Creating a Silver Coin for the Royal Canadian Mint

It has been a year since I was commissioned by the Royal Canadian Mint to design and produce a painting for a 20 dollar silver coin.  Now that the official release has finally arrived, I can take the wraps off of the art and tell the story behind the project and the painting that I created!

It all began in October, 2013 when a product manager at the Mint came across one of my hockey paintings on rdewolfe.com and decided that this was something they would like to see on a Canadian collector coin.  I was then contacted and commissioned to come up with a new design featuring Canadian children playing the much loved game of pond hockey.

The production work for a new coin is long and arduous, so it was imperative that I immediately begin working out the design for the new coin.  Country, kids and hockey are favourite subjects of mine, so I eagerly began working on the project.  Sketches were soon approved and painting commenced!

Original sketch for Pond Hockey painting

The first sketch was received with enthusiasm but because it was decided to reproduce the background buildings in bas-relief rather than full colour, it was necessary to separate the figures in the foreground from the objects in the distance.  I submitted a new drawing that was then deemed perfect for the job!

Final sketch for Pond Hockey painting

Once I received final approval for the drawing, I transferred it to canvas to begin the painting.  The next step was to apply a thin blue wash overall to create a 'cool' atmosphere.

Now I begin painting in dark areas using acrylic paint for speedy drying.  This allows me to move forward quickly.

When I begin adding local colour throughout the painting, things start to come together.  At this point I have switched to alkyd oil paint.

Now I add in colour and texture on the ice surface and the background scene.  All the basics are there, so now it is a matter of finishing up by adding more colour and detail to the painting.  Originally, I intended to do a circular painting as indicated by the initial painting of the sky.  In the end, however, I decided it would be more attractive to extend the scene into a square format, resulting in a more complete, square painting.

Finished painting "Pond Hockey" 

And here it is....the finished one ounce silver coin, available for purchase at themint.ca or one of the dealers listed on their web site, including Canada Post Corporation.  One of the really neat features of this limited edition silver coin is the full colour treatment, making it a very unique collectible!

Meeting Canadian Wildlife Artist Robert Bateman

I have admired the art of Robert Batman for many, many years and finally met him in person on Sunday, October 27th. at a 'meet the artist' event at Select Art Gallery in Newmarket, Ontario.  Along with my daughter Amy De Wolfe, an artist and designer in her own right, we made the drive to Newmarket to meet one of Canada's best known and skilled artists.  Robert Bateman turned 83 on May 26th, 2013, but he is still very active and deeply emersed in his art and conservation work.
 

Enjoying a chat with Robert Bateman.  We discussed art, our careers, favourite mediums, stamp art and collector coins produced by the Royal Canadian Mint.

My daughter Amy enjoyed meeting and chatting with Robert Bateman as much as I did.  She had a story to share with him from her childhood and the first time she attended a Bateman exhibition.

The following is an exerpt from an article by Nancy MacDonald in Maclean's Magazine, May 2013:

An interview with Robert Bateman begins just as you might think—with the avid naturalist excitedly telling the story behind an old sketch of an injured water buffalo in evident distress. Years ago, he’d seen the buffalo attacked by lions at the Ngorongoro Crater, in Kenya.

“The old buffalo escaped by diving into a lake full of hippos,” Bateman explained. “Hippos don’t mind buffalo, the buffalo don’t mind the hippos. But lions are deadly afraid of hippos; they could snap a lion in half. So he was perfectly safe.”

But the following sketch is of a fallen buffalo. “He’d tried to come out during the night,” Bateman explains. “There were five lions just lying, resting, waiting for him. They killed him,” he says, “and all they did was eat his nose.”

“See,” he adds with a wink—“even animals can be cruel.”

Bearing witness to the natural world, its beauty and its cruelty, has been driving Bateman since his boyhood. There is a sense in his work of how things fit together in an ecosystem, a logic of the natural world that demands responsibility from the people in it.

Bateman believes we must slow down and pay attention, acquaint ourselves with nature in its beautiful complexities. Once we do, we’ll care enough to save it.

