“Bengal Tiger” (Panthera tigris tigris), Original Watercolor, 38″ x 30″ on Hahnemühle Watercolor Collection 140 lb 100% rag paper.

Description

I am donating 25% of the proceeds from original and print/NFT sales to the Royal Chitwan National Park, in Nepal.

In Nepal, tigers roam in the Terai Arc Landscape that extends from Bagmati River in the east to the Yamuna River of India to the west. Five protected areas, namely, Parsa National Park, Chitwan National Park, Banke National Park, Bardia National Park and Suklaphanta National Park harbor tiger populations. Besides these protected areas, various national and community forests serve as tiger habitats that enable habitat interconnectivity and allow their dispersal.

I used photos of a male bengal tiger taken at Chitwan National Park, one of Nepal’s most well-known and visited nature preserves. I decied to set the tiger in a snowy landscape, typical of the forests of Chitwan in winter, seen through 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 being 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.

For details about the subject, conservation efforts and the painting, check out the work in my “Gallery” section.