Published 10/12/2007

Wildlife artist depicts nature with a fine point

by Beckye Randall

The bald eagle was poised for the kill, talons unsheathed in a predatory pose, wings spread wide to catch the wind. In spite of the lifelike rendition, however, this eagle was not spotted in the wild or in a lucky photograph. Rather, it was the result of hours of painstaking artistic effort by Pat Delony, a local wildlife artist.

 Delony employs the labor-intensive technique of pen and ink pointillism in his works of art. Each drawing is composed of thousands of individual dots, meticulously placed by the artist with his 6x0 (.13mm) Rapidograph pen.

With a honey-laced Southern drawl, Delony plays down his talent by claiming his work is “knowing how many dots to use and where to put them.” As evidenced by his extensive clientele and national reputation, his artistic interpretation allows those dots to come to life on paper.

Delony is a native of Louisiana and earned a Fine Arts degree from Louisiana Tech University.  His early work years were focused on commercial art, working as a fashion illustrator and manager of other artists. While building a successful career in marketing and management, he continued to refine his artistic techniques as a hobby.

Now, he claims his time spent drawing is a “hobby gone berserk.” While living in the exclusive Atlanta suburban community of Reynolds Plantation at Lake Oconee, Delony began supplying limited edition prints to homebuyers. Soon he was commissioned by the Reynolds Plantation Natural History Museum to provide detailed wildlife art for its exhibits and displays.

The drawings he has created for the museum are incredibly realistic and, due to their use as a teaching tool, always anatomically correct. “I’m a feather counter,” admitted Delony.

In fact, much of the work for a drawing is done months before his pen ever touches the paper. Delony spends endless hours researching his subject, learning about its nesting and mating habits, its natural habitat, and its abilities. “I try to capture the essence of the animal,” said Delony, “and that means what sets it apart from other species. What makes it special?”

For his drawing of a red-tail hawk, Delony found that the bird of prey’s greatest asset was its keen eyesight. “If our eyes were proportionately the same size as a hawk, they’d be as big as an orange,” Delony explained. His rendering of the bird’s head captures that magnificent feature with precise detail.

Pat Delony and his wife Nancy share their Marysville home with their son Stuart, the director for Youth Dynamics in Arlington, Stuart’s wife and their four children. The proud grandfather happily contributes to his grandchildren’s home-based education by providing art lessons.

“We watched the Planet Earth series on TV, and the kids were fascinated by buffaloes,” Delony related. “So I showed them a buffalo head nickel, a picture of a prehistoric cave drawing of a buffalo, and a Native American buffalo design from a blanket. That way they could see how the same subject could be drawn from many different perspectives.”

While he appreciates the diversity of artistic expression, Delony sticks to a style of precise rendering in his own work. He claims his true creative outlet is actually the research that precedes the drawing.

“It’s the act of discovery that inspires me to create an image,” he said. “Visualizing the image, through the research, means that part of me flows through the pen and remains on the paper.”

For each drawing, Delony invests about a month conducting research, then typically spends 100 hours in rendering time. He is able to make progress on his list of subjects because he never sleeps more than 3-4 hours a night.

“I’ve always been that way,” he said. “As a child, my father built a basketball hoop for me that was at the back of our 3-acre parcel, far away from the house and the neighbors, so I could shoot baskets while everyone else slept.” Prime drawing time for Delony is between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m., while the household is quiet.

Delony has 10 to 12 pictures in various states of progress at any one time. “If I get burned out on one animal, I can switch to another for a few days.” He is currently working on a list of 50 commissioned drawings for the Atlanta museum, checking them off as he goes.

He uses photos, drawings and taxidermy displays to learn about an animal. His friendship with several big-game hunters in Georgia allowed him to get up close and personal with life-size models of zebras, grizzly bears and rhinoceros.

His limited edition prints are favorites of collectors, and Delony understands what his clients want. “The story sells,” he confided. Each drawing is accompanied by Delony’s extensive knowledge of the animal and an explanation of his focus for the piece.

He knows, for example, that a peregrine falcon is the fastest animal alive, capable of speeds up to 228 mph, and that wild turkey mothers ferry their chicks up to tree-top nests on their backs until the young ones are able to fly. Those unique characteristics are what Delony chooses to highlight in his drawings.

Delony also uses his marketing background, conducting artists’ seminars on marketing their work. Just like the retail clients he serves with his direct mail business, he tells artists to develop a “unique marketing proposition” that sets them apart from their peers.

That perspective is what convinced Delony to specialize in the tedious process of pen and ink pointillism. “I wanted to stand out from the herd” of watercolor, oil and acrylic artists. He knew he had succeeded in that goal when “75 percent of people I met asked if I was Pat Delony, the artist.”

Leaving that established market to be near his son’s family was not a difficult choice for Delony. He relishes the time spent with his grandchildren, and considers them a gift to be treasured.

In 1991 the Delonys lost a daughter, Haley, at age 11 to a rare genetic disorder. During her brief life, Pat Delony realized he needed to rework his busy professional career to maintain a close relationship with his children and wife. “Parents of special children have the highest divorce rate in the country,” Delony said, “and we didn’t want to be part of that statistic.”

Having a special needs child was the “most wonderful thing that ever happened to us,” according to Delony. He gave up a job that required him to travel 50 weeks a year in favor of a direct-mail marketing company he could run out of his home, and supplemented his love of marketing with his fascination for pen and ink drawings.

Today Delony’s work is on display at the Reynolds Plantation Natural History Museum and in countless private homes. Two other natural history museums have expressed an interest in his work. Delony also participates in juried art shows, but is still making the local connections needed to establish a permanent display space.

Pat Delony can be reached at dmawildlifeart@comcast.net.