Bateman studied geography, not art, at the University of Toronto. “You’re an artist because of what’s in here,” he says, pointing to his heart. Plus, geography allowed him to “take free trips into the wilderness”—mapping iron ore in the high Arctic or surveying in rural Newfoundland—where he “painted up a storm.”

After university, he set out on the ultimate adventure: exploring Africa and Asia in a Land Rover, documenting his travels in paint, before returning to Canada, settling in to a job teaching art at a Burlington, Ont. high school.

“So many of the people I’ve seen and painted, their way of life is gone—they’re extinct now,” his warm smile fading to concern. In a way, Bateman is still doing exactly that: capturing a way of life that’s disappearing. Only now, it’s the natural world, not Tibetan tribespeople.

Sketches like the one of the buffalo in Kenya don’t form the basis of Bateman’s art: photographs do. Generally, his paintings are a mash-up of photos he’s taken or seen and scenes he’s witnessed; it’s something he began doing as a boy, he explains, hurrying over to a painting of a startled elk standing atop a ravine he’d made for his mother when he was 12.

“I grew up in Toronto—I’d never seen an elk.” But he found one in the pages of National Geographic. The ravine in the painting was his own backyard; and the tree patterns in the foreground were inspired by a golf course outside Toronto. “These mountains,” he says, pointing to the range off in the distance, “I made up based on a photo.”

“Little did I know I’d be doing exactly that my whole life.” Up to 15 photos go into every painting. “One photo is never enough,” he says. “I combine them, and play with them.”

“My life has been a continuum from birth to 83,” he says. “At the age of 12, I came home from school and did art every day. And I still do. I still try and watch and sketch every bird I see,” he says, pointing to a painting he finished at 14, of warblers and downy woodpeckers he’d spotted during spring migration, one of the greatest joys of his youth.

Paul Gilbert, the man hired to run the centre, has known Bateman more than 45 years—since Bateman taught him Grade 9 art. Formerly the AGO’s director of marketing, Gilbert says it’s not just snobbery that’s driving the art establishment’s disdain for Bateman’s art. In the post-modern era, Gilbert says, the subject of all fine art has been the inner world of the human being—“it’s about feelings of angst or tragedy or despair.”

“Somebody going back to just painting raw nature—the subject matter is completely out of context for the time,” he says.

But Gilbert believes this will change, that it has to: “Our internal psychological world is irrelevant. What’s most important in the world we live in right now is going to be what we do with nature in the next 40 years.”

Bateman believes “the priesthood,” as he refers to the arts establishment, dislikes his art simply because it’s too “nice,” too easy. “Modernism,” he says, “turned beauty into a bad word.”

But he does actually paint “nasty” things, he protests—it’s just that nobody seems to realize it. One room at the Bateman Centre is dedicated to his “nasty” work: man’s inhumanity to the natural world.

One painting depicts a clear-cut in Carmanah, B.C., home to the greatest Sitka spruce in the world; another shows an albatross and a Pacific white-sided dolphin drowned in a driftnet. Beside it, there’s a polar bear frantically swimming in an Arctic sea devoid of ice, then a painting of a skinned tiger, used for aphrodisiacs in China, a painting he knows will upset the local Chinese community.

Bateman has trouble expressing what it means to have a museum in his honour. He lives in a Zen-like state, he says: “I’m only interested in now. So I don’t think much about the future. And I don’t think much about the past. I don’t think about the enormity of it—if I stopped to think of it, it would seem too much.”

His greatest hope is that the Bateman Centre becomes a “clarion call,” drawing attention both to the irreparable harm we are doing to the planet, and the efforts under way to save it.

When asked how he wishes to be remembered, he turns to the last words spoken by journalist and activist June Callwood. “The last thing she said before she died was, ‘Be kind.’ I love that. I believe that applies to our attitude toward the natural world too.”

Iris Garden

This is another painting that I did recently as a demonstration during an acrylic painting class.  The iris is one of my favourite flowers and my wife and I grow them in our perennial gardens on our farm.  I love the combination of blues, purples and yellows that are so common in these tall, majestic flowers.  It is a pity that they bloom for such a short time.

