The Elk and the Watering Hole | Cana Foundation commission
I'm pleased to reveal my latest artwork in my North American Wildlife series. I was fortunate enough to land on the radar of the Cana Foundation, an organization from New York devoted to animal conservation and restoration of North American landscapes. Their rewilding initiatives focusing on wild horses and native herbivores as keystone species.
The ask was to create a piece in my usual style, with the primary animal in the composition to be an elk, featuring a pronghorn and a cougar elsewhere within the body of the composition...
I started with a very large canvas to give them the opportunity to use this piece for print if they wanted to. Using my previous artwork as a reference guide was really helpful for keeping consistencies in this family of artwork. It also allowed me to pull layers and assets from old PSDs which made things more efficient. Instead of having to cut out blades of grass or trees and bushes, I could just leverage what I already had.
This piece is the first time I've ever used generative AI to assist me in my artwork. Photoshop Beta has an AI generator, which I employed to help me extend the grassy landscape in the middle section and render some rocks jutting out of the field. It's nothing I couldn't have done on my own, but again, I was going for efficiency. Work smarter, not harder as they say...
Here's a speedlapse of my process in Photoshop to create this piece.
