New Snow Leopard Painting – for sale before Christmas!

Here is the latest on my easel, I thought you might be interested in seeing it develop.

Please note the ones I am showing on here at the moment are due to be for sale soon, so will be available for Christmas

This one is 10 x 10in

DONT FORGET YOU CAN FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK – MANY MORE STEP BY STEPS THERE!

Brand New Wolf Painting – on eBay SOON! (next few days)

On eBay auction NOW!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230757944383

wolf painting ebay

 

Here I am working on my brand new wolf painting, just the very 1st layers of detailing at the moment as you can see. I hope to have this wolf painting up for auction in the next few days, so keep tuned. More updates very soon.

Tiger Painted in Moonlight 2

Here is another update, this time showing the blocking in of the nighttime colours (oil on canvas).

 

The photo below shows the blocking in of the Tiger. Notice that I haven’t painted any stripes yet.

Also most of the rear of the Tiger will be covered by grasses etc so I haven’t bothered to finish the tail.

Learning to match / paint a specific color

The one thing beginner and novice artists seem to have trouble with more than anything else is painting or matching a color they see. Whether the color is from a reference photo, or a scene you are looking at you will need to have a basic understanding of color and color mixing before you can even begin to get close to mixing it in paint.

Now although many books over complicate matters for the beginner, many others over simplify things too much by giving the beginner / novice artist paint mixes/recipes, for example they say things like – mix a certain amount of Ultra Marine Blue with a certain amount of Winsor yellow and you will get grass green. Now that may be true, for that particular type of grass, but what will the beginner / novice do when faced with a grass in a different light or any other subject that differs from the paint mix? Basically they are stuck.

By following paint mixes you are basically following a recipe, your doing a paint by numbers and NOT learning how to paint at all.

What you need to do to really LEARN to mix a required color is follow a series of simple logical steps, by asking yourself questions to evaluate the color you are seeing. In my latest ebook “oil painting made easy” I have covered lots of different aspects of color mixing – including learning to see color, lightening / darkening a color, greying a color etc etc etc but more importantly I show you step by step exactly the questions I ask myself when I am mixing a certain color, I show you my thought process. By learning this along with some color mixing basics you can then mix a color to match any subject nomatter where or what it is – you are REALLY learning to paint.

Below is a very brief example taken from my ebook “oil painting made easy” and although the ebook was written mainly with oil painters in mind MANY of the principles apply to all painting mediums – hope you find this example of use

Click the photos for larger views (images much larger in ebook)

BRAND NEW EBOOK “Oil Painting Made Easy” – Available Now!

Adding more details to the Lion Painting – Wildlife Art

I have been adding more details to the Lion painting, and also getting the colours more realistic. Now that is done I can begin to lay in the foreground grasses and also some thicker paint.

Lion painting – some things work, some don’t

I tried to paint in the tip of the lion’s tail, as per the burnt sienna underpainting, but as it was a dark tail, against a light green background it just stood out like a sore thumb! grabbing all the attention, so I just wiped it back off. It seemed like a good idea in principle, but you always have to be ready to make changes during a painting.

Lion Painting – wildlife art continued

I’ve started to add some more realism to the colours now, probably 2 to 3 more layers required to bring the current areas to completion. I can then start laying in the foreground grasses with thick paint. This should give it a nice 3d feel.

Lion Painting (update)

Here’s the latest update of the big Lion painting. Still really at the blocking in stage, although I have spent a little more time on the Lion’s head than elsewhere.

This painting is for sale

Lion Painting – Wildlife Art – On my Easel

This year I want to challenge my art a bit more and not get stuck in to painting the standard African paintings and Tiger portraits, which are always in demand. This year I will be painting a lot more of what I would call REAL Africa. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but one thing for sure is that they will reflect the true, life and death scenarios which are constantly occuring in the wild.

Here is the 1st in that series of paintings.

This is avery small little pencil / pen sketch, probably only about 5 inches wide. I’m just playing with placement / light against dark etc here and this is just one of a few small sketches.

My Wildlife Art Plans for 2010

I know just about everyone has a New Years Resolution, and many fail within the first week or weeks of the New Year, but it has been proven that by actually writing out your resolutions,  you have a much higher chance of sticking to them long-term. So for this post I’m going to list a few of my plans for 2010, basically telling you what you can expect from me in the coming 12 months and beyond.

Well my first real change for this year will be a dramatic reduction in the number of commissions I will be accepting in 2010. I know many artists might have found that they have had a lot less commission requests during the recession, but even during the last year I have really never had enough time to persue artistic avenues that I have been thinking of for ages. So this year is my time well almost all my time ha… I’ll be selecting the commissions that get my creative juices flowing in the next month or so, so if you are thinking of commissioning me to paint something this year please drop me an email ASAP so I can fit you into my long-term schedule

So what will I be painting??? Well I’m not 100% sure yet, but I do want to take this time to REALLY push my boundaries, surely it is only then that one can grow as an artist. So I will be painting large! Larger than I have before, making the big game of Africa even more imposing and dramatic, and I will also be painting much smaller than I have ever done, just because an elephant is huge it doesn’t mean that every painting of an elephant has to be on a huge canvas. I will challenge myself to create the larger than life look on small canvases too

I also have plans to paint the TRUE Africa, not just the pretty / romantic scenes, but also real life, kill scenes and more, not that I want to be gory but it really is how these animals survive and live each day.

I’m also going to start production of my 1st DVD fairly soon. Hopefully it will be of a good production quality (I’m going to be spending quite a sum of money to make this come to life) but my main goal is going to be to pass on as many tips as possible, just like in my ebooks, but this time I will be able to show you my actual brush strokes as they happen.

I hope you take some time to write your resolutions for the coming year down too.