I needed. This Gorilla Totem is the result of the latter.

Had I planned ahead for this painting, I might have chosen the classic Silverback to paint. An imposing figure with great presence, I’ve no doubt I would have been pleased with the result. But this lady was looking at me through the glass one day and when I brought the camera up, she appeared even more interested. Whether it was her own reflection in the lens or mere curiosity, I happily snapped away until she moved on. The glass was dirty and at an odd angle, the light was poor with annoying reflections, but I managed, and was pleasantly surprised with the results.
GorillaTotem13HDI’ve said before that I might hang on to reference for some time before getting around to painting an animal, waiting for the moment to seem right. That’s why I chose the gorilla over others currently waiting in the wings. It was just the right time. This was painted on the Wacom Cintiq 13HD, 24HD in Adobe Photoshop CC, with photos only used for reference.

Starting another Totem today as there are a few I’d like to get done before the end of the year.

Thanks for stopping by.
Patrick.

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Papillons, Paintings and Prints

PupsMy final commission of the year was completed this past week, a challenging piece.

Featuring three Papillon dogs, each with distinctive colouring, personalities and subtle size differences, keeping them straight was almost an exercise in futility. From the top, moving clockwise, they are Desperado, Ringo and Mick.

For some reason, I kept mixing up the personality traits and subtleties of Desperado and Mick. Apparently Mick is less vocal, but I’d originally drawn him with his mouth open, which didn’t fit. Desperado is the mouthy one. Mick tilts his head left, but I drew Desperado doing that, which I ended up keeping after all. Then, after I made the changes in the sketch and got approval, I went back and started painting on the original sketch, which meant I had to correct it again. Chalk it up to a silly mistake from not paying close enough attention.
Sketch
While the client gave me dozens of photos to work from, almost all of the eyes in the usable pics were washed out by flash reflection or were small pics with low resolution and poor lighting. It happens and I do my best to work with what I’ve got. For the details, however, I did buy half a dozen stock photos of other Papillons. The colours were all wrong, but it helped me see fur direction, layering, poses and to fill in the missing anatomy I needed, but didn’t have in the supplied reference.

All well in the end and the client told me I managed to get each personality right with each dog. The painting has gone to print and I should be able to pick it up and ship it by week’s end. Thankfully, this one is right here in Alberta, so there shouldn’t be any issues with shipping at one of the busiest times of the year for parcels.

It occurred to me this week that I’ve been breaking an important rule of mine recently. I’ve said in the past, and have advised other artists, that proofing is essential every time I have a painting printed. A proof is a test print.

Kelly at Chroma Surge has been printing my canvas and matted prints for the past five years. During that time, there have been growing pains. Prints came out too dark or too light, colours too bright or not bright enough, whites and blacks sometimes washed out and muddy, different papers and materials producing different results.

Kelly’s printers and machines are colour calibrated, as is my own display, but with different profiles and myriad little adjustments here and there, a bunch of little deviations can make for large problems, and it wasn’t anybody’s fault. This is why proofing has been essential, especially in the beginning. For my poster prints, I use Maranda Reprographics and Printing in Calgary, and the same thing happened when I first went with them. The adjustments I make for Kelly’s prints are different than those I make for Maranda’s prints.

In recent years, Kelly and I have come to that Goldilocks zone for printing my work. When I send a painting to print, I know which adjustments I have to make ahead of time and I save them in the Photoshop file, a layer that tells me what I did, and that becomes the Master File. A dog with a lot of black fur (which is really not black), needs to be lighter than a dog with light fur, because I know the detail in those blacks is going to be gone if I don’t compensate.

Whites can’t be fully white and blacks can’t be fully black because it sucks the life right out of a painting. Pinks, reds, blues and greens have to be selectively desaturated in the print file, which means making them less colorful. I’ve seen skin tones print very red on portraits, a dog’s tongue so pink that it overpowers an entire painting, or a green background dominate the animal in front of it, simply because the adjustments weren’t made or were done incorrectly on my end. A canvas print will often appear more saturated, especially after it has been spray coated, so I have to compensate for that as well.

All of these things I’ve learned by proofing, which is usually just doing a preliminary small print on canvas and taking a good hard look at the colours to make sure the shift isn’t significant. When it all works, images on canvas just POP! I’m never as happy with a painting as when I see it on canvas.

Now, I could get really meticulous about the proofing, pull out a loupe and check for every little variation, but what I’ve also learned over the years is that tiny little colour shifts from my screen to canvas, matted print, or poster print are acceptable up to a point.
PupsCloseI attended a class at Photoshop World last year, taught by my friend Alan Hess. He was talking about how to reduce noise in a low-light image and how to compensate for it with camera settings in night photography. But he also cautioned that the only people who really care about noise in an image are other photographers.

