Raven Art | Detour for a Thirsty Raven

Description

Details about the Original Work

Title: Detour for a Thirsty Raven
Size: 29 x 37″ (landscape orientation)
Media: handmade oil paint, Ozark foraged pigments
Substrate: birch plywood
Pigment source: shale gray, limestone, brown sandstone, yellow sandstone, black stone, green siltstone, russet sandstone, soot, and titanium white

Prints

Available in 8 x 10, 12 x 16, and 16 x 20 archival, open edition. Notecards, small and large, are also available.

More Info

This painting of a raven having a drink is titled Detour for a Thirsty Raven. It’s an imaginary scene with a rustic, Old World feel. To see still shots of the progression of this work, click here to go to my main website’s page for this painting. Raven art is some of my favorites to see by other artists, and I hope you enjoy mine. Below you’ll find the YouTube progression of my Thirsty Raven accompanied by the instrumental composition of Daniel Hay and performed by Christine Fuxa. Give the video a Like and follow to help me show my appreciation for this collaboration of artists.

Raven Art

I’ve wanted to paint a raven for a long time and finally got around to it. We don’t have ravens in the Ozarks but I loved seeing them while we were in Colorado. What we do have are crows, their smaller cousins. I love crows too. But a local craft brewery in Eureka Springs, AR is having a themed show to celebrate their third anniversary, and that gave me the perfect motivation to make some raven art.

There is no photo reference for this painting, as it is an imaginary scene. I did look at a lot of photos of ravens, kegs, and parts of ravens and kegs, though. The actual ‘look’ of the scene is partly my imagination and partly because of the colors I have to work with. We visited a few wine cellars while in Germany years ago, and memories of that played into the creation as well.

The Colors

The only color that I don’t forage locally is the white that I use for blending and shade/value/tone adjustments. All of the actual colors are from resources foraged here at Wild Ozark or in the local creeks and streams. In this raven art, the black came from soot I collected when we cleaned our chimney last fall in preparation for winter. The other colors came from rocks of various shades. Most of the rocks were sandstones (red, yellow, brown, black, and green). I also used shale to get a dark gray, almost black.

Views of this raven art

If you’d like to see it in person now, while it is still drying, please email or text (madison@wildozark.com or (479)409-3429). Otherwise, once it is ready to hang, it’ll be at Gotahold Brewery in Eureka Springs, AR for the month of July 2023 (at full price).