Bison:

As you all know - Jan just completed a life size fiberglass bison as a fund raising public art project. On one side of the bison she painted a cow bison nursing her new calf as a symbol of the future of this western icon which was almost hunted to extinction in the 1800s. Jan decided it would be fun to do a finished painting of the scene for the Woolaroc Museum Fund raiser COW THIEVES AND OUTLAWS coming up next weekend.

Here Jan is seen painting the bison and calf on one side of the fiberglass bison.	This is the finished painting on the side of the sculpture.	Here is Jan with the finished bison sculpture (this side shows a herd of charging bison). The sculpture will be installed at Tri County Tech in Bartlesville.

So here Jan has redrawn the bison and calf (having thrown away the original drawing that she transferred onto the sculpture). She is going to expand the scene some - showing more scenery and more bison behind than she could on the sculpture.

Jan has completed the background - doing a hill behind that is in shadow and then a foreground prairie area backlit. She did not masque out the bisons; rather now she has transferred the outlines of the main bison and the ones behind. She is now painting them back in with the purple tinted gesso she used to prime the panel.

Here the cow and calf and the bison directly behind her are painted in with the tinted gesso, and the drawing has been transferred to the painting with the white artist transfer paper.

Jan has now painted in the background bison including the ones on the hill. There is no detail in these as they are far off, but the way the light hits them has been observed which will give realism to the scene.

Jan learned her technique of "drawing" out hair coats from Belgium artist Carl Brenders. Carl paints in Gouache, which is an opaque form of watercolor. After taking a workshop from Brenders over 20 years ago Jan decided that she could adapt his technique to acrylic. Somewhere over time she developed the technique you have seen over the past many "Painting in Progress" and "What's on the Easel now", which is to paint the animal in a dark brown base coat and then "draw" out the hair in off white paint. As she was looking through some old notes, she remembered that what Carl does is "draw" the hair coat in sepia (reddish brown) paint and then do the unifying brown wash with an airbrush. Jan does not use an airbrush, but at one time she did draw the hair coat in sepia and then used a rag to rub brown paint over the animal. Here is an old painting of a wolf that she used this technique on entitled "Courtship":

Here is the wolf head in "Courtship" drawn in sepia colored paint.

Here Jan is using a soft cloth to rub the brown unifying wash on the wolf. You can see the finished painting under Jan's limited edition paper prints: Jan Martin McGuire - Wildlife Artist, Naturalist, Adventurer - Prints, Posters & Books.

After looking back over this old technique Jan has decided to give it a try again on this current bison painting. There seemed to be a little more "glow" to the finished work, so she wanted to experiment again. Here Jan has begun to draw out the hair coat on the cow and calf with a sepia/brown colored paint. As per usual she is paying close attention to the way the hair lies, and in the case of bison, how certain areas are a thick "woolly" texture.

Jan has done the unifying brown was over the calf and cow and rubbed it with a rag.

Jan has begun the final detailing work. The cow bison is completed.

This is the completed painting - "Next Generation" 11 x 14.