Polar Bear: value sketch. Graphitint pencils on black paper, 12 x 9 in. Copyright 2008, Tania Nault.
I’m really excited to come back to this bear. The original photograph, by “Cholin” (William Pickard) on stock.exchng, caught my eye with the lovely back lighting and contrast of lights and darks. And even though the bear in the photo is a zoo bear, there is a determined look in his eye, like he knows where he’s going.
I had some trouble with the original thumbnails – neither composition said exactly what I wanted it to. Part of my problem was that the viewer would meet the bear’s eye on the way out of the composition. I decided to solve the problem by flipping the bear to “read” from the left to right. I think that the viewer’s eye will still travel along the bear’s shoulder, but the breaks in the fur and value shift should help push the eye back to the bear’s face. This is going to be a big board 24 x 18 inches and I wanted a dynamic composition, but also wanted the bear’s environment to play a part. I decided that showing this bear at the edge of an icy shore with water fading off into the background would illustrate the bear’s dilemma.
In case you’ve been under a rock for the past several years, the major issue for animals in the Arctic is the increasing melt of the sea ice(1). And polar bears have been particularly hard hit because they depend on the sea ice to hunt other marine mammals that make up the majority of their diet. Polar bears have evolved to live with the annual ebb and flow of the sea ice(2). In the fall the sea refreezes and the bears can leave their summer grounds and return to the ice to hunt. Over the winter they must eat enough to not only survive the long Arctic winter, but also must have stored enough fat to last through the summer, when they must again return to land where they spend at least three months eating very little. Every day the bears have to wait for the ice to return brings them closer to the brink.
While ecological concerns are something many other wildlife artists have addressed in their work, this is a first for me and I’m curious to see the what direction it takes me.
(1) Roach, John. “Most Polar Bears Gone by 2050, Studies Say.” National Geographic News. 10 September 2007. 28 January 2008 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/070910-polar-bears.html.
(2) Gunderson, Aren. “Urus maritimas: polar bear.” University of Michigan, Animal Diversity Web. 2007. 28 January 2008 http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Ursus_maritimus.html.