That lesson applies to my work as well. The only person who really cares if the fur colour in the print exactly matches the fur colour on the screen is me, or possibly another artist. Most people don’t see it, or don’t care. A screen is also backlit, which means every image will always be brighter on a screen as opposed to a print. So it’s all just finding a balance that’s good enough.

Incidentally, the term ‘good enough’ is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Like most creative types, I’m a perfectionist. Thankfully middle-age has taught me to let that go a lot more than I used to. Perfection is unattainable and as the mantra goes, “Done is better than perfect.”

As a result, I have let go of that rule of proofing everything for the very good reason that I now have plenty of experience with the known variables. I know my printer and he knows my work. If there’s a problem, he’ll let me know. Kelly did a test print of my last two commissions, but I never saw them in person. He just told me that he knows what I want and how I like my paintings and that he thought they looked good.

I weighed my options. I could take a few hours out of my day to drive to Airdrie to see the proofs and then tell him to go ahead with the print, or I could just gamble on our past history and the fact that I can’t remember the last time I’ve had to reproof something with him. So I told him to go ahead and when I picked them up this week, the prints were fantastic.

For this commission of the three dogs, I decided to continue the streak and let it ride. I sent Kelly the image Friday morning and got back, “The proof looks great! I’ll run it off here shortly.”

I’ve no doubt that I’ll be happy with finished result.

Technical details. This was painted in Adobe Photoshop CC, using both a Wacom Cintiq 13HD and 24HD displays. Photos were only used as reference. For most of the painting, I kept each dog on it’s own layer, to help with painting the hair.
PupsCintiq

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A Tale of Two Paintings

My usual routine is to write a little blog post after each painting I do, to provide a close-up and maybe share a little bit of relevant info. Given the fact that I’ve been working on two commissions at the same time recently and finished them quite close together, I thought I’d share them both in the same post. It gives me an opportunity to show the difference between the two styles of commission paintings I do.

Loki

The first painting I recently finished was Loki, a beautiful old boy who passed away a little while ago. This is the second memorial painting I’ve done for this client; the first was Odin a couple of years ago. The client is very familiar with my work and chose a portrait style, which is quite often the case with memorial paintings I’m commissioned to do. With plenty of photos to choose from, I had the freedom to go with whichever pose I wanted to use. As usual, one photo spoke to me clearly and I got to work.

LokiCloseI usually only have a rough idea of what a painting will look like before I get started, but it’s usually enough. The background colour might change in the middle of a painting, but this one was orange and yellow from the beginning. The reference pic was taken in the fall and I knew those colours would just bring out his eyes. For me, it’s all about the eyes. If I get the eyes right, the rest of the painting will always come together. And if they’re wrong, nothing looks right.

Having lost a pet of my own this summer, there was a little more gravitas for me with this one. This old boy was loved a lot and I thought of that often while working on it. What a privilege.

SaxonThe next painting was in my Totem style, which is a whimsical caricature look, the same way I paint my wildlife paintings. The clients saw my paintings for sale in About Canada Gallery in Banff while on vacation and looked me up to see if I did commissions.

Saxon was described as a “beautiful drooling mastiff” and when I saw the photos, I was inclined to agree. His personality was evident in many of the pics and again, I found one that I thought would best represent what the client wanted him to look like.

SaxonCloseAs is the case in many of my whimsical paintings, I found myself smiling a lot while painting this big fella, and even laughed out loud a few times. I really wanted to paint in long strings of drool coming from those jowls, but the client didn’t want that. A commission is a significant investment, and while most of my clients give me carte blanche to paint what I want, I’m willing to take direction if it makes for a happier client.

Case in point, when this piece was finished yesterday, I had intentionally made the body a little narrow to draw attention to his big head, but the client thought I made him too skinny and wanted me to bulk up the body a bit. I spent another hour on the painting last night and delivered a final that pleased everybody, including me.

No matter what style my clients choose for their paintings, portrait or whimsical, memorial or just because, it’s such an honour to be trusted with the task. I enjoy these a great deal and each one challenges and teaches me something new. These two were no exception.

These will both be sent for proofing tomorrow and I intend to have them printed, framed and shipped in a couple of weeks.

Thanks for stopping by,

Patrick

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Why They’re Called Totems.

CoyoteTotem
Having just finished listening to Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Big Magic’, I realize I’ve been betraying myself. I have a book deadline in July of next year; it’ll be a book of my animal work. In it, I plan to talk about the painting process, what I think about while I’m working, stories about certain paintings and what brought about their existence.

I have been wrestling with one part of the larger story, however, most importantly deciding whether or not I want to include it. The reason is because it is deeply personal, it is the whole reason I paint these animals, especially the way in which I paint them, and it leaves me open to harsh criticism. I’ve only shared this story with a handful of people.

I’ve realized in recent days, however, that not to include it would be removing the very soul of the book. It would be robbing it of any honesty, and would genuinely be the worst kind of selling out, simply because I am worried about what people might think.