'Iris Garden' by Richard De Wolfe

12 X 9 acrylic on panel

We work quickly in these painting classes as I explain the method while I demonstrate the techniques. At the same time, I try to assist my students with their work, with the goal of helping them successfully complete their painting by the end of each two hour class.

The first step is to loosely place the main objects on the canvas with light pencil lines, just indicating the general shapes.  This way, you have not invested much time in the drawing before you are sure that the placement is what you want.

When you are happy with the placement of the general flower shapes, it is time to refine them, adding basic detail to the petals.  Do not 'over draw' the flowers.  There is no need to labour over excessive detail that would be obliterated when you begin to paint.  Don't get too rigid with outlines either. This way you will not become a slave to lines you have drawn on the canvas.  These are guidelines only!

Now we mix up the basic flower colours and paint the general flower shapes with a large brush.  Some effort is made to preserve most of the construction lines that separate different areas within the flower petals.

Now we add a general background colour using a broad brush and lots of expression in the brush strokes.  Avoid making the background flat and boring.  Give your brush work life and energy.  I use a deep blue and green mixture to emphasize the bright flowers in the foreground.

The next step is to add leaves and stems, again using a large flat or filbert brush.  I mix a warmer, lighter green and apply it in simple, direct strokes.  My goal is to create an interesting and balanced design to support the colourful flowers that are the focal point in the painting.

Now we add darker and lighter variations of the stem and leaf colour, creating a pattern of light and shadows that is consistent throughout the painting.  This allows us to also create an illusion of depth, with leaves and stems overlapping each other and dropped shadows under the flower petals to bring them into the foreground.

We turn our attention to the flowers themselves and add light areas to the basic petal shapes to give them form and detail.  This is done carefully, keeping the light source consistent with our previous work.

In the final minutes of the class, we add deep, rich variations of colour to the flowers.  White highlights are applied sparingly to catch the viewer's eye and hold their attention in a tasteful and not too obious a manner.  Any last minute corrections or additions are made and the signature goes on.  Voila!  Fini!

Still Life Class

Sea Shells by Richard De Wolfe 9X12 acrylic on canvas panel

I decided to try painting sea shells for our first still life class.  The first grouping that I made was more complex, with a little wooden 'treasure chest' spilling strings of pearls and other jewellery onto the table along with all the shells.  When I painted it, I realized it was too much for beginners to complete in just 2 hours, so I decided to simplify it using just the shells.  That worked much better and the students managed to do a great job recreating the scene for themselves.  For me, these small, quick studies are great exercises to loosen up and be a bit more spontaneous.   You can find many of my other works at www.rdewolfe.com.

My wife and I collected these shells (plus many more) along the shore at Atlantic Beach in North Carolina this spring.  I love the multitude of colours, shapes, textures and sizes that wash up on the beaches there!  Walking on the hard wet sand early in the morning is wonderful, especially early in the year before the heat of summer sets in.  Watching the surf roll in and the colours change across the sky makes a morning walk quite memorable.  I hope to go back again soon!

Painting Class 101

In April of this year, I started teaching beginner painting classes at our local Michael's Art Store.  My teaching credentials are rather thin at best and I haven't taught many classes in a number of years, so I thought this would be a good way to ease back into it.  I teach a 2 hour class every week or two and it is proving to be a lot of fun.  Keeping things basic and helping new painters finish a painting that pleases them in just 2 hours is challenging but satisfying.

Texas Blue Bonnets 9X12 acrylic on panel

'Texas Blue Bonnets' was created in the first class.  My students all did a great job on their paintings and really seemed to enjoy the process.  We work small and we work fast, but the results never cease to amaze me.  We use a limited palette to produce paintings in 4 different genres including landscape, seascape, still life and floral.  Usually, I rotate through them and try to come up with a new challenge every class.

