Polar Bear:

Jan prefers painting animals she has actually observed in the wild. If she decides to paint something she hasn't actually seen in its natural habitat - such as this polar bear, she relies on her research, including sketching and photographing zoo animals (being aware of what captivity changes in the body and attitude), conferring with her network of experts and thoroughly going through her immense library of reference books and videos.

Jan sketching at a zoo. Jan maintains a network of experts that she can rely on to give her advice and allow her back access at zoos and other institutions. Here Jan is "behind the scenes" with the elephant keeper at a zoo.

Jan tends to usually focus up close to the animal. In this painting, Jan was intrigued by the shapes and colors of the ice form and snow, making it as strong in the composition as the bear. This is the drawing done to size.

In this photo the sky is done, the bear has been masked off and the snow has been drawn in with the artist transfer paper.

Jan has loosely blocked in the snow and ice with sweeping stokes, and then has begun working slowly back into it to delineate detail and add reflective colors.

The bear has been blocked in with the underpainting of dark brownish purple, and the drawing transferred.

In this photo Jan has begun "drawing" out the hair coat of the bear in off white paint. She has about half finished. This is the most time consuming step of all of Jan's painting techniques..

The "underdrawing" hair detail is done in preparation for the final steps in finishing the bear.

The snow is finished, and the brown unifying wash is done on the bear in preparation for the final detailing of the hair coat.

Jan has begun the final detailing of the bear's coat over the brown unifying wash.

Here is the completed painting - "Nomad of the North", 12 x 24".