That’s not the book I want to write, and I wouldn’t be happy with it. Just as I’d rather give somebody a hug than shake their hand, you got to be who you are. So here goes.

In the mid-nineties, I worked at The Douglas Fir Resort in Banff, running the waterslide facility. A decent job, worked with some wonderful people, many of whom are still good friends. While I can’t be sure of the sequence of events, I do remember that my friends Michelle and Jeremy introduced me to Shamanism, which is a spiritual belief involving the natural world around us and most often associated with Native American culture, as I understood it. The general belief in communion with the natural world, however, is shared by many cultures on the planet. While I won’t go into it in great detail, I enjoyed the exploration.

I should mention that the only mind altering drugs I’ve ever done in my life was that I’ve smoked pot a few times. Let’s just say it didn’t agree with my naturally guarded nature, so none of this is related to illegal substances. Also, none of us was doing moonlight rituals or dancing naked under the stars in meadows, calling ourselves Running Deer or pretending we were in any way connected with a Native tribe. It was merely an investigation, just as I’ve done with many other supposedly fringe beliefs during that time.

One day, Jeremy and I were hanging out at the pool on days off and he gave me a drumming tape, which is just a rhythmic beating drum track that, when coupled with meditation, can often induce an altered perception called a journey. So I went into the sauna with my Walkman (remember those?) by myself, leaving Jeremy out by the pool and figured I’d give it a shot. When in your mid-twenties, you’ll believe anything, including that you’re invincible.

To spare you the detailed play by play, I’ll just say that it was one of the most profound spiritual experiences of my life. In the journey, I met a coyote, as vivid as if he was standing in front of me right now, more real than any dream, and he led me on a walk. In the simplest terms, I had met my personal Totem.

To even write this is daunting, because my instinct says, “right now, people are rolling their eyes and thinking, ‘wow, another flaky artist. What a shock.’”

If that’s you, feel free to stop reading. I won’t be offended.

Over the next few years, I was suddenly flooded with more animal dreams than I can count. I still have three or four volumes of journals I wrote at the time, complete with sketches of scenes and descriptions of the things I saw. These were incredibly vivid dreams and more journeys with the drumming tracks.

At our wedding the next year, one of Shonna’s friends gave me medicine cards. I still have them twenty years later. While in Anaheim in 2006, Shonna and I went to a mall and I found the book Animal Speak by the late Ted Andrews. I still open that book weekly and use it as a reference for the wildlife I often see. I was drawn to this stuff, it just seemed to show up everywhere, or I was suddenly just noticing it. I’m as much a skeptic as the next guy, so I’ll concede that point, as you often find what you’re looking for.

Over time, however, I lost interest in it. The flighty indulgence of youth has time for these things, but I became busy with my editorial cartooning career. Sure, I thought about those dreams once in a while and revisited it occasionally. When cleaning up my office, I might come across those journals and read a few pages, but as time past, it drifted away.

Around 2009, right after my first Photoshop World, I’d been looking for some painted work I could do that I could actually market. Up until then, I’d been doing a lot of painted caricatures of celebrities, but realized I wasn’t enjoying it much and that selling these likenesses would also present legal issues in the future and I didn’t like doing it enough to bother with that hassle.

So I thought about what I could paint. Given where I live, I figured I’d give wildlife a try. I’d done some renderings of animals for editorial cartoons, but wanted to see if I could paint them as well. A bear seemed like a good start. I made time for this experiment and the finished result looked sort of like a real bear, but it was definitely caricatured, which hadn’t been my original plan. It just ended up that way. The response was good, people liked it and most importantly, so did I. It just felt right. It was fun. I loved that bear and it’s still one of my favorites today, and one of my best sellers.

GrizzlyTotem
It was my first Totem painting, of which I’ve done almost thirty since, among many other animal paintings that aren’t considered part of that group. In February of 2010, with three of them done, I got into my first art gallery in Banff, seemingly by accident, and now my animal work is a large part of my career. With three galleries, two zoos and international licensing on apparel and other products, this part of my life is still growing. Best of all, it is still the most enjoyable work I have ever done and continue to do. It feels like a calling, like this is where I’m supposed to be.

Now here’s the spooky part.

About a year after I started painting these animals, I was getting rid of some books in my office. I came across those journals and got sucked into reading one of them. I discovered an entry that described a detailed dream I’d had right around the time I’d been introduced to the concept of animal spirits, about twenty years ago. In the dream, I was at a party in one of the chalets at the Douglas Fir Resort. I had gone into the bathroom to relieve myself but had been distracted by a noise outside. I looked out the small window and saw a grizzly bear walking toward the chalet on the path outside.

The bear approached the chalet, put its front paws up onto the wall, looked right up at me and grinned. The bear had human eyes. That was twelve years before I’d painted my first Totem, and I’d forgotten all about it.

