Other than a love for image making, photography has always been a vehicle to collect reference material for my paintings. As an artist, subject detail and accuracy is important, perch and background of lesser importance.
So, the story behind this image:
The above subject is an escapee from a falconeer here in Ontario. This bird has flown about 100 miles from its owner, and currently resides on a lamp post in a Walmart parking lot. Why here? The parking lot has a full buffet of live pigeons, which Gyr has been happily comsuming. Needless to say the Falconeer is terribly unhappy (I have read that these birds can fetch as much as $50,000 on the black market).
Which brings me to the above composite image. Since this will be the subject of a painting, I have come up with a suitable (natural) background, and placed my subject in it. I think its believable and will make a great painting.
For the record, I embrace the technology that allows me to create the inspiration for my art. I should add also that photos seen on my photostream unless marked, are generally straight from the camera (I do confess to some sharpening, saturation control and a bit of cloning to remove distractions such as phone lines...)
Loading contexts...
