Meadowlake Studios
Guest Blogger Jess Anderson is not only a master painter, he is a great teacher. In this guest post he walks us through step by step his process painting “Don’t Be A Chicken”.
Jess Anderson
I hope all of you are doing well. The rainy season has hit, here in Oregon, and it’s come a bit early. Usually, it waits until Halloween night. The kids always seem to have to go Trick-or-Treating in the rain. I’ve spent a lot of time the past few weeks getting things on the place ready for that season. You know, new roof on the barn, poured a concrete floor in it too, cut up all the limbs that fell on my garage last winter…. You know, just the ordinary stuff. I have all of my volatile plants inside the greenhouse now, safe from freezing. It was time to go back to the studio and do what I love better.
The reference photos came from a fine photographer named Steve Carn. Steve is an incredible photographer and I’m so pleased that he has offered to help me with reference material. He is from northern Utah and shot these photos in Glacier National Park, at a place called “Goat Lick”. It seems when the goats need salt or other minerals, this is the place to go. The stuff leeches out of the rock layers. It’s their health food store, furnished by Mother Nature herself.
I have a number of these wonderful people who have helped me a lot with reference material. I would love to be up there on the mountain myself, but sometimes that stays a dream for longer than we want. He and I have some trips planned up there in the future.
I really enjoyed doing this painting. I went back and used my acrylics once again. I haven’t used them since last year and didn’t want to lose my edge, the one I took a while figuring out. I started off only going to use them for my under painting, but ended up just finishing it all in acrylics. I’ve entitled this one, “Don’t Be a Chicken”. It just seems to me that one young one is taunting the other. I hope you enjoy my journey on this painting.
I drew this layout directly onto the canvas. It’s something I don’t normally do. Don’t ask me why I did this time.
It’s simple because I have done so much drawing in my life that I know most of it will be done with my brush.
I started with my background using mainly a middle tone but filling in the strongest shadows.
A good contrast is something I always try to put into my work.
As you can see, there is absolutely no detail used at this point, just values giving me a shape to work with. This is where a sense of composition is so very important.
A soft glaze to warm it up and I’ve started doing my detail work. There are a million little rocks, and little detail parts of all the larger ones. It’s a most important part to make this work.
Using strong value changes will give me that contrast that I’m looking for. It also gives my composition the depth it needs.
The rocks break away from the massive rock formation in small pieces. This is so good for the composition too. It keeps it from getting boring so that the eyes have many different
Things to ingest.
Now that my background is blocked in I start laying in the basic color I want to work on with the goat.
As I get that back color on the goat I start giving it shape with texture. There is a lot of texture on these guys. To me, texture and contrast are some of the most important things to put into the painting. Who wants to look at a slick haired goat, anyway!
With most of the work done on the nanny I’ve started on the upper kid. They are able to climb on things like this at such a young age. It’s important to learn this as their lives are focused around it.
One baby down and the bottom one to go. He looks reluctant to climb on these rough rocks. Must be his sister up above taunting him to go ahead and climb. Once he’s blocked in I will then work all over the painting. A little detain here, some highlights there, a little more deepening of the shadows. You spend a lot of time at this stage. There are a million little brush strokes on this. I’ve used a very limited palette on this, something I like. I will try to do more like that in the future.
And here is the finished painting.
“Don’t Be A Chicken” acrylics on canvas 24”x12” Framed
Here is a photo of the painting inside its frame. I really like the way this frame finished it off. I hope you are all having a wonderful day! Mine will get better soon!
People ask me….”How long did it take you to do this.” It is probably the most asked question ever asked of an artist. I have found that this is the best answer. I got my first set of oils when I was 11. I am now 74 and have painted my whole life. So, that being said, it has taken me 63 years to do this. I hope you enjoyed this. I certainly loved doing it. JESS