It might surprise you to read that I’m an atheist. I was raised Catholic and know a lot about religion, but if I ever had faith in it, I certainly don’t now. In the simplest terms, I believe we get one shot at this life and I don’t believe in an afterlife. Or if I’m wrong, I don’t think we have the reference required to comprehend what a continued existence might entail, so I don’t give it much thought. I also don’t try to dissuade anyone who believes otherwise. Faith is faith, no matter where you place it. To each their own.

And yet, my personal paradox is that I do believe that there is a mysterious other level that parallels and interacts with our own. Something we can often feel and sometimes see and touch. I don’t try to define it, nor do I believe it’s the same for everybody; we might each experience it in terms we can understand. Whether through intuition, dreams, premonitions or just that gut feeling you have that tells you to turn left instead of right, there’s something indefinable that has an influence on our material world.

In every painting I do, and I’ve mentioned this often, there is a moment where the personality just seems to ‘show up.’ I’m not kidding. The technical brushwork might be to the best of my ability, but to me, it appears lifeless until that moment. When it happens, it is my glimpse into that other, because it’s so profound. It is a real experience to me. When it comes, there is often a sense of relief, that the work was worthy of it, but more often, it’s like greeting an old friend. I’ve even said aloud on more than one occasion, “there you are.”

It’s as if I did the work to create the painted body, and when it was ready, something else gave it life. That’s the best I can explain it. It moves me every time.

In June of 2013, I finally painted the Coyote Totem, and it was worth the wait. It was if I didn’t have the skills to do it justice until then. It is the only painting I have printed for myself and it’s framed in my office. It is not one of my bestsellers, but it is my favorite. My wife suggested I hang it where I could see it easily from my desk. I look at it often, especially when I realize I’ve learned something important or when a perceived failure yields unexpected dividends later on, the connection only apparent in hindsight.

His grin is all knowing and it always makes me smile, as if telling me to have faith in the process or simply to say, “told you so.” From Animal Speak, The Coyote is the wise fool, the trickster. “There is always hidden wisdom when the coyote is concerned. Its energies are tied to simplicity and trust.”

Recently, I mentioned on social media that I was thinking of getting my first tattoo for my 45th birthday in the spring. I’d finally realized that Wile E. Coyote would be appropriate, a frustrated, grumpy looking version that just suits my mercurial personality, and it’s a cartoon. Shortly after sharing that, my mother sent me this picture of me at 19 months old.
Coyote

Seems he has always been around for me.

What I’ve learned from studying this Totem is that the best lessons are often learned in a roundabout way. When you’re failing at one thing, you’re probably succeeding at something else and you don’t even know it. While I was frustrated for years at not getting to where I wanted to be with the artwork I was pursuing, what I was really doing was getting better at drawing and painting, putting in those requisite 10,000 hours. Eventually everything came full circle until I found the work I love to do best, or rather it found me. I didn’t develop the skill until later to create these animals that make me so happy, but I’d always been working toward it, even if I didn’t know it.

So now you know. This is why I paint these animals, why they’re called Totems, and why I can never take full credit for them. It is a powerful gift, one I continually have to earn.

It’s my own brush with big magic, and I’m grateful.

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A Couple of Great Deals!

FreeShipping

First Offer: FREE SHIPPING!
This applies to everything in my online store, including the 8″X10″ prints I just added. They’ve only been available once before via my newsletter, social media, and at The Calgary Expo. For those 8″X10″ prints, postcard sets, poster prints, matted and canvas giclée prints, there are no shipping fees for orders to Canada and the Continental United States, only while inventory lasts. If you live close to me, I’ll even deliver and can take payment in person via cash or credit card. Check out the store here.

Second Offer: 30% OFF COMMISSIONS
The regular rate for pet portrait commissions is $900 (+GST). For the first THREE people that book a commission following this deal, the cost is $630 (+GST). That includes a canvas giclée print (up to 18″X24″), shadow box frame, and shipping. We’re talking friends and family rates here. This sort of thing makes a very unique Christmas gift and something you’ll want to think about sooner, rather than later, to have it done on time. For more information and to see some of my commission pieces, please visit that page on my site.

Any questions, drop me a line via the contact page.

Cheers,
Patrick

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Conservation, Conviction, and Commerce

It came to my attention last week that the Calgary Zoo has allowed the Calgary chapter of Safari Club International to book their annual fundraiser at the zoo facilities next year. In the wake of the recent shooting death of Cecil the Lion, there has been a lot of focus on the trophy hunting of animals both at home and abroad. Unfortunately with our rapidly changing news cycle and our thirty-second attention spans, we as a society are prone to outrage one moment, apathy the next. Online, it has often been referred to as slacktivism.

For most, it costs nothing to rage against the Calgary Zoo on Facebook and Twitter, and then move on with our lives having raised our voices with righteous indignation but ultimately that’s the end of it. We rage on one bandwagon, wait for another to come alongside and climb aboard.

