It all starts with a picture he takes himself, which is later transformed into a heightened realistic colored pencil on watercolor, meant to bring the idea of the animals to its viewer.

Michael Felber is the artist who will be featured in the Animals//Artists exhibition opening at the Jefferson Museum of Art and History on Aug. 31.

Photo to life

With an interest in bears, mostly grizzly and other coastal brown bears, Felber has taken a firsthand approach to each of his subjects. Making the trip to far lands such as Norway and Alaska, with a camera in hand, he takes care to get to know the animals as much as he can before putting pencil to paper. Felber credits his camera rather than his photography skills, since he takes hundreds of pictures during every trip, to get the most detail from every frame. He does not rely on the digital print, however, as he blows up the picture to just get an idea of the details.

“For every tuft of fur, it’s sort of a fuzzy thing, but suggests what it might be,” he explained. “Then I draw it with more detail than what I see. So, I'm basically making the whole thing up, but you end up seeing a detailed drawing. There’s a lot more detail that I’ve added that aren’t in the photograph.”

The digital pictures give the structure, expression and position of the animals, and it is Felber’s job to make it his own. Though there is detail in every lock of hair covering the body of the animal, etched with care, Felber does not call his work photo-realistic.

“I go beyond the photograph,” Felber said. “At a point, I don’t even look at the photograph. Later on, when I go back to the photograph, I find it hard to understand how I got that much detail on the drawing when the photograph didn’t even have it.”

With an interest in capturing animals on canvas, Felber has made routine visits to Katmai National Park, located on the Alaskan Peninsula, seven times spanning back to 2000. There, he takes thousands of photos, of which he chooses just a few to use in his work.

“When the bears walk by us, and they walk by us pretty close, I take one picture right after another,” he said.

When he reviewed the photos, he was intrigued by one of the animals that would later be the subject of his painting “Young Mother.” This bear stuck out to him from the others. Felber recalled looked like she had just thought of something, changing her expression entirely and hitting Felber on an emotional level.

Through other work, Felber had to draw animals from pictures others have taken for reference, but now, with his retirement, he strives to use pictures he has taken. He reasons, when he has the connection with the bear, the experience makes it all better.

“The more I know about the bear, the better the drawing will be,” he said. “When I look at the photo, it goes through my eye, through my brain and out my hand … When it goes through my brain, it gets mixed up with everything else in my brain. So my feelings about the bear will somehow come out.”

When he took a picture of a polar bear in Svalbard, Norway, he noticed a tag number on its back. To learn more about the specimen, he got in touch with the Norwegian Polar Institute in order to learn more about the bear. They told him the bear was seen with a female when it was tagged, giving him additional insight to what its background included.

“I knew knowing all that would help,” he said. “It won’t just be an object.”

With each of his drawings, the process is straightforward. To start out, while looking at the picture, Felber brings each subject into frame as just a line drawing, which is half the process, blocking out the colors with watercolor and then filling them in completely with colored pencil. When complete, Felber's aim is to depict the animals so much that the viewer cannot help but think of anything but the animal.

A storied career

Felber did not start out his artistic career bringing animals to life with watercolor and colored pencils, but instead as a printmaker.

In 1972, he received his master’s in fine arts in printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute, and later was a master printer of etching for the Ruth Leaf and Bob Blackburn workshops in New York City, and Garner Tullis' workshop in Santa Cruz, California.

He had stints teaching printmaking at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Hartnell College and the San Francisco Museum of Art, but had to stop, since the chemicals used were making him ill.

He found work as a character animator for “The Flintstones” cartoon series, where he would draw pencil sketches that would later be given to the inker to draw the hard black lines, which would be completed by a painter and later filmed, one by one, to create a moving 2D image to broadcast.

He worked alongside 10 other animators, 15 assistant animators and 16 background artists in the low-budget animation team.

He also worked on the “The Plague Dogs,” a 1982 film, which Felber described as one of the most depressing animated films of all time, with a cult following. He said it was one of the last animated movies not utilizing computer technology. As an assistant animator to Retta Scott, who was Walt Disney’s first female animator, putting her name on such classics like “Dumbo,” “Bambi” and “Fantasia,” Felber honed his skills in both animation and animals.

After the release of “The Plague Dogs,” which did not fare well at the box office, Felber decided he did not want to go down the avenue animation was taking him, using computers over the physical sheets of paper and pencil. Instead, he returned to his traditional drawing.

“The practice of drawing for 40 to 60 hours per week for four years is what made my drawing good,” he said, crediting his hand-eye coordination to that training.

 Felber, who has an understanding of the trajectory that animation took, said he did not regret his decision in choosing to stick with the more tactile medium.

“I just really like the physical sense of a pencil on a piece of paper,” he said.

During his time in animation, he had to study how animals move. After his run with the studio that created “The Plague Dogs,” Felber put his knowledge to use in his poster, “Animals in Motion” for The Nature Company. The poster, which had two runs of thousands of copies printed, shows seven animals in their run cycles, from the petite rabbit to the large bear.

He later kept himself busy creating illustrations for a variety of publishers to be used in books, magazines, T-shirts and posters until he retired. In 1992, he moved to Port Townsend from San Francisco to enjoy a more country life.

Making the actual

“In my work, I primarily am focused on the beauty of the animal and bringing it closer to the viewer ­- to help the viewer get an emotional connection to the animal,” Felber said.

Though environmentally conscious, Felber’s goal with his work is not to change minds but to put in the mind of his viewer the idea of the reality of these animals.

“Part of what I’m trying to do is show people that these animals have lives that have nothing to do with us,” he said. “They have their own families, they have their own memories, they have their own needs.”

Currently, Felber's work is displayed at Smith and Vallee Gallery in Edison. The original polar bear print will be at the Whatcom Museum exhibit on Endangered Species opening Sept. 8.

His archival pigment print reproductions will be sold at the Jefferson County Museum. Felber, along with five of his peers, will show their work featuring many species of animals during the three-month exhibition at the Jefferson County Museum of Art and History at 540 Water St. The other artists include Drew Elicker, Jason Gould, Max Grover, Jody Joldersma and Frank Renlie.

A members' preview will start Aug. 30, with the opening date slated for Aug. 31. The closing date will be Dec. 31.

According to Jenny Westdal, president of the Jefferson County Historical society, the museum strives to vary exhibits to appeal to a variety of patrons.

“Our last exhibit, ‘Palouse to the Peninsula,’ featured a group of artists who had shared influences and connections in their earlier years,” she explained, “while  ‘Artists//Animals’ is a chance to see the work of artists who have very different styles, education and backgrounds.”

She went on to explain the exhibit is more about the perceptions of animals rather than the animals themselves.

“Because the artists have such different styles and visions, the exhibit is more about our perceptions of animals rather than the animals themselves,” she said. “Some of the artists portray animals realistically, while some of the artists are creating animals that live only in their imagination.”

The exhibit can be enjoyed by both children and more sophisticated exhibit visitors, she added.

“Bringing a wild animal inside a person’s house accomplishes something,” Felber said about his work as it relates to its exhibition and selling it to collectors. “(I) remember that when someone hangs one of my animal drawings in their home, it resides there, and every day they look at a grizzly bear or a polar bear or a bug. That surely makes them think about this animal, perhaps in an unconscious way, but the animal is moving around in their brain, and I have managed to bring this person closer to a wild animal every day. That will help that person connect to the natural world around them.”