In 1982, when artist Jean Pritchard was 17, a representative from a local art and design college showcased its students’ work at her high school. After seeing their scientific and technical illustrations she immediately knew what she wanted to do with her life.
Young Pritchard’s artistic eye very soon steered her toward illustration and eventually wildlife art, mainly painting big cats of the jungle, mountains, and savannah.
Those early days were simpler, when illustrators still drew things the old-fashioned way—tracing on parchment paper then painting on canvas, instead of using Adobe and, now, AI. Pritchard’s professors at the Blackpool School of Arts, part of Blackpool and The Fylde College in Lancashire, UK, trained her mainly in watercolor painting, though she later discovered much bolder chroma in oils.
“This was before computers really took a hold of everything, so illustrations in books were done by hand and not on a computer with digital art,” she said. “The illustration world is so different now.”
“I am a real lover of Rembrandt and I think this is quite evident in my paintings,” Pritchard said. “I tend to over-paint the light source so that it draws the viewer in.”
She said she studied Baroque paintings from books because there weren’t many museums in the quaint countryside of northern England where she lives.
While the white tigers Pritchard now paints are extremely trendy in today’s art market, her approach to technique is very much rooted in tradition. Each painting begins with a canvas toned by a wash of raw umber—very similar to Rembrandt’s monochromatic underpaintings. She then gradually builds up more colors and body using very thin, diluted layers, just like the Old Masters.
“I usually start right at the most important part of the subject—the head and the eyes,” she said. “If you get this part right you have it.” While painting more suggestively in the periphery, for the main objects she tightens up the lines and intensifies lighting to bring them forward and create depth.
Just like artists of the Baroque and Renaissance eras, Pritchard finishes her paintings with glazes of rich color.
A snow leopard currently sits on her easel, confronting the viewer directly with a look of supreme composure. So far this year, Pritchard has finished a pair of white tigers that resulted from several excellent reference photos she found. Now she is “used to painting white fur.”
“People love the white tigers as they are so rare and face their own survival challenges,” she said.
Pritchard says she finds painting from photos that have been Photoshopped off-putting. She prefers old-fashioned techniques, though she’s becoming more tech-savvy in some areas. She used to teach art in person, but the pandemic forced her to teach online. She started using software like Procreate to generate preparatory sketches for future paintings more easily.
But she is selective about the technology she uses.
“I don’t like AI at all,” she said. “I think it’s spoiling art.”
Pritchard is now planning to show her work at busier art exhibitions farther south.