Unfortunately this issue has been literally keeping me up nights. Glancing at the clock on my computer, it is presently 12:53 AM as I write this sentence. I’m normally up at 5 AM to get my editorial cartoons done, so tomorrow will no doubt be a very long day.

The dilemma I’m having with the Calgary Zoo is that I spend a fair bit of time there, taking reference photos for paintings and enjoying the animals. When people have challenged me on supporting the zoo, I’ve long defended their conservation record and have explained the societal value of a well-run humane zoo, that it educates the public about the plight of at-risk and endangered animals world-wide.

A couple of years ago, the zoo started selling prints of my whimsical wildlife paintings and I’ve been proud to announce on social media whenever I’ve delivered another large batch of my poster prints or when I’ve visited the zoo to take reference photos.

I wrote an email to the Calgary Zoo expressing my disapproval of their decision to allow Safari Club International to use their facilities in an official capacity for an event. SCI will actually be auctioning off opportunities for their members to hunt some of the very animals that are featured at the zoo.

As an aside, I should be clear that I do not object to subsistence hunting or those who choose to feed their families with wild game rather than the meat available at the supermarket. I’m a meat eater and we are part of the food chain. Hunting for food is something every species does with the tools they have available.

My objection is to trophy hunting.

Zoo
In the zoo’s official response to the negative publicity (seen above) and no doubt plenty of emails and letters from their own members, the zoo says that they have no relationship with Safari Club International. They then go on to talk about all of the businesses that book their venues and say that they won’t discriminate against anyone wishing to book their facilities.

I would agree that it is unreasonable to expect that an ethical panel be convened anytime a company or individual is presented as a potential client. Nobody has that kind of time or money to conduct such an investigation. I don’t do background checks on everyone who buys a print, nor have I done extensive investigations into every newspaper I work for or gallery that sells my work.

But in the case of Safari Club International, the Calgary Zoo fails to make a credible argument with their response.

From the zoo’s own website, one finds the following, “Your support will connect the community to the natural world and inspire visitors to care for it, all while giving hope to endangered species.”

Additionally, “Education at the zoo builds a legacy for future generations – a love of nature and a commitment to conservation. Your support provides visitors and students of all ages with engaging experiences that connect them with the natural world. You can inspire the next generation of environmental caretakers. Help put our future in caring hands.”

And finally, “The future of your zoo is centered on animal welfare and a proud history of saving species. Inspiring Change, the zoo’s 20 year master plan, will set a new standard for exhibit design, connect the community with nature and continue important endangered species work locally and globally. Help us inspire change and join us on the journey to a brighter future for wildlife and wild places.”

Safari Club International’s mandate is to kill animals. Their argument that they aid in conservation is window dressing, a pretty frame for the dead carcass or disembodied head they take as a trophy. Anyone truly interested in conservation wouldn’t feel the need to kill the animal they claim to protect.

Most venues with facilities for rent should and do have a line in their application for use that reads something like, ‘we reserve the right to refuse bookings at our discretion.’

When a client’s image is so diametrically opposed to the mandate of the Calgary Zoo, it isn’t discrimination to politely refuse the booking and to suggest that perhaps another venue might be more appropriate, especially since there is no grey area or hidden agenda with regard to Safari Club International’s purpose as an organization. The zoo doesn’t need to do any digging to find out that SCI exists so that members can kill animals.

So I’ve been wrestling with this moral dilemma. Do I simply wag a finger at the zoo for allowing this event, but continue to use my annual membership to take pictures? Can I criticize them for doing business with this organization I find so despicable, but still happily deliver prints to their retail outlets to be sold there? Or would that make me as big a hypocrite as I’m accusing them of being?

I’ve been having a hard time with this. I had a long discussion with a friend about it while camping this weekend. My wife and I went back and forth about it this evening before I started writing this post. In all honesty, I’ve been looking for a way to keep selling my prints there while still occupying the moral high ground. I’m a self-employed artist. Removing my prints will be voluntarily cutting a portion of my income. Conviction comes at a price.

I’m just getting started on this journey of painting animals and I enjoy it a great deal. I plan to be doing this for many more years to come and if I start compromising my integrity at their expense in order to make a few more dollars, I’m as bad as the people who go out and shoot them under a bloody flag of conservation. When you get comfortable compromising your values, it will become a habit.

I am hopeful that their many other clients, patrons and regular guests will apply pressure to the Calgary Zoo, to urge them to deny Safari Club International the venue next year. I am hopeful that the outrage I saw online when this story broke wasn’t just hollow talk without action. I would like to give the board at the zoo time to realize their error in judgement and I will be happy to continue to support the zoo if they come around to the right decision.

If not, I will no longer supply any more of my prints to the Calgary Zoo and will cut up my membership. I have to sleep at night.

