Ostrich:

Jan feels that the first step in creating her art is the experience so all her paintings are based on personal encounters in the wild. The next important step is photography. Jan and James are already working on the creative process when they get behind the camera composing, getting the correct lighting etc. This is Jan photographing during their last trip to Kenya in October.

Jan loved this idea when she took these photos. When she saw the male ostrich walking by the zebras with the dark sky behind and the sun hitting and highlighting the whites in the bird and zebras she immediately thought of her painting "BLACK AND WHITE ALL OVER" with the zebras and sacred ibises and thought here was a good idea for a follow up painting. In this first photo the ostrich was just walking by the zebras - in the second he suddenly decided that the zebras were too close and suddenly charged at them with his wings and all his feathers raised. While this would never make a believable painting, Jan wanted to share it with you as it made her laugh out loud when she saw it!

Natural History Notes:
There are three forms or subspecies of ostrich. All females look similar to one another. The Southern Male has an orangish head, neck and legs, the Somali found in Northern Kenya and Somalia has blue head, neck and legs and the Maasai which is found in East Africa can have very bright pink head, neck and legs - especially when they are in breeding condition. This is the bird that will be depicted in Jan's painting.

The ostrich is the largest and heaviest bird and the only that has just two toes which both point forward. The ostrich is the fastest running bird maintaining speeds of 30 miles and hour for up to 30 minutes. Some have been clocked at 45 miles an hour in sprints.

Here Jan has done the drawing to scale of 12 x 24 getting read to transfer it to the painting surface.

In this photo Jan has completed the sky and blocked in the grasses. The masking materials have already been removed from the zebras and ostrich.

Here Jan has begun work on the zebras. Because their coat is so short and they are so far off she does not draw the hair coat in as she does many other mammal species. She does pay very close attention to the shape of the lines as they move around and over the body, and also how there are reflected light areas on the black stripes, and shadows in the white areas.

The zebras are done and the ostrich is blocked in a dark brown underpainting.

This is a closeup of the ostrich with the drawing having been transferred with the white artist transfer paper to get ready to detail out the bird.

This is a closeup of the almost completed ostrich. Notice that the highlights in the black feathers help define the shape of the bird and delinate where the wing is. This bird is in full breeding colors making his neck and legs very bright pink.

"This is the completed painting. It is 12 x 24 and is entitled "BLACK AND WHITE AND PINK".