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Ring-Tailed Ringleader

Here’s a new painting, a Ring-tailed Lemur just finished this morning.

Wacom sent me their new Wacom One display to take for a test drive and to record a video for them. The video has an inspirational theme, rather than a technical one. I’ve written the script, recorded the video, but now I need a few days to edit all of the footage and record the audio, especially since I have my cartoon deadlines as well. It’s a lot of work to take a painting that took about 15 hours and compress it into a 3 or 4 minute video so people won’t get bored.

Seriously, I love painting hair and fur, but it would be effective torture to make me watch many hours of somebody else doing it.

Initially supposed to be more of a cartoony creation, I wanted to see what kind of advances Wacom had made in their display technology, so I painted with it instead. The Wacom One is being marketed as an entry-level display, but I enjoyed working with it and didn’t feel hobbled at all.

I’ll have a more technical evaluation post a little later, but for those of you who just like looking at my funny looking animal paintings, I’ll save those details.

The Ring-tailed Lemurs at the Calgary Zoo are fun to watch, and the Land of Lemurs is an immersive experience. Their enclosure allows them to freely roam where they like and it’s the people who are restricted in the center, but with no barrier. With zoo staff on hand to make sure people follow the rules, the open-air concept allows for some great photo opportunities.

I’ve taken many shots of these critters and plan to paint a group of them together as they like to huddle in a ball. All of the expressive faces peeking out is quite comical.
While going through my photo reference, however, I came across the image above. She’s a female, as are all of the ring-tailed lemurs at the zoo (or were at the time of this photo), and I liked what I saw. I even loved the blue sky background, and saw no need to change it. I don’t know if she really has a bad attitude, but part of the reason I paint the personalities I do is that I actually see that in the photo reference I take. The painting definitely looks male, however.

This was a lot of fun. I know I say that about many of my paintings, but I’d put this painting experience in the Top 3. Many of my paintings could be labelled cute, but this one borders on psychotic, which is probably why I liked it so much. Those crazy eyes suggest a critter that isn’t quite all there.

As my friend Pam at Wacom said this morning on Instagram, “He looks like an evil ringleader.”

So while I don’t know if it’s the kind of image that will be popular on a print or licensed product, some of my best images were ones I did for myself. I never expected my cantankerous Ostrich image to be popular and that one has developed a strange cult following I don’t fully understand.

I worked a very long day on Sunday drawing three editorial cartoons so that I could spend all day yesterday putting the final hours in on this piece. I could have finished it last night, but I erred on the side of patience and decided to sleep on it. When I opened the image this morning, I laughed out loud. It’s such a ridiculous expression.
Another hour on the fine hairs, tweaks here and there, tunes cranked in the earbuds, and I’m glad I waited. It was a great way to start my day.

I’m looking forward to sharing the video soon.

Cheers,
Patrick

© Patrick LaMontagne
@LaMontagneArt
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Lemur Totem

LemurFBMy first Totem painting of the year, this is a Mongoose Lemur.  While many people think of the Ring-tailed species when you mention Lemur, mostly due to the animated movie Madagascar, I painted this species because of all of the reference pics I’ve shot at the Calgary Zoo.  The resident lemurs are free-roaming with no cage or glass between them and the people wandering around inside the large rainforest enclosure.  They don’t move all that fast and are very cooperative models.

While this little guy (or gal) is very cute, you might wonder why I made the choice to put so much work into it and add it to my Totem series, since mongoose lemurs aren’t as universally popular as say, a wolf or grizzly bear.  From a marketing perspective, it might seem like this would have been a better sketch painting.  But, one thing I’ve learned from painting these animals is that I usually get the best results when I put the time and work into the ones that just feel right at the time.

In the past, I’ve forced specific animals, painted them solely because I thought they’d be good sellers.  One in particular, the Magpie Totem, I did for that reason.  These birds are in abundance in this area, they’re interesting in appearance, exhibit amusing behaviour, and the tourists seem to be fascinated by them.  An apt description by one of my former local editors is that, “they’re just crows with better fashion sense.”

The first gallery that sold my work in Banff, the manager suggested I paint a magpie because the tourists often asked him what that bird was they kept seeing.  So that’s exactly what I did, even did some of the painting at a live demo in the gallery.  Even though people do buy it, it is probably my least popular Totem painting and I learned a valuable lesson.  From then on, I decided to paint the animals I want to, when it feels right to do so.

LemurCloseCrop In the case of our little Lemur friend, I’ve had reference for this one for well over a year and it just felt like the right time.  I don’t know if it will sell well or not, but I had a great time painting it and the fur was a real challenge.  It’s made up of very short hairs packed tightly together, so I had to experiment with my hair and fur brushes to find the best way to go about it.  In the end, it simply required putting in the time to get it right.  Looking forward to seeing this one in print.

Here are a few images of this painting at different stages.  This was painted in Photoshop CC on a Wacom Cintiq 24HD display.  It’s all brush work and photos were only used for reference.
LemurProgressIf 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!