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Delighted with DecalGirl

I spend a lot of time trying to get the details right, painting in all of the little hairs and textures. So when I have that work printed, it needs to look great, too. Whether it’s the poster prints sold at the Calgary Zoo, or the giclée matted prints and canvas in the galleries in Banff and on Vancouver Island, if it doesn’t look good, I don’t want my name on it. I’m also a big believer in working with professionals. Rather than stumble through learning to print my own work, I hire people who are already experts at printing. By paying them to do what they do best, I get to continue doing what I do best, which is painting funny looking animals.

When I signed on with The Mountain , it was only because I’d seen their quality and attention to detail and knew that my paintings would look great on their shirts, and I wasn’t disappointed. My reputation is only as good as the people I choose to work with. I didn’t want shirts that were good enough, I wanted the best shirts.

OtterCaseSo, when I got the opportunity to sign on with DecalGirl, it didn’t take long for me see that this company was a perfect fit for me and my whimsical critters. DecalGirl has been in business since 2003. They were the first-to-market, the original skin company to produce full color skins in the United States. They support over 500(!) unique devices, including cell phones, laptops, tablets, MP3 players, eReaders, and gaming devices. Sounds like they’re the best to me.

Whenever possible, I’ve tried to work with companies where the owners are still involved with the day to day. While you can always hire good people to work for you, it’s the people at the helm who chart the course. When those are the people who have built it from the ground up or who’ve bet their own future on it, they just care more. You can build relationships with these people.

Here are some other positives that really stand out for me with DecalGirl.

– Their products are 100% Made in the USA. Yes, I’m Canadian, but I have a lot of great friends and customers in the U.S. and I find it a lot easier to stand behind a product if I don’t have to hide where it’s made. DecalGirl is a one stop shop. Their customer service staff is right on site, so if you’ve got questions, you’re going to be talking to the right people in the right place.

– I already knew from their website that they paid attention to detail, but seeing is believing. I received my samples last week and I was WOWED. The print quality is as good as that of the work I sell in the galleries. I couldn’t wait to put my Shark Totem on my laptop and kept squinting and looking at the fine detail, couldn’t believe how good the print was.
Packaging– These decals don’t just arrive loose in an envelope, the packaging is well designed, colorful, and professional. From an artist’s perspective, I was very pleased to see that included in the details was my name, the name of the painting and my signature. That not only makes me feel valued as a partner, it’s going to make my customers feel valued that they’re not just buying some generic catalog stock photo. This is a piece of artwork.

– I worked in a sign shop years ago and I learned a lot about vinyl and the different weights and qualities. I’ve printed and applied vinyl to many vehicles and signs, but it’s been well over a decade and I’m out of practice. I needn’t have worried, because not only do the decals come with easy to follow instructions, the vinyl is of such excellent quality that I was able to apply it quickly and easily, using only my fingers to smoothly stick it in place. No fuss, no bubbles, and it looks great! Follow the instructions, you’ll have no trouble.
Otters

– The great prices they’re offering for their products, the incredibly large number of available devices, and the attention to detail is very impressive. I’m really not going to have to sell their work, it pretty much sells itself.

– When I bought my laptop, I wanted one that could replace my desktop in a pinch. It had to be powerful and robust, so that if my main computer went on the fritz and needed repair, I’d still be able to work. So my laptop is rather unique and uncommon in the market in that it’s a high end gaming laptop, perfect for the demands of detailed digital art. As such, it’s not listed in their available devices. A nice feature DecalGirl offers is that they’ll custom fit one to your specs. I gave them the measurements of my laptop and the print that arrived fit perfectly in the space I’d intended for it!
Shark– Getting tired of my mentioning attention to detail? On my iPad Mini, for instance, all of the little holes for the volume and power buttons, the speakers and microphones, they’re already cut out of the decal. It helps with getting a perfect fit if you start on an edge with those holes and then apply from there. It almost fell into place on its own. They’ve also got a downloadable wallpaper for your devices, which was a simple process. The decal on the front of my iPad lines up perfectly with the wallpaper on the screen. Looks very cool! This image also completely covers the back and sides of the device, too!
GiraffeiPad– These decals will in no way harm your devices. They’re easily removed without any leftover residue.

At present, the Totems available from DecalGirl are my Great Horned Owl, Ostrich, Giraffe, Otter and Shark. For those who’ve been asking for some of the others, fingers crossed that these sell so well that eventually all of your favorites will be available. Take a look and see some previews of what these look like on your devices.

While this is still very new, the folks I’ve been talking with at DecalGirl have been friendly and welcoming, offering me any and all assistance to make sure I’m happy with how they’re putting my paintings on their products. In point of fact, I’m thrilled. I’m looking forward to a long relationship with these folks.

Cheers,
Patrick.

