In December of 2023 I began working on another large Florida Panther watercolor painting!
This piece is about 4 feet wide and 3 feet tall (36x42) and each plant and animal species is painted more or less to scale. It took several months to complete, and was finished in May 2024. It depicts 23 species of plants and animals that can be found within it's range.
Species depicted:
Animal Species: Florida panther (Jim Damaske), burrowing owls (Ben Jiang), gopher tortoise (Charles Livio), apple snails, and tufted titmouse.
Butterfly Species: Zebra longwing, monarch, painted lady, checkered skipper, duskywing skippers, and grey hairstreak.
Plant Species: yaupon, bidens alba, sunshine mimosa, thin paspalum, tickseed, lakeside sunflower, milkweed, fogfruit, St. Augustine grass, thin paspalum, Florida pellitory and Virginia pepperweed.
Dedication
I hope this piece inspires people to love panthers and advocate for their protection.
Florida panthers live almost exclusively in South West Florida, where cities are growing and sprawling at an alarming rate. In order for them to survive, panthers need more federally protected habitat.
Art can raise awareness but can't change things by itself. Real protection for panthers can only come from politics. As individuals, we can vote for politicians who will support conservation, and vote out those who don't. We can also join conservation organizations to know when and how to take action. For instance, these groups have taught me when and how to join county commission meetings, and have coordinated email campaigns to elected officials.
The South Florida Wildlands Association email newsletter is my favorite resource to stay informed and find calls for action on panther conservation. Scroll to the bottom of this page to find their email subscriber form. There are many other local, state and national conservation organizations that do the same. I highly recommend joining with others in this way. Coordinated actions have helped to protect the panther in the past, and will be needed again in the future. We work better when we work together.
Inspiration
In 2019 there was a massive proposed toll road project that would have sliced through panther habitat and accelerated urban sprawl in the area. Had it gone forward, it would have likely made the Florida panther go extinct. It was massively resisted in every county and city on the West coast of Florida. People came out in the thousands to speak in opposition to it. Thankfully, the project was thrown out.
During that time that I came across this Florida panther photo by Jim Damaske in an article about the MCORES tolls roads from the Tampa Bay Times and immediately fell in love with it. I loved the expression on it's partially obscured face, and the subtle movement against the backdrop of foliage. I wanted to paint it and add my own flair, but was unable to reach the photographer at the time to ask permission, so I went on to create a different large Florida panther painting that year.
In 2023, 4 years later, I remembered this photo. This time, I was able to make contact with the photographer and owner of the image and purchased a license to use it as the main reference for this painting!
Florida panthers are an "umbrella species", which means that if you protect the panther you also protect the plants and animals that live within it's large range. Similarly, I wanted to show how the large panther can be enjoyed from a distance, but then by zooming in you see a constellation of plants and animals that we often overlook.
Process
I began by sketching the panther to help me understand it's anatomy. Then I made some small "thumbnail sketches" to plan out the rest of the composition. I decided that I'd like to add burrowing owls and a gopher tortoise, so I found reference photos for those species and contacted the photographers to ask permission to use them in the painting. The burrowing owl references come from Ben Jiang, and the gopher tortoise reference is from Charles Livio. After that, I made a quick watercolor sketch to plan the colors.
I then stretched my watercolor paper onto a large MDF board by wetting and stapling down the paper. Once it was dry, I transferred the sketch onto the watercolor paper. To do this, I created a collage of sketches and the photos I'm directly referencing, then printed it out to scale and traced it using graphite transfer paper (I don't have a photo of me transferring the collage, so I added a photo of me transferring the collage for the Saw Palmetto Study painting, to help give you an idea of what it looks like). Then I refined the sketch and added additional details. Many of the plants are from the photos I took for the Plant Portraits project. Some of the insects are also recycled from that series. Some critters, like the tufted titmouse in the bottom right, is my own imaginary creation that I used a variety of bird photos to help me bring into reality. The whole planning, transferring, and sketching process took over a month, and accounts for almost 50% of the time spent on this painting (that is normal for all my work).
For the painting stage, I began by applying masking fluid over the plants that overlap the panther. Masking fluid acts as a barrier preventing some areas from absorbing paint. This allowed me to build up consistent layers and details in the fur without disturbing the foliage sections. After the body of the panther was complete, I removed the masking fluid and painted in the animals, leaves and other details. The whole painting process took me 1-2 months, but was spread out over several months because I had an injury and also was working on two other paintings.
I developed an injury/pain in my right shoulder half way through the plants, and had to slow down for a while to figure out what I was doing wrong ergonomically. I have EDS, so I am no stranger to odd aches and pains. I did regular exercises for that area of my body that learned in physical therapy, and started using a homemade art maul stick to help support my arm as it healed (seen here).
Slowly but surely, I finished the details in the herbaceous plants and flowers.
Printing and framing
I finished painting in May, and took it to a large format scanner at Prints Giclee Shop in Miami, to get it digitized. I then used the scanned digital images to make limited edition prints. For this piece, I decided to offer it in an edition of 30 in both a large and a small size. Available here: https://www.kimheise.com/product-page/yuma-the-florida-panther-print
Framing is almost as important as the painting itself. It protects the original watercolor and compliments the piece. The original was framed at Custom Photo Images in Boca in June (third image).
Details: Click to enlarge.
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