Cape Buffalo:

Jan is working on her big auction piece for SCI. She decided to do Cape Buffalo. She has seen, sketched and photographed them many times in all the countries that she has been to in the last 13 years in Africa. In this photo she is standing up out of the top of a Land Rover in Kenya sketching Buffalo.   Digital photography has changed the way Jan and most artists use their reference now. It has truly expanded the amount and range of their available reference material. What Jan does when she comes home from a research trip is to print some of the photos, making notes on the back of the image number in the computer. She then files these photos in her file cabinets. When she is ready to do a painting, she goes into her files and pulls out the necessary photos. In this painting she is using three photos she took on her trip in July to Tanzania. But she wanted to print other "back up" secondary photos of the same buffalos, so here she is going back into her computer and looking these photos up.

On the left is a detailed sketch Jan did for SCI. Jan usually doesn't do this detailed of a sketch prior to the painting, but SCI needed it for publication. Jan then did a copy of the sketch and made a grid system on it (right) to help her enlarge it to size for the tracing paper.

Here is the drawing done to the size of the painting - 24 x 48" with the grid system drawn in.

Jan has again decided not to mask out the main subjects. She is again "painting" around the basic images so as not to waste time painting grass where the buffalos will be. She will later transfer the drawing and clean up the edges. She is now laying the base for the grasses. Notice that the far off area of grasses is light, and then as it moves forward Jan starts blending browns into it until the foreground is dark brown to detail the grasses onto. Notice the three main photos of the buffalo she is working from at the top of the drafting table.

Here Jan has begun detailing out the grasses. Notice how she is "splaying" out an old brush to create the look of bunches of stems or grass.

The grasses are now mostly completed, and the outlines of the buffalo have been cleaned up.

Buffalo have very textured horns. To create the base texture Jan is applying cellophane to the wet paint.

The horns, eyes and nose are done, and the face hair and skin have been started. Buffalos are interesting and tricky to paint, as they have very sparse hair over thick gray skin; sometimes the older bulls have very little hair.

The left buffalo's face is now completed, and his body has been started. Because of what was mentioned in the last photo - that buffalo have textured gray skin with sparse hair, Jan is doing a completely different technique for the body. She is lying in very loose gray/brown brush strokes that will be the basis for either skin or the sparse hair. She is splaying out an old brush and quickly scrumbling in texture.

The buffalo on the left has now been completed.

Jan is starting work on the center buffalo. She has done the cellophane technique which shows on the right horn. The left horn she has gone back in and detailed it out.

The head is done on the middle buffalo.

The body is being started with loose washing of gray. Notice the reference photos taped to the painting. Because Jan paints in Acrylic which dries immediately, she can tape her photos right to the painting for easy reference.

Here the buffalo on the left and in the middle have been completed.

The head of the last buffalo on the right has been completed (notice he has a VERY bare face), and the body has been started. Because he has very sparse hair and a very textured area of skin on his shoulders and back, Jan has created a little texture with cellophane here.

This is the finished painting - "TRIPLE TROUBLE" 24 x 48". It will be auctioned at the SCI convention Wednesday January 21 during the evening auction and banquet. Jan is doing two sizes of giclée prints - 15 x 30 and 24 x 48.