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Letter to my Editor

I’ve been following Renegade Arts Entertainment for some time now as the company is a local success story. A Canadian publisher of comic books and graphic novels featuring internationally known writers and artists, Renegade’s reach appears to be ever expanding. Based right here in Canmore, their commitment to quality artwork, storytelling, and printing has earned my respect.

Earlier this year, I asked Editor and Publisher (and writer!) Alexander Finbow if he wouldn’t mind meeting me for lunch. I was looking to pick his brain about publishing and asked for any advice he could give me. Alex and I didn’t really know each other, though we’d met, but I needed help and figured I had nothing to lose by asking.

He was gracious and generous with his time and information, we talked about Renegade possibly publishing my book (something I didn’t expect), but with the many submissions he gets each week and the fact that my book will be very different from anything they’ve published before, it was just tire kicking on both of our parts. I thanked him for his time and willingness to share what he knew and I went away with a lot more to think about.

Alex and I ran into each other a few times at the Calgary Expo, talked while walking to the BMO Centre one day during the event, and he invited my wife and I to a networking event that weekend as well, which was a lot of fun.
Alex01FBThis past Sunday, I went downtown to Café Books here in Canmore to buy Renegade’s latest book, The Loxleys and Confederation, and Alex and I chatted more about my project. Before I knew it, we had agreed to work together on it, and Renegade will be publishing my book in early 2017. If that seems like a lot of lead time, it’s because there are a thousand things to do if you want to publish and market a book well. Creating the content is step 1. I’m looking forward to a lot of work and a lot of education over the next year. The artwork and writing of the book needs to be done by Canada Day, 2016.

So now I have a deadline. I’m good with deadlines.

With some suggestions for the narrative from Alex and my own thoughts rattling around my head, he tasked me with laying down a foundation for the book. What do I want to say? What story do I want to tell?

Yesterday, I sent Alex the following email and I thought it might be something you’d like to read, with his permission and approval, of course. He even came up with the title for this post.

So here it is. The beginning of my first book of artwork…

Hi Alex:

Having had some time to think about the direction of the narrative in the book, I wanted to write down what I think would give you my best work to go along with the images. Most people I know who’ve run their own business or charted their own course for any length of time, have experienced the rewards of following their gut instinct. Sometimes it’s soft spoken, other times it’s a deafening roar. We’ve all been the victims of ignoring that instinct as well, and the ones still working have learned from it. I’m sure you can say the same of your own experience.

With that in mind, I don’t want to include any fictional stories in the book. Don’t get me wrong, I like writing fiction. I’ve written two novels that have been sitting on a shelf for the past fifteen years because I was focusing on my artwork instead. Truth be told, I chickened out on trying to get either published, although I did recently start editing the first one again to give it another go.

But for the animal work, fiction just feels wrong to me. What I had intended from the beginning, and what still feels true to me, is to use the writing in the book to talk about the road from there to here. How I stumbled upon drawing animals and the success of that work at this point in time is a weird meandering story and that’s the one I want to tell.

I’ve never gone to art school, so I don’t like talking or teaching art in that way because I don’t feel qualified to do so. I’m also not an animal expert by any means so talking about habitats and biology would be boring for me to write, not to mention for someone to read. As for telling a story that goes with each painting or image, there really isn’t one for every animal. Some of them, like my Bactrian Camel image, was just because I saw one at the Calgary Zoo and thought, “I want to paint him!”

BactrianCamel
That’s often the case with most of my images and there will be plenty of sketches and works-in-progress I’d like to include in the book that won’t require captions or accompanying text.

But there are many paintings that do have fun and ridiculous stories associated with them. There are the owls up at Grassi Lakes, a rooster on a hobby farm outside of Bowden, a couple of goofy looking seagulls on a dock in Ucluelet, the lion cubs I photographed up close outside of Innisfail recently, and a Coyote that waited twenty years to be painted. Incidentally, that Coyote is my favorite painting and I’m willing to tell that story in the book. I’ve never written about it before.

CoyoteTotem
I’ve got plenty of stories to tell, but the common thread that will tie them all together is that they’re part of my story. So that’s what I want it to be, a collection of stories that contribute to the whole. The lessons I’ve learned from painting animals.

I want to talk about my philosophy on the business, anecdotes, learning to paint, following instinct, serendipity and happy accidents. I started in my mid-late twenties and somehow turned this into a career. What I’d like to share with people is the inspiration that it’s never too late to try something new and to point out the value of taking risks. Ask twenty artists how to become a success and you’ll get twenty answers. The ones who went to art school will say you have to go to art school. The ones who paint with oils and acrylics will say you have to paint with traditional materials. More and more in my career, I find that the rules others tell you that must be followed are often shackles, chains that prevent you from moving forward.

This is the type of narrative I want to write, the one I’m the most passionate about, and what will deliver my best work to the project. It’s these types of themes that have given me the greatest response in newsletters and blog posts over the years, the ones that strip away the glossy PR and marketing and talk to people like they’re real…well…people.

