Cougar:

Jan and James do all their own research and photography that Jan works from. James has a great eye and understands what Jan is looking for. The initial step for a painting is done behind the camera in composing and getting the lighting the way Jan likes in her paintings. Jan and James took a recent research trip to Montana to photograph habitat and predators. The predators were "tame" trained animals used in movies, TV documentaries, and commercials and are also used by professional photographs as predators are very difficult to get close to in the wild (see PEOPLE, PLACES AND NEWS button). Here Jan is photographing "Charlie" a cougar she is planning on painting.

Once looking over their photos, Jan frequently does quick thumbnail sketches to try to decide what idea she wants to do . She liked all three of these poses, but decided she wanted to explore the idea of a long tall thin vertical with the cat against a blue sky (positive and negative space), so she decided on idea 3.

This comprises the first two steps. The sky is done. It was raining, so the photo was taken in the studio . The light in the studio doesn't show the sky properly. It is actually opposite than what the photo shows. The sky is a light blue, darker at the top very subtly getting lighter at the bottom. The cougar and tree are then blocked in with a base color of very dark brown.

Jan then transfers her drawing to the painting using an artist transfer paper sort of like carbon paper only white. By the way, the painting is 30" x 15".

Next step will to start work on the tree. Stay tuned!!

Jan has now started detailing the tree.

Now the tree is finished and Jan has begun work on the cougar. The eyes, mouth and nose are done, and she has begun doing the hair. She starts out by "drawing" the hair coat with an off white paint and a splayed out small brush. She carefully pays attention to how each hair lies. This is the most tedious and time consuming part of her technique, and as you will see much of it will get covered up. But Jan says it's like the framework for a house. Once the house is built you don't see the framework, but if it wasn't there the house would fall down. . . . . same thing with this technique. Jan is trying to create a depth to the hair coat so that there is "air" as well as "hair".

After Jan has "drawn" the base hair coat completely in, she unifies it with an overall wash of brown.

Coming Up . . . The final step and the finished painting!

Jan has now begun detailing the final touches on the hair coat. In this photo the cat is done from the tree limb up.

The finished painting . . . "CAT'S EYE VIEW", 30" x 15"