Sand Dunes 9X12 acrylic on panel

'Sand Dunes' was created in the second class.  My students seemed to find this one particularly satisfying and worked hard to produce wonderful renditions of their own.  I tend to get a little too meticulous in some of my work, so I find these quick studies to be very beneficial for me also.  Helping new, aspiring artists find their way is a great way to get your own creative juices flowing too!

A Visit to the Brandywine River Museum at Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania

Early this spring, my wife and I had a short vacation at Atlantic Beach, North Carolina.  We enjoyed the  east coast in April, when the beach was quiet and the sun was growing warmer each day.  We drove from Southern Ontario to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, taking in the beauty of the countryside in spring and making a few stops along the way.  One short week of relaxation and then it was time to go home once more.

 The old grist mill at the front entrance to the museum

On our return drive, we made a stop at the Brandywine River Museum.  Exhibiting American art in a 19th-century grist mill, the Brandywine River Museum is internationally known for its unparalleled collection of works by three generations of Wyeths and its fine collection of American illustration, still life and landscape painting.  The museum is located on the banks of Brandywine Creek at Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania.

A view that shows the modern gallery complex behind the grist mill

The gallery features the work of many of my all-time favourite artists and illustrators such as Howard Pyle and N. C. Wyeth.  To see this collection of masterful work at this legendary location was one of the top things to do on my 'bucket list'.  I had anticipated just such a visit for many years and I was not disappointed!  Seeing so many paintings and illustrations that I had previously only seen in books and magazines was a dream come true!

 My wife Mary enjoying the multiple works on display in the museum

The roads leading in to the museum location are enchanting themselves, but the old grist mill that fronts the complex, as well as the ultra-modern main structure that has been added on as exhibition space are well worth the visit.  The museum has an undulating glass wall that faces the creek and gives the whole complex a feeling of oneness with nature.  The museum exhibition halls are rustic and simple, with lighting that focuses on the paintings that adorne each wall.  The gift shop is a treasure trove of books and collectible items that feature the art and artists within its walls.  If you are like me and enjoy traditional art that tells a story, this is a place you will want to visit.  I hope to return as often as I can.

One of the many paintings by Howard Pyle

I stand face to face with the artistic icon, N. C. Wyeth

Heading for the Loft

Winterlude Part 3

"Winterlude" almost there!

I keep adding colour and detail throughout the entire scene.  I want to maintain a balance so that I can judge each new brush stroke against the overall look of the painting.  If you concentrate too much on one area you may find that it doesn't work so well after the rest of the painting is completed.  You also run the risk of 'falling in love' with how that particular area of your work looks and you may not want to make necessary changes as you go forward.  By working more or less equally across the painting, you can maintain a healthier and more impartial perspective on your work.

Here I have painted in the distant trees using a mixture of sap green, ultramarine blue and titanium white.  Ultramarine blue dominates to create an illustion of distance.  Now the local colour of the barn is introduced.  I decided on a soft yellow to promote the feeling of bright sunlight on a cold winter day. I add snow to the branches of the spruce tree in front of the barn and generally add more detail to everything.  I introduce a slight hint of warmth in the sky on the right side of the painting, again to establish a feeling of bright sunlight coming from that direction.  Now I embellish the soft shadows in the snow and on the snowy branches in the foreground using a mixture of ultramarine blue and titanium white.

"Winterlude" 9 X 12 inches acrylic on board

I work fairly consistently over the entire painting as I go along, so everything comes together quite nicely as I near the finish.  I add small details and highlights as necessary, such as brightening the snow on the barn roof, spruce tree, fence and middle ground to suggest bright light in these areas.  I add bits of snow in the forks of tree branches beside the barn and I strengthen the blue shadow areas.

The last area to concentrate on is the foreground.  Layers of detail and colour are added to the birds to make them appear close to the viewer.  The pine needles are finished off with darker and more detailed brush strokes using a combination of sap green and lamp black,  The tree branches are painted in quickly with burnt sienna and lamp black in the shadows.

In order to increase the contrast between the sunny background and the shadowed foreground, I add a glaze of ultramarine blue and mat medium over most of the pine branches and the birds until I see a clear division between the two areas.  Once the signature is added, the painting is finished!