I’ve been keeping a pretty regular blog since February of 2008, although some months are leaner than others. Lately, more of my writing has gone into my newsletter, but there’s a lot of material there and more I can add that I think will make an interesting read to go with the paintings.

Everybody’s got a story to tell, and I’d like to start telling mine. I think there’s value in it. Plus, I really do enjoy writing and if I’m going to keep painting the images I want to paint, then I’d like the writing to follow the same guidelines.

That being said, I fully submit to your editing expertise when the writing is done. I mentioned to my wife the other day that it seems laughable when we were kids that our teachers would assign 1000 word essays in English class. I can write that much in an email even when I’m trying to keep it short. Clearly, I need an editor.

I’ve had a title in mind for a couple of years now. It best sums up the work and describes the whimsical nature of most of my paintings. I’d like to call it, “Funny Looking Animals.”

With that in mind, I’d welcome your thoughts and advice on this. I’m happy to send you links to any blog posts I’ve written that I think best illustrate the tone I’d like to set in the book. I’m looking forward to working with you.

Cheers,
Patrick
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Polar Bear Totem

PolarBearTotemHere’s my latest painting, the Polar Bear Totem. I’ve mentioned before how I never really know when I’m going to paint a specific animal. I’ll keep reference photos for some animals for years before using them, waiting for the time to seem right. In other cases, I’ll get the urge to paint an animal and go searching for reference right before I start the painting, as I did for this one. I bought several stock photo images and used all of them in the painting of this bear, although as always, no photo is part of the painting, only used for reference. It was painted in Photoshop CC on my Wacom Cintiq 24HD display.

In my experience, if I paint an animal for commercial purposes alone, it often doesn’t end up working for me or it turns out to be less than I’d hoped for. The Magpie and Ground Squirrel have always felt like that for me, because I painted them for my first gallery in Banff, rather than for myself.

On many occasions, I’ll enjoy working on a painting, but I’ll feel the finished result just isn’t as good as it could be, so it’ll take me some time away from it until I feel good about it. Even then, some of my most popular paintings aren’t my personal favorites.

Thankfully, this one felt special and the final few hours were some of the most enjoyable I’ve spent painting this year.

Initially, I wanted to have this done for the upcoming Calgary Expo show in less than a couple of weeks, but to make my deadline to get all of my prints done, allowing me time to sign and package them, it would have had to have been done a couple of weeks ago. I was feeling rushed, looked at how many prints of images I was already bringing and it became clear that I didn’t need it, so I decided to take my time. I’m quite pleased that I did as I’m very happy with the result.
PolarBearSketchI’ve always loved bears, even though I’ll admit to an irrational fear of them, which sometimes does put a dark cloud over camping trips. I live in bear territory, specifically blacks and grizzlies. Despite the fact that I hike alone quite a bit, and have seen plenty of bear sign, I’ve never run into one in the wild, which after twenty years in the Bow Valley, is kind of odd. But I’m ‘bear aware’ as they say in these parts, carry bear spray and know what to do if I encounter one. In most cases, as long as you don’t startle them or they aren’t feeding or with cubs, they’ll want to get as far away from you as they can. Even if they charge you, it’s often a bluff, and if you can keep your wits about you, they’ll stop short of contact or veer off and hightail it in the other direction.

I’ve worn a black bear’s tooth around my neck for many years now, given to me by an acquaintance years ago in Banff. He’d found it somewhere in Quebec years ago, still in the skull, and it’s very old. I had a jeweler friend craft a silver bezel setting for it so I could wear it on a chain.

The first Totem I painted was a Grizzly, but it hasn’t felt right yet to paint a black bear. Sooner or later, it’ll show up, I’m sure.

Why I felt the time was right to paint a polar bear, is beyond me. Perhaps it’s the increased frequency of their mention in the news, associated with climate change and the expected loss of their habitat. Scientists fear that polar bears, while very adaptable, show no inclination to survive solely on land. They thrive on sea ice, that’s their habitat, and when it’s gone, likely they will be as well. A recent CBC report stated that ‘Inuvialuit traditional knowledge’ says the bear numbers are actually fine, so as in all things, the truth of their future lies somewhere in the middle, although they are classified as a threatened species.

The polar bear has no natural predators other than man. Classified as a marine mammal, it’s carnivorous and a skilled hunter. While they will avoid encounters with humans when they can, they aren’t fearful of us and have been known to kill and eat people. Considering how many of them have been killed by humans, I say turnabout is fair play.

I’d like to visit Churchill, Manitoba one day and take one of the polar bear tours, to see them in their natural surroundings.

PolarBearCloseIf you’d like to receive my newsletter which features blog posts, new paintings and editorial cartoons, follow this link to the sign up form. Thanks!