Fine Art and Illustration

I enjoy doing fine art and have been painting and drawing for most of my life. I can work in a variety of media, from oils and acrylics to watercolor, charcoal, pen and ink, or more. My paintings and drawings reflect a dedication to the pursuit of anatomical accuracy, solidity, emotion, and that indelible quality that gives artwork "life". These skills helped me as I created the how-to-draw book, "Drawing Wildlife", due to be published by Watson-Guptill in February 2005. In addition, I greatly enjoy the challenge of drawing stylized, yet believable, animals with plenty of expression and personality. These can be seen in the "Illustration" section below.

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Fine Art

Two wolves play amidst the grandeur of the Rockies. A wary wolf gives you a look. Charcoal. Desert Bighorn Sheep- this won Best of Show- Professional Fine Arts Division- at the local County Fair. Max oils on canvas. Rattlesnake pattern- can you find the hidden images? Watercolor and charcoal pencil. Hunting Lesson: Coyote family- acrylic 24 by 30 inches- This won Best of Show- Professional Fine Arts Division, at the local County Fair, 1995 Abert (or tassel-eared) Squirrels- acrylic 20 by 16 inches on canvas (appeared in May/June 1998 issue of Wildlife Art Magazine) Spots and Stripes: Black-tailed deer fawns (California)- Max oil paints 20 by 16 inches My commissioned Cheetahs painting. Acrylic, 30 by 40 inches. A lot of work went into this one! Eternal Vigilance- Very painterly Max oil painting of a mule deer doe and her fawn- (based on deer that I saw at the Grand Canyon, Arizona)- 20 by 16 inches. Another, even more painterly picture of a doe. I call this one Neon Bambi! Acrylic, 20 by 16 inches. It was the start of my current understanding of color. Mountain lion is confronted by two Steller's Jays. Acrylic. Based on finding fresh cougar tracks on a snow-topped log. Yes, I do something besides animals. Here are wild irises! Watercolor, about 15 by 10 inches. (Digital image) Mexican wolf portrait- Painter. Pen and ink drawing of a javelina (collared peccary) family.

 


Illustration

Two desert cottontails. Inspired by the courtship dance of cottontails and by the colorful clothing of the Navajo Nation. Watercolor and colored pencils. Two young desert coyotes experience rain for the first time. Watercolor and colored pencil. Two gannets are puzzled by the appearance of a puffin. Inspired by my trip to Scotland, and a visit to a island covered with gannets! T-shirt design. Arizona coyote and silence-loving saguaros. An illustration of some moth-people done for a role-playing game project presentation. Year of the Dragon- acrylic painting background, finished with Illustrator and Photoshop Collage of a herd of elk in their Ponderosa pine forest environment- watercolor and pen-and-ink.

 


Life Drawings

Female nudes. More female nudes. Male nudes and clothed models. Male model reclining- 30 minute sketch

 


Field Sketches

An important part of wildlife art is going out in the field and making sketches from life. Here are some of those sketches as well as studies of found dead animals.

Gray fox pups and a baby saw-whet owl. Elk (wapiti) sketches. Sketches of a serval (cat) from a drawing session at Further Confusion. Watercolor sketches of a (dead) barn owl. A study of a road-killed raccoon. Sketches of a cardinal, a sparrow, and some inca doves. I believe these were called an eared pheasant and a silver pheasant. From-memory pastel study of a forest fire that I had observed the previous night.

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