Polar Bear: Thumbnail Sketches. Graphite and marker, 4 x 3 in. Copyright 2008, Tania Nault.
First things first: The above is based on a photograph taken by “Cholin” (William Pickard) I found on stock.exchng I’ve been wanting to do a polar bear for some time, but not having any decent reference photos of my own… well, I finally found this great photo and I’m really excited to start this piece.
Seems ’tis the season to head back to the basics of art, well at least parts of the art blogosphere: Maggie Stievatar has been talking the basics of colour theory and Katherine Tyrrell has gone back to the drawing board with a re-view of the elements of art. I thought I’d take you through some of my own thought processes as I begin a new work.
One of the things that’s on my mind as I approach a composition is: story. What am I trying to say with this work? I think about these sort of things because it’s not enough for me that my art is simply a picture of something, I want my work to engage the viewer with a story. In this case I want to talk about the changing environment and animals in the North. Now, maybe you think that’s a boring story, or an over-done story, of course I would hope that my final work would change your mind, but the point is: my art starts with a story.
Once I have that in my head, I start to play around with the main subjects: bear and environment. As you can see in my first thumbnail, the bear looms large in the scene and his muzzle is just leading past the center of the board – wherever it is he’s going, he’s more than halfway there. The large size of the bear in relation to the overall size of the board suggests he is the main subject of the work and also imparts a sense of strength to the bear. While both of those things are true, it’s not the whole story – I want to see the bear in relationship to his environment. The second thumbnail shows the same bear, same pose but the action is slightly different as the bear walks into the landscape. Here the sky seems to loom over the bear and the lower part of the landscape seems to have shrunk. To my eye, and hopefully your eye, as the viewer, the bear’s place within the landscape seems less certain, more tenuous. I think I have at least a couple more “drafts” before I’m willing to commit this story to the board, but I have a much better idea of how I see these parts telling the story.