Automotive Art

'84 Corvette' 11X14 Acrylic on board

I seem to have great difficulty in keeping the old blog up.  The last post was  in late January and now it is mid-April already!  Too many distractions I am afraid.  Many days I plan on writing a post but once the day gets started everything changes and I find myself emmersed in something entirely different.  There just never seems to be enough hours in the day!

I used to do a lot of car art for various auto manufactures.  Ford, GM, Nissan, Toyota, Saab and Jeep, to name a few.  This kind of work can be very time consuming and usually requires a great deal of precision and attention to detail since the finished art is closely inspected by engineers.  The trick is to be true to the design but also instill artistic flair at the same time.  This painting was done with a combination of pen and ink and painted and airbrushed acrylic.  The background was painted on a surface roughened with gesso and a stiff brush before the lettering and symbols were painted by hand.  The car and reflection were partly brush painted and then airbrushed with acrylic to create a glowing shine.

This was before computer art and photoshop, so the art is all one piece, painted simultaneously on one piece of illustration board.  Everything was done by hand in those days!

'32 Packard'  11X14 acrylic on canvas 

This one is a very different approach.  I worked on canvas this time and completed almost the entire picture using a brush and acrylic paints.  The background was applied using a very thin and drippy mixture of mat medium, acrylic paint and water.  The ghost image was painted in with monochromatic detail before additional applications of darker and slightly heavier paint were added to the upper section of the canvas.  The feature car was painted in detail and strong colour before a few whispy highlights were applied using an airbrush.

I was quite pleased with the effective colour and contrast of texture and detail in this painting.  To me, it conveyed a feeling of age of the vintage car but a sense of perfection in the restoration being portrayed at the same time.

Both of these auto paintings were originally commissioned as car magazine covers.  These were wonderful assignments and I enjoyed doing a series of similar paintings for more than a year before the publication ultimately folded.

Winterlude Part Two

"Winterlude" a work in progress

Now I begin blocking in a few colours to create an underpainting on my illustration board.  The sky is roughed in with a combination of cerulean blue and titanium white acrylic pigments.  Because the light is coming from the right side of the painting, I transition from a very pale colour on the right to a darker sky on the left.  I block in the shadows on the barn roof and in the snow.  The snow surfaces that are directly in sunlight are blocked in with titanium white.  I use cerulean blue to add a few contours to the shaded, snow laden boughs in the foreground.

"Winterlude" one step closer!

I keep adding more colour and more detail, gradually establishing my colour scheme and mood of the painting.  I use cadmium red to wash in basic tones on the male and female cardinals and slowly build contours of light and shadow as I go.  The plumage of the female cardinal is primarily drab and somewhat olive, so I use a combination of cadmium yellow, titanium white and ultramarine blue to create this colour.  The spruce tree in the middle ground and the pine boughs in the foreground are quickly blocked in with sap green.  Next, I introduce burnt sienna on the fencing and bare deciduous trees in the middle ground.  I also build a little more shadow contour on the male cardinal with this colour.  Finally, I paint the sky again with more colour and detail in the blending.  My painting is starting to take shape!

Winterlude

"Winterlude" sketch

I thought I would do a demo of how I paint this Christmas image for licensing.  I do a fair amount of illustrative art for licensing through Porterfield's Fine Art Licensing.  A winter scene is the perfect choice, since the art that is most in demand for licensing is usually a Christmas theme.  These images are often used for greeting cards, puzzles, gift ware and paper products as well as many other possibilites.  A prospective client will review the work I have available for licensing in a given catagory, choose what suits their project and purchase limited rights to use the image for a specific purpose and for a specific period of time.

The first thing I do when producing this type of art is to brainstorm an idea that will appeal to a maximum number of buyers.  Quite often, as in this case, the idea includes a number of similar images that may evolve into a series of finished pieces, all on the same theme.  Once I feel I have enough inspiration to proceed I come up with reference material for my idea.  I file all types of reference and I take digital photos everywhere I go, so I have a lot of material to draw from.  Now I create sketches to work out my design and create any additional parts of my picture from a combination of memory and imagination.  When this is done  I proceed to do a finished sketch on board or canvas to begin my painting.

