by Diane, Painting my reality without camera references

Traditionally painters make plans like taking photos of their subject and making drawings of their composition before starting to transfer their final drawing onto the canvas. Then when all is perfectly planned, they paint.
          Rejecting tradition, I want the painting to be my first impulsive fresh statement capturing the vigor of my child- like enthusiasm. I try to summon my courage and go right for drawing in oil paints on my canvas. Of course my rejection of a safer path can result in more failures. Critics used to photographic reality will say my fox doesn't look like a fox. Most often I am the critical one meaning  correcting errors. For example, the dark background on the fox's right front leg is a distraction counter to the fluidity of the fox's movement. So I added more dark under the fox and transitional grays.

Convex belly,
left horizon line confused
right front leg

        During the past month of oil painting  fox in our backyard, I accept my depiction of anatomical inaccuracy trading it for lively exaggerations of gesture and color.  As I watch the fox, I am becoming more familiar and want to see if I can remember well enough to better capture an abstracted form on my canvas. I was not satisfied with my first paintings after continuing to study the foxes' flowing movements.  Before painting more oils, I drew in grays with sumi ink and washes of white acrylic ink.
   

The dark below the belly defined the belly as being concave
 because in order for the fox to have maximum spring
 the pelvis tilts down pulling the belly in before the apex of the jump as the back legs push
and the chest expands with air 

Other parts of my life come into play on how I am observing the fox. I have been learning Tai Chi Qi Gong for two months. So my co-ordination and memory of strange, slow, sneaky movements are foreign to my Western stiff tight neck and knees. I imagine myself as smooth and as a fox. but of course I am not.  I am becoming more aware of my breath and how I am distributing my weight and what it does to my bones as I move. So when I am drawing the fox, I can imagine the fox's body as if it were my body giving me a reality different than the camera's.  The fox has to move with the same principles as the practice of martial art. Interesting to make comparisons and record with a little distortion where the weight and breath is in the fox.
        Time to paint more memories of the fox, last seen on Monday. I sure hope one of the four foxes we watched, survives the predators.

        Not taking pictures with my phone, also, allows me to accept childlike distortion and simplification making the spirit of the gesture dominant.

I do not know if 6,000 years ago
when Qi Gong was first practiced
if the first masters
took inspiration from the movement of foxes.