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Bengal Tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) are known to be wide-ranging animals, meaning they occupy huge territories, and can be found in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. In India, they are spread across a variety of habitats, be it tropical rain, deciduous, evergreen, or mangrove forests, or Terai grasslands. And now, the snow-capped mountains of the eastern Himalayas are included in the list.
a three-year study has produced the first-ever evidence of Indian tigers thriving in snow-covered mountains on the north-eastern tip of India in Arunachal Pradesh. These snow-comfortable tigers were photographed by camera traps at altitudes of 3600 meters above sea level.
A team of researchers took thousands of pictures using camera traps spread across the Dibang Wildlife Sanctuary and the Mishmi Hills. In some of these pictures, tigers were seen walking across the snow.
Range Map of Bengal Tigers
About the painting
I used photos of a male Bengal tiger taken at Arunachal Pradesh, and added some background foliage and a haze of falling snow. The branches and twigs on the background, and each snowflake, were masked using Holbein liquid frisket. The paper, Hahnemühle Watercolor Collection 140lb (oversized, at 38” x 30”) was chosen for its excellent frisket handling properties.,The compromise is that it is almost impossible to reactivate and blend dry paint and the paper does not lift at all. So my wet-on-wet technique has to be executed quite a bit more quickly than my preferred pace, and once laid down each brushstroke was indelibly stained.
The background involved more work and took much longer than the tiger itself, but plays an integral part, I think, in setting the mood as the intense staring big cat stalks toward to viewer in a snow storm.
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Augurs in Naivasha
Gene is an augur buzzard rescued by Shiv Kapila with the Kenya Bird of Prey Trust, in Naivasha. While somewhat shy, he is less reclusive than his cousin and neighbor, the Black Goshawk. He poses with austere dignity on a branch in his spacious enclosure, calmly awaiting his impending release.
Range Map of the Augur Buzzard
About the painting:
I created this painting while vacationing at Diana Beach on the coast of Kenya (I traveled with my paints, paper and 3ft x 2ft lightbox!), using reference photos I took while visiting the Kenya Bird of Prey Trust in Naivasha, a few months earlier. I was captivated by Gene’s stoic poise and piercing gaze and loved his chic black and white ermine-style plumage. As usual I composited several photos to get the right pose and transferred outlines to paper, which I taped to my lightbox. I was happy with the deliberate blooms and the rich ochre coloring of the background panel, which I think offsets his minimalist plumage colors and beautiful patterning quite well. The whole work was done with a combination of wet on wet, wet on dry and glazing, with detailed over-painting restricted to the eyes and beak.
You can see a step-by-step process slideshow in my CREATIVE PROCESS section.
To see a high resolution image of the artwork and to learn more about Augur Buzzards, check out my GALLERY section