"Winterlude"

The next step begins by spraying my drawing with a workable fixative to seal the graphite and prevent smearing.  Now I cover the drawing with matt medium that contains a small amount of acrylic pigment to tone the board.  Usually I will mix one muted colour and cover the entire surface evenly to provide a ground instead of glaring white.  Warm earth tones are my usual choice, but blue-gray is an alternative for a cooler, more subdued look.  

This time I wanted to suggest an extreme contrast between the extreme sunlight on the right and the cool shade on the left of my painting, so I toned the matt medium with cadmium yellow on the right and cerulean blue on the left.  I hope to create the illusion of a winter day warmed by the sun.  These colours will influence the paint that I lay over top as I continue to work.

The View at Brown's Bay

"Brown's Bay" 9X12 alkyd oil on panel

This is one of my favourite views as you drive along the Thousand Islands Parkway between Brockville and Rockport, Ontario.  The parkway follows the North shore of the St. Lawrence River for about thirty miles from Brockville on the east to Gananoque on the west.  The river views are spectacular and there are many places that travellers can park their car and enjoy the view.  I grew up in a house right on the water near the village of Rockport and I never tire of looking at the mighty St. Lawrence River.

Brown's Bay is a broad, shallow bay with a sandy bottom that makes the water appear pastel blue on sunny days.  The very distant shore, beyond the headland in this painting is New York state, directly across the river.  For years I have planned on creating a painting of this spot and I finally got around to it last fall.  I like the way this small canvas panel turned out and I plan on creating a much larger work from it in the future.  There always seems to be an endless supply of subjects to paint but not enough time to paint them all.

Barn on Hunt Road

'Barn on Hunt Road'  7X9 inches  

It was late in the season, one day last summer, when I drove past this aging old bank barn on a side road a few miles northwest of Kingston, Ontario.  The missing boards, rusted metal roofing, along with the split rail fence really caught my eye.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to concentrate on a larger painting at that time, but I intended to return at a later date and spend more time.

I managed to get this small painting completed and then filed it away in the back of my mind to follow up in the weeks ahead.  The spot was really charming and I really wanted to make the most of it.  Finally, the day came when my objective for the day was to create a larger plein air painting of 'The Barn on Hunt Road'.  The weather was perfect that day, sunny and warm, with nice cloud formations starting to build but no dreaded winds to topple my french easle!  With great anticipation, I struck out for the location along the dirt road where I had found this wonderful subject.  Alas, to my dismay, when I arrived at the correct location, all was lost.  The beautiful, historic old barn had been bulldozed and the land was now scraped flat!  Another rustic scene had been changed forever.

Situations like this are one of the reasons I love to paint the landscapes around me.  I never know when they will cease to exist and could be lost forever.  If a painting or at least a photo is made then there is  a record of something that can never be recreated in just the same way again.  Fortunately, I did complete this small painting and I did take some photos that day, so maybe a larger work will one day sit on my studio easel!

Murvale Creek

'Murvale Creek' 9" X 12" oil on canvas panel  $300.00

'Murvale Creek' was the last plein air painting that I completed before the weather turned cold and the days became bleak this autumn.  It was almost the end of November at the time, so I can't complain too much!  The day was ideal for painting out-of-doors.  As you can see, the sky was nearly cloudless and there was hardly a breath of wind all day.  That is pretty rare here in November!  This is a lovely spot and one I am sure I will return to again to paint and enjoy nature.  I took a number of photos while I was there, so maybe I will create a few more works throughout the winter to record how much I enjoyed that day and that  place.

Today is January 2nd., the first 'back to work' day of the new year.  I hope to produce plenty of new art in 2013 and I will try to share my efforts here with all of you who take an interest in my work.  Please feel free to share your comments about any of the paintings that you see here or contact me directly for more information.  All the best in 2013!