Huntingparty - Story and Painting of a Falconer

mariekedestip (49)in #hunting • 7 years ago (edited)

Previous year, my father took me to a falconer. We both love birds, so this was a real treat. I always take my drawing gear with me, when I go to places where I might see interesting stuff. I was not disappointed, he had snow owls, Lapland owls, hawks, vultures, and many more species. We made a walk through the forest with a bird (I carried a barnowl), and he flew with them.
The falconer saw me drawing, and when everybody was gone, and my father and me were left, he asked me to show my drawings. I have this disorder in which I cannot accept compliments in a normal way, so showing my drawings (in real life) is always a huge step for me. The man asked me if we'd like to come over again, and join him hunting with a hawk, where I could draw and make reference pictures. So he'd receive a drawing or painting, and I have a unique day, filled with birds and nature, oh, how exited I was! (I said yes!)

Drawings at the day with the falconer:

So, half a year later, when it was hunting season in the Netherlands, I called him to ask if the deal was still on. And it was. Together with my father, the falconer, his dog - a German Wirehaired Pointer - and a 'ferretter' (a man who carries a ferret who is put in a rabbithole, and gets out in the other end of the 'pipe', with or without a rabbit) I walked along. I drew and shot pictures, but all the action is too fast for my pens and pencils, unfortunately. After some hours the hawk of the falconer catched a rabbit, and we set it loose, because there was momentarily a low rabbitcount in this area.

In the end it took me a few months to produce the 60x70cm acrylics painting of the falconer with his hawk and his German Wirehaired Pointer.

I started with a red background, which I learned from a local plein-air painter in regio Arnhem (mid/East part of the Netherlands). It makes your canvas covered, so no white specks, and it gives your work a warm glow, even though you're going to paint parts blue.

After building the painting I had to make the strawy, thick, long grass. I have to admit, it wasn't my hobby. Nature comes with trees and all, and I always hope I can stick to the portraits with a woolly background. Unfortunately. But to be honest, for someone who rarely paints plants and trees, I didn't completely messed it up.

In the end, the falconer and his wife loved the painting. I didn't varnish it, because the painting was hanged in a quite dark room, so the blackness of the colours look completely black, and don't need an intensifier (that's the main reason I do varnish paintings usually).