Bsion and Birds

Painting portraits of animals I have seen is rewarding in a unique way. The memory works by stimulus as we all know. As I begin to paint something I have seen, it takes me back to that moment and the moments after. In taking the picture of the raven, it was early morning and he seemed to pose for that perfect shot. Perfectly still it was as if he were saying, "yes I am a pretty bird now take the picture!" I didn't use black, I used a mixture of cerulean blue, alizarin crimson and ultramarine with a smudge of cad orange. then added a tiny tiny touch of white.

The bison underpainting is where I finally got the hang of relative proportion you find one thing in a scene and measure all else to that one thing. Example: take one Bison and measure all other Bison against it. For that moment he is Every Bison.