Mountain Snowy

For my next painting I'm going to bring to life an ancient stag from the pages of a medieval manuscript. I have already made the landscape background using a paper collage technique, literally using scissors and glue to cut and paste. Many of the collage materials are derived from food packaging and I have a huge collection of useful pieces to choose from, all stored in order of colour. Sometimes when out grocery shopping I buy a packet of something in the supermarket just because I need that particular colour of packaging for my latest collage. I also use maps as a collage material and I have a huge collection of these as well. This particular landscape is based on a view I see regularly when travelling between Llanon and Talsarn in Ceredigion.

So far I have worked out the composition digitally in Photoshop, by scanning in my collage landscape and then superimposing a digital image of my chosen animal, in this case the stag I have named Snowy (for obvious reasons). Once I have adjusted his size and position within the composition I print this image out as a guide for my painting. I then delete the stag and print out just the landscape background onto good quality cartridge paper to form the ground for my painting of Mountain Snowy. Pictured here is the digital version from which I shall work.

Merging Pokémon with George Stubbs

Inspired by George Stubbs' painting Red Deer Stag and Hind 1792 I created a woodland landscape for these animals by painting tree shapes onto a map. I have used a semi-opaque technique which allows the colours and details of the map to remain visible as part of the painting. For the sky I have obliterated the map with thick blue paint which also helps to delineate the trees and to suggest a horizon and fields in the distance. I have painted the stag to look like the Pokémon Sawsbuck in his Spring mode, with pink flowers budding in his antlers. The hind is painted to look like the Deerling Pokémon in her Autumn outfit as those colours work best with the composition. The idea is to make the Pokémon deer look more lifelike, as if they really are wandering around in our woodlands.

GEORGE STUBBS

The best painter of our native animals ever!

A perfect research image...