ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

BY: Kevin Kibsey

A PORTFOLIO BY KEVIN KIBSEY ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

FOR MORE THAN TWO DECADES, OUR RESIDENT ARTIST HAS BEEN ILLUSTRATING STORIES ABOUT COWBOYS, INDIANS, FLORA AND FAUNA. AND EVERY MONTH, YOU SEE HIS WORK IN OUR HIKE OF THE MONTH AND SCENIC DRIVE. THEY'RE IMPRESSIVE ILLUSTRATIONS, BUT THEY RUN PRETTY SMALL. SO, THIS MONTH, WE'RE GIVING YOU A CLOSER LOOK.

Kevin Kibsey calls Blessings of a Cowboy, which he made in the early 2000s, “a save of a disaster.” This scene is near Prescott’s Phippen Museum, where Kibsey attended a plein-air workshop. “I did a nice 9-by-12-inch study of it, and it was such a successful piece that I thought I’d try to increase it to 24 by 36 inches,” he says. “It didn’t work compositionally, so I decided to turn it into a Western. The dog and the horse belonged to two friends of mine, and I had them pose the animals while I shot Polaroids from a vantage point that would match the painting. For the cowboy, I had my brother photograph me. Then I used the photographs to paint the figures into the scene.” The cowboy life, Kibsey says, is a bit of a dream of his, “but that wasn’t the intent; the intent was that I didn’t have anyone to model for me.”

KEVIN KIBSEY AND ALLEN IVERSON wouldn't get along. Iverson, the former NBA star, infamously derided a reporter's question about missing practice. Kibsey, though, believes that just like athletes, artists must work tirelessly to hone their craft.

"People are born with a certain amount of talent," Kibsey says. "But if you're ever going to approach a high level, you've got to live it and breathe it."

In addition to occasional other projects for Arizona Highways, Kibsey has been illustrating the maps that accompany our Scenic Drive (previously called Back Road Adventure) and Hike of the Month stories since the mid-1990s. That relationship, he says, began with a chance meeting at the pool.

"Gary Bennett was the art director at the time, and I was freelancing as an artist and also working as a swim coach," he says. "It turned out that his daughter was one of my students, and his wife put me in touch with him." Bennett was impressed with Kibsey's portfolio and gave him his first assign-nment. In February 1993, his scratchboard illustrations accompanied Chato the Betrayed, a William Hafford story on the Chiricahua Apache warrior. Shortly thereafter, Kibsey became a regular contributor to the magazine. He also illustrated our children's book Dr. Bird to the Rescue, published in 2005.

Kibsey studied graphic design and illustration at the University of Arizona. But he says his turning point as an illustrator came when he took a two-week summer course on plein-air painting, the traditional French method of capturing landscapes in the outdoors. It helped him learn the fundamentals of oil painting, and it also played to what Kibsey considers his biggest strength: his ability to compose a scene.

"If there's one thing that separates the men from the boys, it's the ability to compose," he says. "Throughout history, great art has not just been about being able to represent something accurately. The ability to direct the viewer's eye to a focal point is so important. The focal point of a painting is like the climax of a story."

And knowing how to do that, of course, takes practice.

A PORTFOLIO BY KEVIN KIBSEY

LEFT: "This red-faced warbler is one of my nicest bird illustrations," Kibsey says. "It's really easy to get muddy with watercolor and overwork it. It's much harder to do than oil or acrylic painting. In some instances, like with my Dr. Bird to the Rescue illustrations, I've had two false starts before getting to a finished piece. But on this piece, the color quality is mature and sophisticated. I also like how the pine needles frame the scene."

ABOVE: Kibsey will often use multiple photos of one animal while making his illustrations. "On this prairie dog, I probably used more than one image to reposition his front paws," he says. "I'll even go as far as making subtle anatomy changes to make a great composition."

ABOVE, RIGHT: Kibsey says this watercolor of a Hereford cow illustrates a key tenet of painting: White is never white. "In the white on the cow, you see pinkish tones in some areas where light is reflecting off the ground. In other areas, you have cool shadows that are more blue and green tones. When you really look at objects, you can discern different colors and temperatures in the highlights and shadows."

RIGHT: "I get a charge out of reflected light," Kibsey says. "I looked at several photos of yellow-headed blackbirds for this image. On a number of them, the light reflecting on their heads gave them more of a green-blue tone in places, so I incorporated that in my piece. Yellow is the hardest color to paint with, and I'm happy with the way this one turned out."

A PORTFOLIO BY KEVIN KIBSEY

ABOVE: When illustrating a plant, Kibsey usually focuses on a detail, as he did with these yucca blossoms. “If I do a close-up of the blossoms,” he says, “I can render the individual petals and show how light reflects and shadows bounce off them. I can show the intricacies of the flower parts in a way I couldn't if I painted the whole plant.” RIGHT: Kibsey made Cowboy Photographer a few years ago for an exhibit at Sul Ross State University in Texas. The subject was a student at Scottsdale's Arizona Cowboy College who was also a budding photographer. “At the time, I was doing a lot of horse-jumping and horse-wrangling, and that's how I ran into this guy,” Kibsey says. “I set him up with the saddle, and he had this vintage Polaroid camera. The horse was never there; I photographed the horse separately and combined elements of several photos to create the perfect pose. The cowboy was also wearing a different hat, which I changed to a 'brush popper' style of hat to fit the show in West Texas. The horse leads the viewer to the focal point, which is the camera.”